Justice League (Zack Snyder, November 17, 2017) Movie • Page 105

i don’t need my water to have bubbles

it was fun. 5 was the right amount. i don’t feel like my teeth are rotting out and my gut feels fine. since most movies aren’t 4 hours i’ll probably do beer for the next shitburger

 

people can read this

 

I sincerely hope Jared Leto [redacted]

 

jared leto and nancy pelosi self-immolate challenge

 

sorry im acting out

 

this is a society

 

This was not “a good movie,” in that it wasn’t really “good” and, in its current form, wasn’t really “a movie,” but I ultimately enjoyed the experience a ton. Trim it down to about 3 hr, maybe even 2:45, & you’d probably have something fairly decent for what it’s going for. Got one of the DCEU’s top, like, three films, & Snyder’s best (whatever either of those means, lol), buried in this assembly-cut-with-special-effects.

 

I think the two main things Snyder needs for his films are, one, a good screenwriter with sensibilities that reasonably align with his, & two, an editor with a good eye for storytelling.

The writer thing is obvious & has been discussed many times before. I've argued for it before. I don't mind the occasional silly line of dialogue or convoluted plot point in this genre, but like... it's pretty obvious this writer also worked on Rise of Skywalker, lol. Snyder's ~ideas~ need refined by someone who really knows what they're doing with this type of film.

But, I don't think the editing part is discussed enough, & not just in the general "make it shorter" sense that this 4-hr beast would make someone think. Zack needs someone who can take the footage he's shot & know what needs trimmed, what needs removed, & what needs to stay. And, they also have to know how to present those pieces in the most effective order. I feel like a tweaked Man of Steel would make a world of different. And, while the die was cast with some of the more convoluted bits here, someone could've shaped this into something much stronger, too.

 

a 2.5/2.75 hour cut of snyder's footage would be firmly mid-tier MCU. as it stands at 4 hours it's on the bottom 3-5 level. whedon's is worse than thor 2.

 

chris terrio: bad at his job

 

I read an article that reported Snyder states he wanted the movie to be two and a half hours long when he was initially still directing and the plan was for it to go to theaters, and I feel like that would have been a good runtime for this. I kinda wish he had used this opportunity to turn in what he felt was the best and strongest version of this movie and not simply the longest using all of the footage he had, but that doesn't seem like what he did here, and restraint really doesn't seem like something he's interested in. I appreciated Cyborg's story and arc much more in this version, but I do wonder how much of it would have made its way to theater screens in Snyder's theatrical cut.

I feel like editing as an artform and a storytelling tool in and of itself is severely underappreciated in these types of films. It seems like it's looked at as just cutting things down by and large. Like I said before, I could *feel* the beats that so many of these scenes and sequences should have ended on, and instead of getting out and moving onto the next scene, we stay for several minutes too long and just spin our wheels.

 

Ultimately I do realize that writing these films is Chris Terrio's job, and he is paid a shitload of money to do so, but I honestly cannot look at movies like this one or The Rise of Skywalker and feel that he in any way, shape or form looks at the stories they told and thought he did a good job. Not even remotely. He probably sucks and is a bad writer, but also the way these types of projects treat their scripts and stories with all of the last minute changes and decisions and changing things on the fly kind of make the writers job impossible.

 

the writing isn't good in argo either. he sucks.

 

Argo fuck yourself.

 

How would we rank DCEU directors?

Yan
Wan
Sandberg
Jenkins
Ayer
Snyder?

 

Wan
Jenkins
Yan
Snyder
Sandberg
Ayer

snyder has been diminishing returns ever since but his dawn of the dead is better than anything sandberg has done. it's better than most of ayer's work, end of watch withstanding, but ayer's worst is somehow much worse than snyder's

also might have taken the ? wrong. seemed like you meant talent/careers and not just their DCEU work

 

i need to see dead pigs and some more of wan's horror films before i can make that call. both conjuring movies are very good

 

mayyybe swap Sandberg and Wan but yeah this is bang on

Gunn will likely make my top 3 unless he absolutely whiffs Suicide Squad (unlikely)

 

conjuring 1 and 2 are better than anything any of the rest have made. better than some the others have made combined. shoutout bathsheba

 

This movie has literally no subtext. It's like it was directed by Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

as a result of the consequence free nature of the MCU the subtext of most of those movies is "these superheroes are amazing and good and always right, and even when they aren't right, it's not a big deal because they meant well". Iron Man attempts to help form some bit of government regulation but it's forgotten before that movie is even over, a movie that presents the dilemma but doesn't really engage with it.

 

I’ve honestly come to believe some of the narrative around Snyder & Rand is a little off. His interest in aspects of some of her work has clearly seeped into his storytelling. But, he really doesn’t seem to be a straight up Steve Ditko style objectivist.

 

Just finished. It's alright I guess? lol

 

Random additional morning thoughts:

The Knightmare scene was so bad & pointless, lol. Such a weird choice to get permission for a short reshoot & choose to do that.

Harry Lennix is a good Martian Manhunter, but the look was off, & this would’ve been better without those parts.

The Flash time travel bit, while visually more compelling to look at than most superhero movie action I’ve seen... also maybe should’ve been cut? I dunno. There was way too much going on in that last bit there.

Speaking of things that should’ve been cut... I might be in the minority that things the first Wonder Woman sequence was really cool (in spite of the ridiculous final blast’s collateral damage & a couple bad bits of dialogue), but a good version of this film probably wouldn’t have that. It’s a dope standalone WE short, but it’s also fat weighing down what this movie wants to accomplish.

The 4:3 aspect ratio was good & the right choice, lol, sorry y’all.

 

At the end of Part 1 and the score is already grating on me. It feels like there a great movie in here, but it’s buried too deep in other window dressings (slo-mo, bad CGI/character design, super unnecessarily long scenes, random chanting, overly sanctimonious hero worship).