We Need the Snyder Cut

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2017)

Justice League picks up an undetermined amount of time after BvS. The country still mourns the death of Superman, while Batman is out there taking out Parademon scouts and Wonder Woman is botching the plans of terrorists in London. When Steppenwolf appears to steal a motherbox from the Amazons, they come together to form the team and save the world. Pretty much it in a nutshell. There's no fancy plotting or complicated mysteries. Not even a sub-plot, everything is tied to this one path.
Firstly I'll start with the big elephant in the room; the tone. BvS was harshly criticised for being tonally dark, and Warner Brothers has reacted by ensuring Justice League does not fall to the same judgements. Lighter moments are welcome, of course, but it's at the cost of any real threat or suspense. Batman himself almost feels like a completely different character. The brooding, angry Batjerk from BvS is gone, and instead we get a smiling, wisecracking Batman who doesn't really know what to do with himself.
But you know what bothers me most about Justice League? It's the stylistic shift in tone; the superficial and aesthetic. Snyder was absolutely not finished with his vision when he stepped down, and Joss Whedon simply could not replicate Snyder's signature style. It shows. It shows really badly. Warner Brothers, wanting to capitalise on the director switch, decided to concentrate far too much on Whedon re-shoots (most of which are terrible) instead of polishing up the already questionable visual effects.
Steppenwolf is possibly the worst superhero villain I've seen in recent memory. Beyond being just a deep-voiced antagonist hell-bent on taking over the world, he just looks terrible, like a video game rendering from ten years ago. Cyborg suffers this same fate as well, looking like badly rendered plastic instead of the futuristic alloy he's meant to be made from. The fact they even went so far as to CGI his entire face for some reason as well just makes it worse. Like, you have Ray Fisher's face literally there, why would you CGI it in? And talking of CGI faces, I'm fairly certain Paramount used their contract with Cavill to have a stab at Warner Brothers. He could have easily shaved off the moustache and worn a fake one for M:I 6, or even had it CGI'd back in for a fraction of the cost. Instead we get a half-CGI'd Superman face that doesn't even look like Cavill. Oh god it's awful.
The other missing Snyder trademark is his reliance on music. There are some moments that feel intact from Snyder's auditory vision, like the opening of Superman's absence to Everybody Knows by Sigrid, but replacing Junkie XL with Danny Elfman was when my excitement for this movie hit rock-bottom. There is no A-List composer more boring or generic than Danny Elfman, and Justice League just goes to prove me right. The scenes hold no weight in the music at all, instead opting to sound flimsy and wishy-washy instead of punchy or emotional. It just peeters on in the background pointlessly doing nothing and not being guided by the direction of the film at all. What's worse is that it barely even registers the themes laid out in the previous films.
But all of this frustrates me so much because there are some genuinely great moments here. I've already mentioned how spot-on the casting was, especially for Flash and Aquaman, but what does remain intact from Snyder is still great too. The League vs Superman is the film's high point, and is Justice League's version of Faora zipping about in Man of Steel, or Batman taking out an army of thugs in a warehouse in BvS, or Wonder Woman stepping into No Man's Land. This scene shows Superman at his most bad-ass and most capable. Before he's just been holding back, but here he lets rip. He headbutts Wonder Woman into the ground from the air, asks Batman if he bleeds, and catches Flash in mid-speed force dash. But then the whole scene ultimately feels pointless because he rushes off and is barely seen again until the third act, leaving the League precisely where they started before deciding to resurrect him (which was equally as rushed and half- baked).
Warner Brothers lack faith in their product, in their cast and crew, and have no vision whatsoever. They react and go with the times rather than forging ahead with their own idea. They already did this once with Suicide Squad and look how they turned out. They had the groundwork for a solid superhero franchise that stood out from the pack in tone and artistic merit, but they didn't stick to their guns and gave in to the critics, resulting in a chimera of a movie that can't decide on a tone or a focus. Both Snyder and Whedon are great directors, but they're polar opposites, and asking one to pick up the work of the other is going to result in a mess. I didn't even bother sticking around for the second post-credits scene, because let's be honest, whatever it teases is never going to come to fruition. Warner Bros will probably shelve this shared universe after Aquaman next year. No doubt about it. I give it a 5/10.