Zack Snyder's Justice Lube
/Bad movies. What’s with those things? (What is up with those baaaad movies?) I don’t mean movies that offer scuzzy pleasures in the vein of Commando or Road House - the cinematic version of a “Don’t argue with your wife, dicker!” T-shirt - but grand follies, born from an obsessive, earnest vision and a complete misunderstanding of that vision’s worth.
Enter Zack Snyder’s Justice League, riding the corpse of a Parademon through a CGI building and walking away unscathed. It’s not just a folly; it was a folly averted and buried, replaced by mediocrity, awoken by the death cries of Snyder fans and now disinterred and shambling across the screen. It is bloated, bizarre, bad and amazing to behold.
So I thought: hey, why not look at every scene of this mishegoss and see what we see? Expect digressions, speculations and plenty of half-baked film analysis. Maybe I’ll get bored partway through. Maybe the experience of watching every scene of ZSJL will defeat me as Steppenwolf’s axe defeated a dozen Amazonian necks. But if we’re lucky, I’ll defeat ZSJL in the exact manner Superman’s body defeated Steppenwolf’s axe. I’ll stand there with an axe blade on my shoulder and say “Not impressed”.
That’s one of Superman’s lines, by the way. It’s not the longest line he gets in the movie, but it’s close.
So what’s going on here?
Glad you asked. This is a scene-by-scene examination of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Every so often I’ll be comparing it to the 2017 theatrical release, which I’ll be referring to as Joss Whedon’s Justice League, or JWJL for short. I’m being a bit cheeky, but I’m committed to this bit so I refuse to back down now. The truth is that the theatrical release is no more “the Whedon cut” than it is the Snyder cut. Whedon is a director for hire here, a script doctor-turned-creator charged with reproducing The Avengers movies inside the dark womb of the DC franchise. It is not a good fit, but there was obviously no good solution here. Justice League is a fascinating mess, and the Snyder cut could only exist in this age of fandom and streaming money.
00. Introduction (00:00-00:30)
In keeping with Zack Snyder’s maximalist tendencies, the movie is preceded by a short intro - in other words, you’re getting even more movie for your streaming dollar than you expected (depending on where you watch it, you may not get this little intro - I confess to downloading a copy because my streaming service refused to stream). Snyder is seated on the stage of a movie theatre, facing the wings in a direct address. There’s something odd about adding a frontispiece set in a theatre to a movie than can only be viewed at home, in the manner of a cardboard coffee cup with an illustration of a demitasse on its side. Snyder’s palms are pressed together in a gesture of gratitude. His sleeves are rolled up show his many tattoos. He looks a little drawn and tired, as if the process of finishing the movie and bringing it to the screen has worn him down a little.
The clip starts mid-sentence, almost arbitrarily, as if someone had forgotten to hit record (although it’s more likely that Snyder reviewed the footage and decided, for once in his life, that less was more). Snyder thanks “the fans” for bringing his vision to life, even though it’s more accurate to say that HBO Max calculated that the release of Justice League would entice the fans to the streaming service and put them on the path to 150 million subscribers.
There is also the mention of the AFSP, or American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In early 2017, Snyder’s daughter Autumn committed suicide, which precipitated Snyder’s exit from the film in post-production and its subsequent reshoots by Joss Whedon. The resulting film contained relatively little Snyder footage. Snyder has reportedly never watched the theatrical release.
Comparison time: Bizarrely enough, JWJL has an intro of its own, an iPhone-ratio recording of Superman being interviewed by little kids. “What do you like about humans?” the children ask. Superman, flustered, cannot answer. His grotesquely, digitally depilated upper lip twitches in consternation. He doesn’t invite anyone to watch the movie. He is frozen in place, lightly constipated. It’s 100% Whedon and already wrong.
