Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Our Review

This one exists because fans would not stop asking for it, and the strangest part is that the campaign actually worked: a studio funded a four hour recut of a 2017 flop, Snyder restored his footage, shot a cameo epilogue, and released the movie he originally meant to make. The result is a genuine curiosity, a superhero epic with the pacing of a miniseries and the squarish aspect ratio of an old TV set by design.

The biggest winner is Cyborg. Ray Fisher goes from background spare part to the emotional center of the whole film, and his story, a son rebuilding himself alongside a father who cannot apologize, carries the film’s emotional core. Ezra Miller’s Flash gets a genuinely moving rescue sequence, the Junkie XL score finally breathes, and the Knightmare epilogue with Jared Leto’s Joker is fan service of the purest kind.

It is also four hours long, drenched in slow motion, and built for people already invested in Snyder’s mythmaking; newcomers will find it indulgent. Fair. But as a piece of industry history, a director’s vision literally resurrected by audience demand, it is fascinating, and as a film it is more coherent and more heartfelt than what shipped to theaters. Our score: 7/10. Clear a weekend afternoon and take it in one piece.