Zack Snyder's Justice League

I admit it. Not only do I, despite the sophisticated and jaded exterior I try to present, like capeshit, but I am also that most unhappy of creatures – a DC Comics fan. I saw Whedon’s Justice League in the theater with some friends, and I’ve finally managed to watch the Snyder Cut, in five or six half-hour to one-hour viewing sessions.

A proper blog entry would be too much time and effort for me to spend on this media artifact, so I’m just going to post the notes I took about it. Enjoy. This is now out of my head, and I can hopefully work on more useful/productive things.

Things I liked better about the Snyder Cut

• More time spent giving characterization to Barry and Vic
• Better characterization for Barry
• Fewer plot holes
• Barry and Vic get to be the big damn heroes.
• Flashback to ancient invasion includes more alien Green Lantern action.
• Appearances of the Martian Manhunter
• The Joker in the Knightmare sequence was, despite being Jared Leto, much better than the Joker in Suicide Squad.
• The Knightmare sequences were clearly leading to a future movie.
• The epilogue gathered together everything that in a theatrical release would have been mid-credit or post-credit.

Things I liked better about the Whedon Cut

• Shorter
• Used musical callbacks to the Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) themes; *possibly* used an uncredited sound-alike to The Flash (2014). The only character who had a recognizable theme in the Snyder Cut was Wonder Woman. Apparently themes from MoS and BvS were re-used, but no one fucking remembers those, whereas *everyone* knows John Williams' Superman theme and Danny Elfman's Batman theme.
• Snyder Cut messed with Speed Force physics so Barry couldn't carry anyone at super-speed, and had to interact very carefully with the regular world. Whedon wisely ignored this, and let Barry rescue hostages.

Things I didn't like about either

• The three motherboxes thing is a clear "collect the McGuffins" plot. It's a shortcoming of both films, but it's worse in the Whedon cut, because there's so much other stuff going on in the Snyder cut.
• Batman with guns. Admittedly he only uses them on parademons, but why does he have them in the first place? Why does the Batmobile have a tank gun?
• No Green Lantern! How do you have a Justice League without *some* Green Lantern. I realize the Hal Jordan movie was terrible for various reasons, but couldn't they have at least gone for another Earth Lantern? John Stewart, most likely? Though my pick would be Jessica Cruz, because the current line-up is a sausage-fest.

General discussion

• Obviously, 4 hours is too long for a movie, even if fans of capeshit have gotten used to long-ass movies. *Three* hours is too long for a movie. The Snyder cut fixed a lot of things that were wrong with the Whedon cut (plot holes, choppy transitions, cardboard characters), but at a terrible cost.
• The *right* thing would clearly have been to make the Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman movies before Justice League. Then, a lot of the "getting the team together" material could have been cut down. You *need* the extra Cyborg and Flash material that was in this movie, but it should have been in a different movie. Yes, that makes the approach too much like the MCU, but the DCEU could have still distinguished itself by making the individual character movies all have a distinct tone and style, where the MCU movies were basically all the same.
• The Knightmare movie won't get made, since the Whedon cut is 'canon', but that doesn't matter, because Flashpoint is going to rewrite everything anyway. Though apparently Flashpoint will also establish that everything that's been seen on screen is canon *somewhere* in the multiverse.

Further semi-unrelated Flashpoint discussion

• Michael Keaton will appear in Flashpoint, but will he be playing another Earth's Bruce Wayne, or will he be playing the DCEU Flashpoint-timeline Thomas Wayne?
• Grant Gustin (TV's Barry Allen) will make a cameo in Flashpoint, though it's not clear if this will be in addition to what we've already seen in the TV Crisis On Infinite Earths.
• If Professor Zoom plays the same role in this Flashpoint as in the comics (and the animated movie), it will be this Barry Allen's *first* encounter with him, which is weird; of course it wouldn't be Thawne's first encounter with Barry.
• The comics have retconned the changes from Flashpoint to be partially the doing of Dr. Manhattan (of the Watchmen) behind the scenes. It would be a trip to have Snyder's Dr. Manhattan in Flashpoint, but preferably only for a cameo.