I don't know what to call this. It's not refined and focused enough to be a review. I don't feel it's important and in depth enough to be proper analysis. I guess this is just good old fashioned blogging as I freely stream my thoughts into words as I ramble on about a thing. Like I used to years and years ago. Enjoy.
I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to Zack Snyder. I don't hate the man. I find him sincere and engaged with the stories he wants to tell, and by all accounts, he sounds like a deeply kind and considerate man to work with. I also feel he has genuine skill as a craftsman, composing impeccably detailed images that stick with a viewer. The problem for me is he puts so much work into crafting the images, and the major beats of his stories, that he gets sidetracked from the builds needed to give those images full emotional weight and impact, the drives and motives to string them from just being images into being a narrative.
Take for example Superman killing Zod in Man of Steel. I actually don't have a problem with that in concept because, while I understand many finding that an offputting deviation from Superman's iconography, a story is absolutely allowed to challenge and subvert that iconography. The problem is the build that brings us there, focusing so much on the two fighters and the devastating path they're cutting through, that Superman never takes in the populace being ravaged by this, never pauses to see the people being genuinely affected, the lives being wiped out in an instant, ending with only a couple "too little too late" civilians meant to drive him to the breaking point of that snap being the only solution available to save everyone. Yes, BvS absolutely does marvelously spin that sequence with Bruce Wayne's street level view of the battle, the populace directly affected, and Bruce's friends and colleagues being slaughtered. But Superman is the one who needed that perspective, that loss, that witness to horror and devastation as the drive to make the choice he does. But he doesn't get that, and so the iconic snap rings hollow.
There's other examples throughout Zack's filmography, like the iconic Martha moment in BvS, heavily diluted both through awkward delivery and the fact that both Marthas are barely featured in any significant way beyond tiny flashbacks or a single phone call before an abduction. Or in Watchmen where Silk Spectre and Night Owl brutally ravage thugs in an alley to show what they're capable of, in a way which completely fails to demonstrate a contrast between their experienced fighting abilities and the savagery Rorschach is meant to be the notorious unleasher of. Or Pa Kent's "maybe you should" in MoS, which is a perfectly valid point to be raising in the face of potentially losing his child, but fumbles any form of significant payoff to give it the philosophical and emotional arc which would make that line pivotal.
That's my main problem with Zack. He knows the big moments he wants to hit, and they are strong and valid moments, but narrows his focus on making those moments as big and striking as he can, losing sight of the necessity of how a story is supposed to build to those moments to give them weight and context. He's like a grand illustrator trying to make a comic, and each panel and page is gorgeous to look at, but he doesn't know how to flow those images into a build of dramatic weight.
I didn't see Man of Steel in theaters, just a couple of times at home. I don't hate it. Even with a Superman who's more dour and aimless, and trying to figure out how he fits into this new planet he calls a home, I felt it had moments of warmth and humanity. Pa Kent had an awkward ark, but Ma was great. Jor-El and Zod are well played. The story is perfectly fine in structure and plot beats. But like a Michael Bay Transformers film, once the third act kicks in, the action is relentless, endless, and so caught up in the scale of the devastation it's capable of unleashing, wiping out both Smallville and Metropolis, that it lacks the emotions which would make such devastation legitimately devastating. It's big, it's loud, it's cool, it's badass. But it's hollow. A sad Superman can work, but there's nothing moving about his sadness, nothing gripping about his disconnect, nothing inspiring about his journey. Even the romance with Lois feels empty and sudden, there because it's the iconography they're expected to follow even as it's being ignored. I don't hate the film, but nor do I particularly care for it.
Out of pure curiosity, I did see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in theaters. That one I strongly disliked. The whiny petulance of Batman, the doubling down on Superman's dour disconnect, the randomness of how it sets up the pieces of Justice League. Yes, Wonder Woman is amazing. But the film sure as hell doesn't adequately build to her before she shows up to rightfully dominate the final act. The Lex story isn't so much a hot mess as a soggy and overly caffeinated one. The film is just so mean and bitter, even as it tries to sweep, never fully justifying why Batman is willing to go SO FAR to a point where Batman is absolutely not a hero in this world. He's an angry rich man with a chip on his shoulder so big he makes a point of letting everyone know it's that chip which he's savagely beating them with. I finally watched the "Ultimate Cut" a few weeks ago, and while it absolutely does flow better and is a more cohesively told narrative, it still doesn't fix the foundational issues which put me off in theaters.
I have also seen the original release of Justice League in theaters, again out of curiosity. The story was a mix of empty fetch quests and random snarkness. The visuals swung from Zack's moments of sweeping dour grandeur to Joss's more conventional, and occasionally quite cheaply rendered, jaunts. I did like the addition of humor, though. It worked for me, not only in humanizing the characters beyond their overwrought operatic grandeur, but in their interplay and dynamics as a team. It was a mess of a movie, but it had me rooting for these people and looking forward to more, which we thankfully got with a pair of Wonder Womans (I quite enjoy both - yes BOTH), and an Aquaman (love it's goofy colorful splendour). And I do hope they keep going, that we get some more interplay between members of this team. That WW and Auqs keep building, that Flash does well with his Flashpoint multiverse, that Shazam gets to bleed over. Yeah, I know Batman has already been rebooted (multiple times) and Superman is about to follow suit, but I hope they don't fully abandon a line which just needs renovation instead of being burned to its foundations.
Which I guess is why I'm okay with the Snydercut existing. I expect it'll have Zack's impeccable craftsmanship of powerful images, just as I expect it'll fumble the emotional builds needed to give those images their fullest power. Not to mention the heaps of indulgence in how far this has spiraled beyond what he originally intended it to be, and the entitled way he and his producer wife not only complain about losing their vision when that's the daily life of every blockbuster screenwriter in the industry, but in how they've played to the nastier side of their fandom, generalizing it all as supporters vs haters, and ignoring those using aggressive harassment to belliger into existence something out of pure spite, and very little has been done to parse them from those legitimately curious to see an alternate film with a growing mythos to its making. Which is where I fall. Not that I'm particularly eager, but I'm always curious to see alternate takes on a story and mapping out how they compare and contrast. Which is what led me here.
Without further ado, it's time to hit play.
TITLE SCENE
I do like this, the idea of Superman's death cry being so powerful that it reverberates around the world, carrying us to the various characters and Mother Boxes which will play into the story. I wish the music emphasized this a little more strongly, but I'm pretty game to take anything Tom Holkenborg is willing to give me.
PART 1: "Don't count on it, Batman."
I'm liking the fullscreen ratio. I know it was a controversial choice, especially in this age of 16:9 displays, but even on my 4K Roku tv, I watch tons of old cartoons and movies, and even have a VHS hookup for rare occasions, so letterboxing on the sides is something I'm well used to. I like how Zack uses it here, emphasizing height and vertical dynamics to enhance his towering mythic themes. I wish the color pallet wasn't so desaturated, with Wonder Woman's reds and blues having some actual pop instead of just being slightly tinted shades of dark leather, but at least it's not the full black & white or heavy sepia tone he occasionally threatened us with.
So far, it's not a bad build. Batman meeting Aquaman is still largely the same, if shot better. I see we can't fully credit Joss with adding humor to the picture as, like a lot of Zack's work, there are some genuine laughs there, some nice banter, especially with Alfred. It's not overbearing snark nor even particularly witty, but it has a warmth that I'm fine with. Even as he throws in "shithole" and "f-bombs" from time to time just to show how grown up and mature he is.
There's a bit of Martha leaving the farm and Lois having a slow mo musical montage of mourning set to Nick Cave's "Distant Sky". Which wouldn't have been a bad song to play under the credits of Superman's reverberating death cry, now that I think of it. I'm curious to see how this thread builds, since both characters felt very tacked on in the theatrical cut.
Wonder Woman's big action sequence in the museum is another tonal issue typical of Zack. On the one hand, it's a genuinely exciting sequence with marvelously choreographed and dynamically composed action, and a great intro for Diana to swoop into the story, even ending on a little superhero inspiration message. But it swings overly dark on the villain side with them just being terrorists there to slaughter hundreds, innocent people gunned down in their wake in pools of blood, those insisted upon "f-bombs", and even Diana hurling people into walls so hard that big blood splats are left behind. It reminds me of the big prison break scene in Watchmen, where Rorschach saws the man's arms off. It gets so caught up in drooling over every angle of its gore effects that it loses the impact and character of the moment and distracts from the broader scene. This is the conundrum of Zack, that he's equally intricate and absent minded, obsessively focuses while missing underlying yet obvious points. I mean, why have that inspirational message to little girls in a film where little girls are walled out of the intended viewing audience?
This feeling carries on with the stand of the Amazons. Yes, they're badass warriors with their muscle-baring bikinis and giant hammers, who fight bravely and die with honor, but the pure level of their slaughter, the fetishization of their sacrifice, is Zack bathing in the memories of his 300 days. What should be inspirational as they pass the MacGuffin box along a line of fallen warriors is instead offputting and sad, not because of the senseless tragedy of it all, but for how hollowly it misplays that tragedy. Compare this to the famous Vader sequence from Rogue One. It's the same basic concept of him slaughtering rebel troops as they pass the stolen plans along a line before it narrowly escapes. Here, it never escapes. Steppenwolf still gets what he was after, and the tragedy of hundreds of honed warriors cut down in the prime of their lives is centered on mourning one woman squashed under her horse. It's dynamically choreographed, but I'm not emotionally engaged by it because the sacrifice has no thematic relevance, the tragedy has no culmination. It just goes on for a while, then stops.
And if we can't fully credit Whedon for the humor, we also can't fully blame him for the cheap and rushed effects. Some of these shots, while well composed, are very obvious in their blue screen composites and stiff actor plates. When you see the army ride in at the end, and every Amazon is an individual actor pretending to ride a horse that's CGI'd in after, it just doesn't hold the magic that this charge to battle should carry.
I still hate Steppenwolf. He's a very typical sub-boss, spouting off empty lines of religious adoration of the master he serves as he hits people hard with a big axe, and his pointy new armor doesn't change any of it. I still argue this role should have been filled by Granny Goodness. Like a full on Bea Arthur sassy Granny Goodness.
I'm curious how these chapters will continue to break up. From the title, I figured this would have more focus on Batman trying to assemble the team, but we only get one scene of that before drifting off and settling with the Amazons for a while.
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