DC Films

Problem is he basically plays the same character in every film and as Black Adam showed thinks so highly of himself that he refuses to be a bad guy even when playing one.

I think I just came. And there is now a large hole in the ceiling. That would be the darkly mature take on superheroes that is needed. 

It took me three sittings, but now watched all of Zack Snyder's Justice League.

To be honest, I can't remember much about the theatrical cut of the Justice League. My main memory though was actually spending the first half thinking it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be and the second half thinking that it was an absolute nonsensical mess, to the extent that I wasn't sure how it even saw a release.

Snyder's cut is overall an improvement. It feels a much more consistent film and doesn't have the jarring tonal shifts where the original was clearly two very different voices fighting each other. But, the Snyder cut is still a Snyder film and features all of his trademarks ad nauseum. Barely a scene can go by without some slow mo going on accompanied by sad music.

The runtime is obviously excessive and there is no way it would have been released in this form if it weren't for the history. There is an even better version that cuts out probably about an hour, even though that would probably feel too long as well.

The characters also just aren't that interesting. The baddy Steppenwolf is probably the most improved, with the addition of Darkseid to be his Palpatine. I see that Cyborg's story is supposedly expanded quite a bit from the theatrical, but, to be honest, I remember him being one of my favourite bits of the original version. Here, I felt he was just another dour hero. Character-wise, they all feel fairly indistinguishable in this version, with the exception of Barry Allen (he is mostly on the edge of being annoying, although that might just be because of Ezra Miller and what we know about him now). Cyborg at least has an actual character arc though, which is sorely lacking from everyone else.

The final battle is still incredibly ugly. Some other bits are visually interesting, but it does rely massively on CGI. Sometimes that is to good effect (the visions of the original battle with the old gods, Amazons and Atlantians) and sometimes it looks like shit (Amazons on horseback trying to escape with the Mother Box).

Although it feels a little more coherent in places than the theatrical version, the Epilogue in particular is really all over the place. It doesn't help that it is obviously setting up things that probably won't ever happen, but the future vision in particular was utter nonsense. Of course, Jared Leto never helps things.

Having said all that, for fans of what Zack Snyder does, I'm glad it exists. It is clearly his vision completely uncompromised, for better and for worse.

That's funny, I'd heard that Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) had pitched a standalone Clayface film that I thought was supposed to be set in the new DCU. I wonder if the two projects are related or it's a mixed message game of telephone.

Either way he seems a strange addition to the supposedly grounded Matt Reeves film but I'm all for it. Give me my wacky Batman villains. I want him fighting King Tut and Condiment King and Orca.

Isn't he supposed to be doing a Dark Tower series? If so, having just finished reading the series, he is going to be quite busy for some time trying to adapt that into something that would be coherent for the screen.

I don’t think it was coherent in a book. “Taking inspiration from” might be the screen adaptation approach.

Looks alright, but I'll be watching it on HBO Max anyway.

I was about to say that the suit looks a lot better and a lot less cheap-kamen-rider-kids-tv-show than in earlier shots... then he did the stupid thing with the giant final fantasy sword and I gave up.

Wish they'd spent the money on boosting Batgirl to cinema-worthy status instead.

That wasn't even a month in the cinema, no?

Ouch. It was originally set to release on streaming in June IIRC.

This should be good..

No.

He grows up to be Wonder Woman.