Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) Early Review: Size Matters (Written By Jaeden Noel)

The story of Justice League is one of the craziest & saddest stories to happen in mainstream Hollywood. After the tragic passing of director Zack Snyder's daughter, he left the film with good reason. Instead, Joss Whedon took over and well, absolutely ruined it. 2017's Justice League was a formulaic & annoying superhero film that with just a couple Deftones & Korn songs slapped in could have been a 2002 film. Luckily, by demands of fans and critics alike, Snyder is finally able to give the audience his true vision for the Justice League. Snyder's 4 hour rendition of the film is truly a spectacle in superhero filmmaking that will leave it's "predecessor" in the forgotten land for the rest of life. 

The biggest question that's probably on a lot of people's minds is how different could this film really be? And boy oh boy it's DIFFERENT. Rather than spicing up what we have already seen, Snyder expands on this universe with new plot lines, characters, tons of much needed context and extreme refining to many of the scenes we've seen already. Essentially, the core story remains the same. Batman recruits a group of superhero's to serve justice after the death of Superman. When evil Steppenwolf threatens the earth, it is up to them to stop it. What is different however is how well crafted this story is told. Rather than rushing through scene to scene, Snyder allows time for everything to develop. Specifically, Steppenwolf's motives are further analyzed with the inclusion of Darksied and DaSaad in the film. There's so many more exciting sequences and battles added that contribute so much to the dark tone and overall experience trying to be achieved here and it all works wonders. 

As for our main superhero's, their stories are so fully fleshed out that you wish they all had more solo movies. Cyborg and Flash in particular are two who get true justice (no pun intended) to their characters. Cyborg plays a much more crucial part in developing the story and eventually becomes the forefront of the film. With this, further understand his grief and shall I say "edginess" that felt a little too on the nose in original cut. His relationship with his father is further examined and analyzed making for a much more interesting backstory. At this point, Cyborg NEEDS that trilogy. For Flash, it's safe to say his character fully redeemed and now one of my favourites. I absolutely hated everything about The Flash in 2017's JL. Ezra Miller's performance pissed me off, his quippy one liners irked me and it just seemed like he was there to be the comedic relief. Yet again, this changes here. The Flash is essentially humanized in a weird relatable way. He's a teenager with a huge secret struggling to find his place in life and it's delivered in a way that doesn't only focus on how funny he can be. 

The film is BEAUTIFUL. Everything about it is breathtaking even on a laptop screen. With many wide landscape shot's it feels we are essentially transported into this stunning universe. The direction and cinematography are absolutely impeccable. Even with the scenes that are extremely similar to the original cut, Snyder allows for more long, unedited takes that add to the overall grittiness of the film. Specifically the bank scene which was done 10000x better in this cut. Instead of cutting every time someone dies, we see that aftermath, the bodies, and most shockingly for a CBM, a whole lotta blood. 

As mentioned, this is FOUR hours. But in all honesty, it did not feel all that long. The film is paced so immensely well that there's rarely a dull moment. The exposition is always interesting and there's always great visuals to keep you entertained in those rather "less important moments." The only spot where it does drag a tad is in it's epilogue. While it is exciting and relatively cool to see what goes down in those last moments of the film, it didn't really need to be there. It would of worked much better as a slimmed down post credit scene, but nevertheless still really cool that certain characters end up showing up. 

At the end of the day, Zack Snyder's Justice League was worth the wait. It's off the charts amazing-ness are sure to win back many fans and shock those who doubted it's success. Put all you're thoughts aside of the 2017 film and go in with a fresh, positive mindset and I guarantee you by the end of this, you won't even remember the Josstice League. I can't wait to see this in a theatre and have my mind blown again at the fact that Zack Snyder turned one of the worst superhero films of all time, into the one of the best superhero films of all time. 

Zack Snyder's Justice League get's a 4.5/5!