Zach Snyder's Justice League (2021)

  I thought about just reposting my review of the theatrical cut from 2017, but there are enough differences that it didn't feel right.  This was a Tyler pick, by the way.  I do not personally hate myself enough to choose a 4-hour-long superhero movie.

Plagued by visions of a dystopian future, Batman (Ben Affleck) searches the world for superpowered people to help him in the coming onslaught.  He strikes out with Aquaman (Jason Momoa), but Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is more amenable, especially after she receives a warning from her island home of Themiscyra about the Mother boxes, three sentient computer boxes lost by Darkseid (Ray Porter) after his last attempt to conquer Earth failed.  Now that Superman (Henry Cavill) is dead, Darkseid feels more confident sending his minion Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) to retrieve them.  Darkseid was only defeated by a coalition of the most powerful beings working together.  She and Batman split up to continue recruiting, going after Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and the Flash (Ezra Miller), respectively.  Cyborg comes up with a plan to reanimate Superman using the Mother box given to humans but will it be in time to save the Earth?

Okay.  There was no scenario where this movie doesn't turn out to be a shitshow for one reason or another.  The studio hated Snyder's version and called in Joss Whedon to reshoot, leading to the infamous Cavill-stache travesty.  Whedon harassed Gadot and Fisher on set, making the entire production hostile,  but turned out a relatively entertaining product.  Snyder, discontent, put his director's cut on HBO Max (problematic for a host of reasons now), which adds two full hours of extra footage, restores the Darkseid plot, boosts Cyborg's role by a factor of 10, and sows the seeds of a multi-verse.  

Patton Oswalt has a great bit about male directors shooting miles of film like it's sperm and then female editors coming along and creating a fully-formed baby film out of it and it was screaming in the back of my mind as I watched this collection of good ideas being buried beneath the weight of a four-hour runtime.  There were definitely parts that didn't further the plot, didn't speak to character development, that felt redundant, and should absolutely have been left on the cutting room floor.  Somewhere between these two versions is a great Justice League movie, but neither one of these dudes was ever going to find it.