The Snider Cut

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I've never been a huge fan of Snyder's movies. To my mind his best, which I didn't realise was made by him until very recently, was the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, I'd been a fan of the original and I was surprised the remake was actually good. 300 was visually stunning, balletic action sequences, dramatic angles and slow motion techniques that hadn't been overused at that point, but it was undeniably dumb as all fuck! I'll confess I didn't read Watchmen until after I saw the the movie, and while the movie wasn't awful, it doesn't have the same kind of angry, brutal energy that comes across in the comic, and the slo-mo action was starting to get tiresome. The less said about Sucker Punch, the better! Then came the Snyderverse. Man of Steel was really po-faced and frankly lacked anything that I might class as charisma. When I watched Batman vs. Superman I almost laughed at what was meant to be the emotional climax of the movie, that Batman, on the verge of killing Supes, stops because he learns their mums have the same name. So I didn't expect 2017's Justice League to be any good. And after Synder had to pull out due to a family loss, and Joss Whedon was brought in to finish it off, I'm not sure it stood much chance. It was an incoherent mess.

After a big online campaign (fronted by people who now like to say that they won, and got WB to finally listen to the little guy, while WB count all the money from little guys who signed up for HBO Max just to watch the new cut) Zack Snyder got to finish his vision, which is almost certainly not the cut he would have got to release in cinemas if he'd be able to finish in 2017. It's 4 hours long for fuck sake! I saw a few people talking about how it was not only better than the previous version, it was actually good. Outstanding! Shakespearean! It even retroactively made Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman better!

I was sceptical, but open to having my mind changed, and I'll be honest, the new cut really does have a lot going for it. It's pretty well paced, it doesn't feel 4 hours long, and the story does in fact make sense. There are no giant plot holes, and for the most part you care about what's going on. I can even understand why someone likened it to Shakespeare (I can't remember where I read it, probably on twitter), there's a lot of moving parts and people doing shitty things for a variety of reasons, structurally it is kind of reminiscent of something like Macbeth or Othello, but that's where the similarities end, I think. I still wouldn't say it's a good movie. I honestly think you could lose a good half hour just by speeding up some of the slo-mo action, it got tedious, and the script feels like a teenagers idea of what adult masculinity is. The whole thing is macho, and brooding, and takes itself far too seriously, and the moments it does try to be funny face plant pretty hard. I don't want to get into a MCU vs DC thing, because I find it intensely boring, but The Avengers had big belly laughs at points, well written and well delivered. This never raised more than a chuckle.

In the run up to the Snyder Cut's release I read someone defending the Batman/Superman scene I thought was so ridiculous. They pointed out it's the moment that Bruce Wayne sees Superman's humanity for the first time. Before that he only knew Superman was an alien capable of wiping out the human race on a whim, he was a threat, not a person. When he learns that Superman has a mother, a childhood on Earth, people he loves, he has humanity so Batman can't kill him, because, as we all know, Batman doesn't kill people (just other intelligent beings who happen to be born on other planets and so could possibly qualify as "people"). Now I agree that that is a whole weighty subject, and I wondered why I hadn't really got that when I watched it the first time. So off to YouTube I went, and found the offending scene, and I think it kind of encapsulates why I don't think Snyder is a very good filmmaker. His fans defend his work based on the large scale scenarios and heavy choices his characters need to make, and in that moment Batman had a lot to deal with, and I think it's worth mentioning that, as far as I know, in all of the interactions Batman and Superman have had over the decades, this is the first time that their mothers having the same name has ever really come up, it's actually a new connection and it could have been a good one, but the problem with that scene is the dialogue. Since you probably can't be bothered watching it (fair) I'll give you the few lines I think are the problem:

Supes’ mum, Martha, is being held hostage by Lex Luthor. Bats has Supes under his boot, raising a Kryptonite spear.
BATS:
You were never a god. You were never even a man. (On target, this is going well)
SUPES:
You're letting them kill Martha (Still moving in the right direction, great)
BATS:
What does that mean? (That someone called Martha is going to die, find out who Martha is so you can make the connection and have a big emotional climax, come on Bruce, you got this!)
BATS:
Why did you say that name? (Because someone called Martha is going to die, that seems self explanatory)
SUPES:
Find him! Save Martha! (That was pretty vague, you're not helping)
Bats has a little flashback to remind us that his mum was called Martha, and she died in front of him. (Not taking for granted your audience know every little detail about the characters backstories, good thinking! Now find out who the Martha is that Supes is talking about and we can wrap this up, fight the real bad guy!)
Slow motion pearls flying through the air. (Fuck sake Zack! get on with it!)
BATS(Standing on Supes's neck, stopping him from speaking):
WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME? (Come on now, you tried asking that before, it's still not really a logical question)
MARTHA, WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME? (Seriously, Bruce, we've covered this, and you're not letting the poor man talk)
WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME? (Ok, so we're just having a tantrum now)
Lois runs in (Thank fuck, can you fix this?)
Please! Stop! It's his mothers name (YAY! Fuckin' hallelujah!)

So I know it's meant to be this incredibly tense, high stakes scenario. And I get that Batman isn't exactly meant to be the picture of mental health, but this dialogue intentionally obfuscates important information just to build drama. One point of the defence I read was that Supes had to say Martha, if he said mother it would imply an alien mother, and Batman wouldn't care about an alien mother. But surely, with all of the humanity he has, after mentioning her name in one line, he could state that she's his mother in the next line? Instead of repeating her name again. I feel like someone had the idea of batman standing with the spear, screaming over and over "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME" and it was so cool to them that they found a way to write up to it, just not very well. So yeah, it's this big weighty moment, and the reason Batman ultimately chooses not to go through with it is because he sees Clark, not Superman, but the moment he stops, he does it because he hears his mum's name. The whole thing is done in such a clumsy way that I wasn't paying attention to the deeper stuff, all I could think was "Why aren't these people able to understand how language works?" I guess it's possible that Snyder was trying to make a point about how men don't articulate their feelings and often rely on women to do the emotional heavy lifting? What do you think? Answers on a postcard!