Zack Snyder vs. the World – Justice League

Written by Tom
The third of a trilogy of posts, arguing that Zac Snyder’s DC films are genuinely interesting pieces of work which are in no way designed for their primary audiences.

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At this point, talking about the issues with Justice League feels like kicking a dog while it’s down. It had a tortured production and wears the scars of it quite blatantly. The producers seemed to finally lose faith in Snyder’s direction after the response to Batman vs. Superman and started requesting changes to make the film into something it wasn’t (the same methodology that gave us the beloved smash hit Suicide Squad). Personal problems meant that Snyder couldn’t finish the edits, leaving the film in the hands of Joss Whedon who would’ve had even less control over the edit and was being asked to do too much stuff with too little time. The result is exactly the type of mess you would expect: scenes feel compromised, everything’s too rushed, nothing is focused on providing any one single effect, and, as a result, everything falls flat. What else did we think we’d get?

But then again, the question of these Snyder blogs has never been whether Zack Snyder’s DC films are good or not; instead we’ve been interested in if they work internally as singlular texts. I contend that both Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman do work as texts because both give themselves a job and largely succeed at doing it. Man of Steel tasked itself with deconstructing Superman and does it. Batman vs. Superman tasked itself with turning the DC cinematic universe into one which could house the Justice League and does that. Whether you like the films, or whether you think those tasks are ones which should’ve been done in the first place, are ultimately different concerns and you can find other people’s opinions about them everywhere else on the internet. Here, for just three posts, we’re interested in the texts themselves.

So let’s turn our lens to the internet’s current punching bag: what is Justice League doing as a film and how does it relate to the previous Snyder films on a thematic/narrative level? 

Well, the first thing to note of Justice League is how much it tries to link itself to the current political situation of the world. The universe of Justice League is one that’s falling apart in surprisingly familiar ways: there’s racist fights on the streets, terrorist groups, increasing poverty, terrible refugee situations and more. And everyone is deeply aware of these issues: as Alfred says, ‘I don’t recognise this world anymore’. The world’s turned into a nightmare.

But what caused this falling apart? According to the film, it’s a lack of icons: people have stopped believing in things and, facing a life without footholds or hope, they’ve allowed nihilism to justify them tearing the world apart. (See: the terrorist group in film’s opening scenes whose reaction to society falling apart is to blow it up further.) This is why Batman’s so dedicated to getting the Justice League together and resurrecting Superman: he knows that society needs icons around which to organise themselves, and post-Batman vs. Superman he’s now aware of his insufficiency as an icon on his own.

The breaking apart of an icon is done through its deconstruction though, meaning that the main issue with society in Justice League is that it’s spent too long focusing on deconstructed superheroes and not enough time celebrating actual ones. Put another way, this is another film which critiques the main aesthetics of Man of Steel so that the series can move past them. The difference between this and Batman vs. Superman though is that in the former film, there was still a large question mark over whether its characters are heroes come its end – over the course of the film, Batman and Wonder Woman came to realise that they needed to be better icons but there was still a long road ahead before they could be. At the end of Justice League though, they’re full-on heroes who have bettered themselves, brought people together, beat the bad guy and are ready to protect the world.

This creates the sense that Zack Snyder’s first three DC films are truly a trilogy: Man of Steel is a deconstruction of superheroes, Batman vs. Superman is a deconstruction of the deconstruction, and Justice League is the reconstruction. You can see this mirrored in the character arc of Superman himself: Man of Steel is him being a failed icon, Batman vs. Superman sentences him to death for his failures, and Justice League resurrects him to be the beacon of hope he should’ve been in the first place. The whole trilogy is a dismissal of deconstructed superheroes and an embrace of the most idealistic, emotive ones.

But… I’m sorry, it still doesn’t work.

For all that Justice League does feel like the conclusion to a trilogy, it also feels oddly disconnected from the other films, to the point where it’s not even certain if Snyder or Whedon have actually watched them. Wonder Woman is suddenly a forlorn figure who has been unable to get over a few-day long relationship she had with someone a century ago, something which comes out of nowhere and deeply cheapens the film Wonder Woman if it’s ultimate narrative goal was to just give her a guy to pine over. Elsewhere, Ben Affleck’s dour Batman is suddenly a deadpan wise cracker, Atlantis never gets introduced to us as if it was meant to have been already shown in another movie, and apparently the discussion between Aquaman and the fish woman means something to someone somewhere.

More importantly than this, it seems to forget that the Superman in this series has never been an iconic superhero. We get it endlessly repeated to us that Superman was a beacon of hope and only he can bring society back together. But… erm… What? Superman? You mean the same guy who was put on trial last film for destroying several cities, causing mass panic and a widespread public debate? The person who spent the first two thirds of the last film beating the shit out of Batman because he’s as obsessive and as unhinged as he was? He’s the one with enough of an unblemished reputation to unite the world behind him? No he’s not. He’s never been that in this series. Resurrected version or not, the way Superman is treated in this film in no way remotely relates to how he’s been used previously.

As a whole, Justice League just seems desperate to pretend that it’s not the concluding film to Zack Snyder’s DC work. Characters get written out and replaced with other ones who share their name and only the faintest characteristics, the plot reins itself in from any excesses such as the piss bomb or toilet fight, and the character arcs try to pretend that they’re the concluding act to alternate versions of the previous films, hoping that we wouldn’t remember enough about them to notice the changes. Batman vs. Superman at least tried to tackle Man of Steel‘s style head-on and morph it into something else; the result was messy but there was meat to the mess, giving the sense that the film was at least doing something. By throwing away the remains of Synder’s old style instead of engaging with them though, Justice League throws away the meat that might’ve made the mess worthwhile. Instead we’re just left with a mess. Another way of saying this is that the film would’ve been improved immeasurably by something half as stupid as Batman vs. Superman’s piss bomb.

By sticking to its Snyderish guns, Justice League would have also at least retained the one audience it has left: those who were not alienated by Batman vs. Superman deliberately alienating those who were not already alienated by Man of Steel. Instead, they got a film that took everything that at least made Batman vs. Superman interesting and removed it, leaving them with a sub-par pastiche of a bog-standard Marvel film. At this point, it’s just the fanboys left, and the fanboys would probably justify a two-and-half-hour shot of a stick if it had the DC logo stuck on it.

The result is a film that looks at the major issues of our time – the refugee crisis, the increase in racism in society, the inescapable feeling that everything’s falling apart – and the best response it can come up with is… we should like Superman more.  When the Superman we’re meant to like is the same Superman who we’ve been told to mistrust for two films now. Which is laughable. You can see how it’s meant to work: at last, the masculine angst which drove Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman gets brushed under the carpet, allowing us to usher in a new generation of reinvigorated superheroes ready to take on whatever the world gives them. But it assumes an audience who didn’t see the blacklash to Batman vs. Superman, who aren’t aware that the behind-the-scenes of the franchise is a wreck, and who can barely remember the other films in the first place. If the DC producers had stuck to their guns and if Zack Snyder had been able to complete his cut of the film, then they might’ve at least have been able to create another curates egg that would’ve appealed to the tiny demographic that Batman vs. Superman found. But Justice League didn’t even end up being made for that audience in the end.