Leonardo da Vinci is incensed. "Of-a all-a my-a a-paintings, the Mona a-Lisa is a-considered a-great? What a a-load-a of a-crap-a!!! Hold-a on-a!! Let me-a a-fix a-that-a!!!!"
Leonardo da Vinci is then promptly arrested because no one believes he's really a time travelling Italian polymath of the Renaissance and the Louvre Museum in Paris doesn't want anyone touching their shit.
Which brings us to the topic of today's Cinema Sunday, a movie not from the past or of the present but a movie from the future, one that hasn't been seen yet, Zack Snyder's Justice League.
The infamous and long fabled Snyder cut.
Long ago in the "before time", Zack Snyder was tasked to give Warner Bros. and DC their version of Marvel's The Avengers. It's time for Justice League: THE MOVIE!
The path to the Justice League: THE MOVIE! was not an easy one. Misfires along the way included very poorly conceived and received films such as Suicide Squad and Snyder's own Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Once we get there, the final product is a bit underwhelming.
For my "hot take", click here for my post from 11/22/2017 about the Justice League movie.
One other bad thing on the way to Justice League was tragedy of the worse kind for a parent as Zack Snyder and his wife had to deal with the loss of their daughter to suicide. It is more than any parent should have to endure and Snyder stepped down from the Justice League movie.
Joss Whedon comes in to finish the movie. This is not, as they say, his first rodeo. Joss wrote and directed the first two Avengers films for Marvel that DC was so desperate to emulate. And Joss' style was perfect for countering the criticism that Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice was too dark.
Justice League landed with a thud.
In addition to trying to thread the needle to be true to Zack Snyder's vision while bringing is own take to the project, Joss Whedon had to contend with studio meddling. Key among that meddling was an insistence that the final edit of Justice League come under 2 hours. Another criticism of Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice was that it was too long. Which was a valid criticism but needs to be considered in context. What makes a movie long is not just the measurement of actual passing time but the mood of the audience. A dark brooding slog of a movie is going to seem longer whether the movie is 90 minutes or 3 hours.
To meet the enforced mandate of keeping Justice League under 2 hours, a lot of the movie wound up on the cutting room floor. Elements to bolster the plot or improve character development did not find their way to the finished product.
The upshot was that Justice League was underwhelming. And the legend begin to rise up that there was a better version of the movie to be found: Zack Snyder's.
I have never understood the obsession with the Snyder cut. What exactly is there about Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice or Man of Steel before that that would make people thing that Zack Snyder's Justice League would be a superior film to what we got?
What I did enjoy of Justice League I felt owed more to the lighter, more character driven touch of Joss Whedon. I don't mean to give credit where it isn't due but the more humorous (and thus more human) interactions of the Justice League seemed more like Joss' influence than it seemed like Snyder's style. I may be incorrect in that assessment but that's how it felt to me.
As for the missteps in the movie owing to studio mandated edits, I don't see what Snyder would've had any better luck with the fighting the studio than Whedon did. After all, the reason for the mandate owed to Snyder's own excesses in BVS.
But the fervor among certain elements of fandom continued to be enflamed until the word came down last week. The new streaming service HBO Max will release in 2021 "Zack Snyder's Justice League".
I'm not in favor of this.
1) It's an insult to Joss Whedon. "We don't like your movie. We want it done by someone different." Joss has his plus and minuses as a creative person. I think there is more to admire about Joss Whedon's work that there are detriments. I don't think Joss' "Justice League" is some kind of sacred work of art. It's more or a less a work for hire. Whedon was hired to do a job with certain restrictions. In turn, Whedon did that job, delivering a competently produced professional movie. Is it great? No. Is it a total steaming pile of shit? No. Could the movie had been better? Yes.
2) The enflamed fervor among certain elements of fandom is not so wide spread to justify the formal endorsement of releasing the Snyder cut. The protests for the Snyder cut is primarily from a bunch of disgruntled fan boys who didn't get the movie they wanted. The last thing we want to do is vindicate this sort of mind set by giving this whiny fan boys what they think they want. And do they really know what they want? The same disgruntled subset of fans who think Zack Snyder can save "Justice League" are probably some of the same people who bitched the loudest about how long and dark and boring Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice was.
3) I would rather see creative energies invested in making something new rather than poking under the hood of an existing movie, tweaking the editing, the soundtrack, the special effects. I had to endure George Lucas remaking "Star Wars". For all his tinkering to make a more perfect product, I never got much out of it. For example, Lucas added a deleted scene between Han Solo and Jabba the Hut which covers the same ground more effectively covered in the scene between Han and Greedo. (I don't care what Lucas says: Han shot first!) I realize this is not a good analogy as Zack Snyder never got to make his Justice League and for the most tragic reasons. But Justice League was never his, it belong to DC and other people got the movie made for DC. The moment for Snyder's vision of the Justice League has passed. We need to move on to other things.
I feel bad that Zack Snyder endured the loss he did and he feel bad that he didn't get to deliver the Justice League film he wanted to deliver. Perhaps Justice League would've been his redemption for the darkness of Batman Vs. Superman.
If I'm still alive and writing this fershlugginer blog next year when Zack Snyder's Justice League comes down the pike on HBO Max and it turns out this version of the film was worth all of this fuss, I will humbly concede the point right here on this blog.
But for now, I don't think we need Zack Snyder's Justice League. It's the wrong thing to do for the wrong creative reasons.
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