What is Added and What is Removed on The Snyder Cut of Justice League
source HBO
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is out now on HBO Max where it bears a very little resemblance to the original version of Justice League released by Warner Bros in 2017. Zack Snyder who found himself fighting over the creative director of the movie with the studio where he fed up and grieving the recent loss of his daughter, Snyder then walked away during post-production while Joss Whedon who brought in to add some human touches on the screenplay finished up the job.
The movie which earning more than $650 million worldwide were somehow bombarded with critics and disappointed fans where they team up for the #ReleaseTheSynderCut to persuade HBO Max and arm of WarnerMedia to just let Synder do his own version. Snyder which spend four years, $70 million and a hundred of hours of shooting and editing to finally put together his own version which is an altogether different movie.
Snyder said that he never saw the version of Justice League that Warner Bros released but he is aware that what he wanted to put into the film was changed and discarded while the main outline as Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman (Henry Cavill), and Aquaman (Jason Momoa), among other comic book heroes, band together to defend the earth from the evil alien Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) were remained the same on the movie, but Snyder’s own style has made the new movie becomes unrecognizable.
source HBO
Synder love balletic action with big, slow motion pieces set on display with new sequence including set up Victor Stone a.k.a Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and also an alternate introduction to Flash (Ezra Miller) with a more background, plus adding new villain called Darkseid with more menacing grandeur destroying the planet earth. Some noticeable changes were Whedon’s reshoots with Cavill where his chin look like Plasticine and in Snyder Cut it has been restored to is ordinary flesh and blood glory.
Some of the Whedon version are less convincing visual effects shot has been redesigned or fine-tuned and the aspect ratio on the movie has changed from the wide screen format to a boxier and eye-catching ratio where Snyder always wanted it from the start. Synder also known for staging a scene with music and his cut of Aquaman chug a bottle of whisky and struts from a dock into the rolling sea strikes together with the Nick Cve Song of the friendly rock jam “Icky Thump” and another moment which is set to be a plaintive cover of TIm Buckley’s “Song to the Siren”.
Synder cuts of four hour running time also expands on plot that in the theatrical version where it explains the origin of the Mother Boxes as well as the motivation of Darkseid and his horned minion, Steppenwolf who has an added dimension of centuries old vengeance.
The film also has time to elaborate on characters backstories that Whedon has cut and the greatest beneficiaries are Cyborg and the Flash where they are the heart of Synder Cut. Which talks about Fisher’s performance as a broken young man trying to hold a glimpse of hope and Cyborg in particular compelling with a more breathing space to talk on his past.
On Whedon version, Victor is a teenager who transform into a human robot hybrid, but there isn’t much learn about him or how his power are defined in the past but in the Synder Cut, we see him in flashback losing his mother in fatal traffic accident and he is estranged from his Father (Joe Morton) a top scientist specializing in alien technology which use the Mother Boxes to turn Victor into Cyborg after the crash.
source HBO
The biggest different also in terms of the removed thing where the whole scenes conceived and directed by Whedon has been taken out including the comic interludes, or upbeat section of the picture such as Batmon strings up a crook on a rooftop to entice an alien out of hiding as well as Aquaman sitting on Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth. As one of Whedon’s first job on the film before Synder left was to add jokes which will be spliced into Synder’s first cut of the film.
Synder changed all this so that Flash no longer kids around brunch and Superman back from the dead no longer jokes about his coffin itching. And the Warner Bros version would make the more audience friendly version while Synder cut are more coherent. There is also an early scene which Affleck’s Bruce Wayne visit Iceland, where Aquaman is hiding and Aquaman tells Wayne that the Strong Man is the strongest alone.
With a new refined finale where the heroes still battle Steppenwolf inside a nuclear reactor but instead of Flash being having a passive role to race and saving civilians, he must now race around the city building to allow Cyborg to enter the Mother Boxes before they finish merging and allowing Darkseid to dominate the world then after successfully separating the Mother Boxes and vanquishing Steppenwolf, there is a brief celebratory moment before the Synder Cut move into its final chapter which is an 40 minutes epilogue that sets up for another action trilogy of sequels.
In the final vision of the future, Bruce Wayne dreams the world has come to ruin and he with the crew of heroes are roaming the apocalyptic landscape in Mad max style which for some reason Wayne wakes up home in bed which he is visited by the benign alien Martian ManHunter.
