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DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...


Cassandra

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As the executive producer, I can assure everyone that Zach Snyder had considerable input on the WW84 movie and its writing.  The author of that essay on Heroes though, he has it right: Jenkin is great at getting best performances out of women in her movies (the men are kind of bleh but fair enough, most women in other movies are bleh.  You're supposed to like the love interest because she's pretty and that's about it) but she's not much of a writer.

 

Zach Snyder can do good work but he needs to stay far the hell away from anything involving superheroes or good guys, because his view of the world is Sucker Punch.  He should have no power or input whatsoever with making DC comic movies.  None.

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  • 2 months later...

So we watched Zack Snyder's Justice League yesterday and I was truly impressed.  First of all, this version is light years ahead of previous version.  All of the characters are fleshed out and layers are added to the personalities.  We get a deeper dive into the Flash's background and especially Cyborg's backstory.  Explanations are given for certain head-scratching moments from the previous version and for Steppenwolf's role and motivation.  The 'higher power' is given more screen time than I anticipated and we even

Spoiler

get to see the 'Omega Beams' in action

and it did not disappoint.  There are several more 'dream' sequences that really get into the possible 'apocalyptic' scenarios that can arise from bringing Superman back to life.  The action is much improved - it flows better (although there is still a lot of unnecessary Snyder-esque 'stop and pose' moments) and is definitely more violent.  Additionally, all the CGI is vastly improved upon, particularly the appearance of Steppenwolf and the parademons.

 

Obviously, it wasn't hard to improve upon Whedon's JL movie, but this version was really good.  So good, that I am disappointed that we probably won't get a sequel.

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18 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I'm curious about the tone. Is it as "dark" as Snyder's other DC movies, or more upbeat?

 

I didn't find the tone to be any darker than Infinity War, although there were less jokes.  It was done in Snyder's typical color palettes though.  I actually found the JL members to be serious, but generally hopeful and positive more often than not.  One person surprisingly so.  Aquaman was the only true pessimist of the bunch, and the individual stories all ended on positive/hopeful notes...with the caveat that clearly 'something wicked this way comes' from a big picture perspective.

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Think of this new Justice League movie as two connected movies, like Infinity War and Endgame, rather than as one long four hour movie. Snyder even created space between two of the chapters for an intermission where you could split the viewing experience cleanly in two if you wanted to.

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2 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Infinity War's darkness was in the storyline and plot, but the characters weren't grimdark angry and murderous versions of their comic book personas.

 

I've been pretty critical of Snyder's DC characters in the past, but I only remember one character violently killing humans.... Given the situation, and particularly this version of the character, I thought it acceptable.

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I did think Diana was given shorter shrift in Snyder's version than Whedon's, but I suppose with two movies of her own (and one of them the crown jewel of the DCEU), she could stand the loss better than any of the other characters. It's odd to me that I got a less clear impression of her being the team's heavy hitter in the fight scenes though, considering how much she rocked at the end of BvS.

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Wonder Woman is basically the number 2 powerhouse in the DC universe after Superman but the entire premise of Justice League was that they all suck and only Superman could do it, since he is better than all the rest of them at what they do.  I get that Superman is powerful and they want to emphasize that he's tougher and stronger than Thor x Hulk cubed, but it made the movie just seem like a really long setup for surly Superman to beat up everything in a few seconds.

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49 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Wonder Woman is basically the number 2 powerhouse in the DC universe after Superman but the entire premise of Justice League was that they all suck and only Superman could do it, since he is better than all the rest of them at what they do.  I get that Superman is powerful and they want to emphasize that he's tougher and stronger than Thor x Hulk cubed, but it made the movie just seem like a really long setup for surly Superman to beat up everything in a few seconds.

 

Snyder made a better movie than Whedon (which likely wasn't difficult given an extra two hours to work with).

 

But having the whole movie be a set-up for "Superman and His Barely Adequate Sidekicks" wasn't the payoff I was expecting. Or wanting.

 

Yeah, I've said for decades that the Flash's best superpower is that he can run and bring back Superman really quickly. But that's supposed to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

 

Knowing that they were going into the Last Battle for the Planet without having Superman at their side, I would have expected them to have taken some more thought to it. (In particular, Batman saying he was specifically going to draw off the minions so the rest of them would have a clear shot at getting Steppenwolf then all the rest of them a couple of minutes later track down Batman, away from Steppenwolf, to have a "superhero group poster shot" was really annoying.)

 

I would rather have had something like Batman telling the Flash, "Here's my old utility belt. I labelled everything for you. Go and distract Steppenwolf. Put batarang bombs on his back. Tie his legs together with the grappling cord. Tie him to a couple of parademons. Glue his feet to the floor. Put a bag on his head. Pick up rubble from the floor and throw random things at him or at parademons. You're fast enough to come at him from unexpected directions then be gone before he knows you're there. Change things up, keep him guessing. Don't let him tag you. We're going to also use you for emergency extraction if one of us goes down or gets in trouble. Listen for our calls."

 

Then we get to see Flash geek out over opening up the utility belt in combat, fumble with the items, use some of them well, use some hilariously wrong (shining a flashlight in his eye, thinking it was a laser), and occasionally move the other heroes from point A to point B to keep them from getting overwhelmed. Which is a lot more visually interesting than having the Flash run in circles endlessly waiting for Cyborg to get ready to do something.

 

At least doing something like that would make it look like the heroes were thinking and trying. And when Superman comes along to save the day, it doesn't seem like the rest of the heroes had been floundering around helplessly until he came along.

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I wanted to say, people keep saying the movie Joss Whedon made, but truthfully, he didn't. He reshot a couple scenes and added in the part at the beginning with the kids asking about what Superman liked about the planet. This was still, mostly, Snyder's movie. The powers that be brought Joss in specifically to add some lightness to the movie due to the clusterF that Snyder had made of Man of Steel and BVS. I would have been interested in seeing a JL made by Joss, and I guarantee that WW would have been a much bigger gun then she was. For awhile during the final battle, I thought they were making a decent case of her and Aquaman holding their own, but then, suddenly, they weren't.

In the old days of JL, we used to wonder why there was anyone called in to do stuff other then Supes or GL.

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I think it is a bit disingenuous for people to call the theatrical version of the movie "Joss-tice League", as if Whedon was the visionary mastermind behind what we got. The real culprits were WB execs who couldn't keep their meddling fingers out of the pie, even when Snyder was in charge. Whedon was merely the knife with which they butchered what Snyder had begun. Geoff Johns gleefully engineered Snyder's removal and convinced Whedon to take the reins for a nice, fat paycheck. Whedon was never going to have the time or resources to make what anyone would truly call "his Justice League". His greatest failure, in my view, was in agreeing to the job in the first place, and putting himself in a position to take all the blame for what ended up on screen.

 

The fact that the "Snyder Cut" is, by many accounts, merely different--but not necessarily better--is testament to the fact that the movie was flawed at its foundations, and that no amount of re-working was ever going to save it and make it great. It seems to me that any glowing praise for it is coming primarily from DC fanboys who are desperate for a win here. I would not be surprised if the Snyder Cut fades from memory and is forgotten in a few years as WB moves on to the next series of disconnected movies of inconsistent quality.

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