10 Major Problems With Zack Snyder’s Justice League
For every step the Snyder Cut seems to take forward, it takes an extra few backwards.
In February last year, Warner Bros announced they had given Zack Snyder $70 million to complete his version of the Justice League film and that it would be releasing on HBO Max. This news stunned many media outlets who had reported that a Snyder Cut of Justice League was highly unlikely, but was very well received by fans and cast members who had been petitioning for the Snyder Cut for years.
After much build up and anticipation, Zack Snyder's Justice League was released on March 18th and has been mostly well received by fans and critics as an improvement of the original film. But now that the Snyder Cut has had its chance to shine, it is time to acknowledge that, despite being perceived as an improvement, the film still has major problems.
There are many smaller issues, like how Snyder decided to cut meaningful moments from the original version in favour of his own additional scenes, but for this list we will be looking at the 10 biggest problems with Zack Synder’s Justice League; concerning issues around plot holes, characters and directorial decisions, while also making comparisons to the original film.
Spoiler warning if you have not seen the Snyder Cut.
10. Too Much Slow Motion And Extended Scenes
In a film where you have multiple characters that can move super fast, it is no surprise that a bit of slow motion is going to be used. But the Snyder Cut has a distractingly large amount of slow motion with the sole purpose of making scenes look cool. IGN even calculated that 10% of the film's 4 hour run time is in slow motion, which is just over 24 minutes.
But what is more egregious than the many instances of unnecessary slow motion are the unnecessary extended and additional scenes.
The multiple interrogation scenes. Steppenwolf’s conversations with Desaad and Darkseid. The weird yodeling from the fish town people, and the after credits scene where Lex breaks out of prison and reveals the identity of Batman to Deathstroke.
All of this, combined with cutting out meaningful character moments between members of the Justice League from the original version, adds to the bloated runtime of the film. It can also be argued that this is an example of Snyder prioritising precious time and resources to create impressive imagery in his own unique style, rather than add anything of meaningful substance to the story or the characters.