Granddad, Did You Fight In The Zack Snyder Culture War?
By: John Devore
Tags: Culture, Film, Masculinity, Superheroes, DC Comics

The new high-profile streaming service HBO Max announced this week it was going to release Zack Snyder’s version of his movie Justice League in 2021. This new cut will be a four-hour standalone movie or six episodes and the service will spend $20 million dollars to do it right.

Justice League was Snyder’s follow up to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice but then a family tragedy forced him to back out of the project in 2017. So studio Warner Brothers brought in beloved, if problematic, sensitive man Joss Whedon to save the day and maybe do what he had done for Marvel’s first Avengers movie — namely, lighten up the tone and respectfully choreograph multiple extremely valuable corporate IP properties.

Justice League, starring Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, and Gal Godot, was a box office disappointment. It was a confused blockbuster — Snyders solemnity didn’t jibe with Whedon's cuteness. And then, a small fire started. Fans of Snyder began an internet campaign demanding the studio release his version of the epic team-up between Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, The Flash…. you get it. These fans then proceeded to bang that drum for years and years and now they’ve got their wish. Isn’t that nice? These fans put their hearts into a dream and it came true. It’s a happy ending!

Except it’s 2020 and no one can be magnanimous in victory. Or defeat. No one can be magnanimous. We must be cruel because that is America’s promise fully realized: every man gets to be a mad king. The Zack Snyder fans are thrilled. Their arch-nemeses are passionately apathetic. I’m one of those people. But this is a massive battle won for pro-Snyder forces who, also, conveniently, don’t share my politics.

For instance, I think men would criticize the behavior of other men, and many of the Snyder fans I have encountered don’t. Or at least, they disagree that I with my theory that Zack Snyder is a macho sentimentality. Fair enough. If we’re lucky these boys will make an appearance in the comments of this wee blog.

But check it out.

I’m 100% going to watch the Snyder cut. Warner Brothers know this. International media conglomerates aren’t always dumb: releasing this new version of a poorly-received movie that failed to meet box-office expectations is a win. They get their cake and they get to eat it too. They’re going to make more money, god bless.

In fact, I’ll be one of the first to watch it, and I will loudly judge it the whole time. It should be fun to have opinions but it’s not and that’s because our entire society is broken. There is no fun unless it comes at the suffering of others, but I digress.

I’m going to watch but my opinions will probably still stay the same. Snyder’s other DC Comics movies were dreary, humorless slogs. For me Snyder’s greatest sin is misunderstanding his source materials, especially Superman, a relatively simple parable about an all-powerful god who makes the choice, every day, to be a mortal. His Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice does one thing right: it introduces Gal Godot as an inspired and formidable modern-day interpretation of Wonder Woman but other than that the rest of the costume opera is as sad and serious as a recently dumped single dad.

They’re bad movies.

It’s not Snyder’s fault entirely. To be honest, his upcoming zombie movie Army of the Dead could be promising — his Day of the Dead remains his best flick in my opinion. He’s not a big fan of real people so chaotic horror movies about the undead is a great genre for him. But somehow he got looped into telling stories about heroes. Warner Brothers executives made the wrong initial creative decision handing over their answer to Marvel’s massively successful cinematic universe to one single auteur — no matter who. Marvel, for instance, has settled on a strategy where they invest in quirky directors with distinct voices who then work from a shared playbook. Now WB knows better.

So I’m going to write this because I think it needs to be written: movies are meant to be loved or hated, slept through, or immediately forgotten. They’re a fun way to spend a few hours. They’re also thrilling and life-affirming and more real than life itself. A movie isn’t ice cream though. A movie, like a book or a song, is ice cream if ice cream could make you forgive yourself for being a deeply flawed human.

It’s complicated. Movies are lights and make-up and make-pretend. They’re silly. But they’re also so very important. This life is not easy. There is so much loss we have to endure to get from here to there. A little distraction is welcome. A story about someone like you surviving what you don’t think you can survive is sometimes what’s needed to survive. A story about a person who does the right thing is a good story to be told because you know what? You can choose to be a person who does the right thing. If you love Zack Snyder movies then please enjoy them. I’m going to give him my money but I won’t give him my respect.

Unless the infamous Snyder Cut is, somehow, an unparalleled masterpiece that Joss Whedon’s big squishy libtard brain couldn’t possibly have understood. Perhaps I will watch this new version and realize I was always wrong. Not likely but I’ll keep an open mind. I fully realize I could be the problem.

Everything is politics now. Every small decision you make carries some kind of potential political weight. The Snyder Faction — mostly men who feel they are history’s greatest victims despite libraries overflowing with information to the contrary — have won and they will hunger for more. Perhaps Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the next cultural liberation? Or a GoFundMe campaign to produce Sucker Punch 2?

I will meet you Snyderistas on the field of battle, which is a wildly over-dramatic way of saying Twitter. Kisses.