Justice League (2017)

SPOILERS BELOW

Whedon Cut:

Vapid. It's just character intro after character intro then this 2010-era video game character stealing cubes one after the other, then a big CG battle. I thought Batman looked less cool in this one, too - lots of shots when you catch him being a guy in a muscle suit doing some goofy pose. And Cyborg looked tacky as shit. A couple of good bits were bringing Supes back to life - first the debate over it, then doing it and him coming back all pissed off, built up well - and the Amazon chase to keep the cube away from Steppenwolf. But overall, crappy.

Rating: Bad

Snyder Cut:

I don't know if it's because I already saw a different version of this, or just because it's too unremarkable, but it's hard for me to form an opinion on this.
It certainly felt like it gave everything enough time to breathe, which helped with the vapidity problem. Considering it has three new heroes to introduce, 4 hours running time isn't all that crazy (even though the Flash and Aquaman stuff was so disposable and ill-fitting respectively, it felt better to have something there). It's clear to see why the theatrical release felt like such a hatchet job - this movie was built around a 4 hour runtime.

But really, this has the typical Snyder feel of a feature-length music video - there's no variety in tone or pacing, every moment is geared towards being cool and epic and super-deep and meaningful, and nothing feels real. It's hard to pick out anything specific to criticise (apart from the jarring, patchwork score perhaps), it's just all rather dull and charmless. Judging by my reaction to previous Snyder movies, I'd probably realise this is terrible if I watched it again, but for now it seems merely inoffensive.

Rating: Meh.