The Thing About the Snyder Cut or No Time For Rand, Dr. Stone

There’s a lot to criticize about the Snyder Cut but there’s also plenty to celebrate, and paramount enjoyment for this nerd is the abiding and pervasive LACK of Snyder’s political philosophies sledgehammered into the text.

With the Snyder Cut comes a host of obvious Firsts (first four hour superhero movie, first time a movie has changed directors, been reshot, recut, released, then recut, reshot and released again by that first director; the first major superhero film released direct to streaming) and one First that, due to the very fundamentality of its expectation within the genre, may have passed somewhat under the radar: this massive Snyderverse superhero movie where men and women play act at gods dressed in fancy costumes to save the world from operatic cosmic villains is neither Mean nor Cruel.

In every other Snyder joint there are moments, scenes, hell, entire acts centred around highlighting the world’s (read: humanity’s) cruelty and or the futility of attempting to struggle against such “realities.” And this is a guy with four superhero movies under his belt.

In ZSJL, there is just the introduction or re-introduction of a pantheon of god-like heroes (and boy howdy does the movie like to remind you they’re gods) and regular-human-but-rich-Batman’s Danny Oceanesque assembly of them to battle an utterly fantastical, cosmic-origined, existential threat. To reappropriate a line from the film’s primary antagonist, Steppenwolf:

“This world is undivided; no apathy, no nastiness. People Coming Together to Help People is Good.”

Superman doesn’t lament the lack of Good in humans and doesn’t sulk while he’s rescuing people.

There’s no xenophobia, or homophobia or misogyny (some clunky Girl Power tokenism that’s kinda condescending but hey).

There’s isn’t the overt, unrelenting sexualization of women, or trivialization of sexual assault.

Batman doesn’t brand anybody.

Jonathan Kent doesn’t throw cold water on the notion of helping people because horses will inevitably die.

Batman doesn’t kill any humans (parademons tho, HEADSHOTS AMIRITE???)

Rorschach isn’t…well, Rorschach isn’t in it, but there’s no character that is presented as “right” whom the source material was clearly depicting as “no good very bad don’t do it.”

Batman doesn’t quote Dick Cheney when trying to justify murder

Indeed, the entire enterprise serves as a redemptive act for Batman’s misdeeds in BvS. He is functionally repudiating the plot of Dawn of Justice; in his own words: “i spent so much time dividing us, it’s time I brought us together.”

Further reading: Maggie Mae Fish, Dan Olsen, Film Crit Hulk

Now it could very well be that this over-stuffed four hour Tale of a Team-Up simply didn’t have time to include a subplot about how Altruism is a sucker’s game and the stable geniuses of the world should be entitled to the sweat of their brow without soft-dick liberal interference or whatever the Randian Objectivists of today think the Social Compact should be. But regardless of motivation, Snyder has opted to spend his time building a huge amount of characterization that gets crammed into this magical beast, and while none of it is what I would call elegant, Snyder has gone against type and provided actual character motivation for the eventual battle royale. I gotta say I cared about these characters when all the pixels started smashing together.

And this beast is absolutely magical, for it flat out should not exist; it would not exist save for these hyper-specific societal circumstances. When else would a studio be willing to sink an additional $70 million into a work they once deemed “unwatchable” so it could be released in its full, untest-screened, unpolished-passed 4 hour and 2 minute glory? When else but during a global pandemic, with movie theatres shuttered and the masses huddled around their streaming services, could a major studio release the biggest and longest and most uncut superhero tentpole without a pole?

With Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Snyder was finally able get out of his own way and made a fun, if overlong, epic superhero movie that befits the source material. Based on the pedigree and the evidence on display regarding Snyder’s interests when it came to portraying superheroes in cinema, I would have told you we were in for more dour, sulking cruel ruminations on the foolhardy practice of saving people.

But I would have been wrong.

Science is the belief that the future will behave exactly like the past. And Zack Snyder is proof that it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Edit: Never mind, forget I said anything
https://twitter.com/hiattb/status/1373299687596380160?s=20