Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) is the result of a very toxic but vocal minority on social media who campaigned for director Zack Snyder to complete his version of Justice League (2017) after being replaced by Joss Whedon. The resulting 242 minute epic is the climactic conclusion to Warner Bros.’ defunct franchise and feels like an auteur run amok with one of the most lucrative brands in our culture today.
Ostensibly, both Whedon and Snyder’s versions are identical in terms of narrative beats. Snyder seems to have simply filled out the piece with narrative dead ends, asides, segues, and half baked ideas. Desaturated images abound in true Snyder fashion as do long slow motion sequences set to popular songs, and an over abundance of the worst CGI special effects one could ever hope to see. Snyder’s choice to crop the image for the academy aspect ratio seems strange since the picture will appear mated on wide screen devices. But that seems the point of this exercise; to create the most self indulgent film of Zack Snyder’s career.
And what are the merits to extending an already awful film to more than twice its run time and peppering it with sequences that do little more than stroke Snyder’s ego? The answer is that Zack Snyder’s Justice League has no merits, it is void of redeeming facets. This version of Justice League is for Snyder fetishists. It’s sort of like the porn parody of a popular movie. It’s amusing that it exists but only the most obsessive fans and the indomitably curious will see it.
The ramifications of the completion and release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League are even more disturbing than the film itself. The fact that a small and abusive cluster of fans on social media could pressure an entity like Warner Bros. is incredible. So fearful are major studios of fans that it seems they’ll follow all their whims and fancies without question. This very model seems to be what has steered Disney to such success with their MCU. But what will this mean to the rest of us, the quiet majority?
