You could be forgiven to assume – given that it’s four hours long, features tons of extreme expensive new recordings made to make a workable film, and appears specificalland designed to say goodbye to DC Films’ broader superhero franchise ambitions – that Zack Snyder’s Justice League could be the director’s final word on this particular set of highly unsaturated characters. But you’d also be forgiven for assuming the above thought was complete and totally naive idiocybecause, hey: did you meet this Zack Snyder guy? If you think that he’s is going to stop pushing his very specific, very violent, very gray version of blockbuster superhero until he’s really done with it, you lost your Motherboxing mind.
Hence a whole series of revelations IGN‘s Fan Fest 2021 event today, including the news that Zack Snyder’s Justice League, despite arguably being as definitive a statement about the Justice League as any other man could hope to make will still end up on what Snyder called one “Huge cliffhanger.” This despite the fact that Snyder know that DC has abandoned its efforts to Avengers from his personal superhero movie franchise, and that’s a Snyder verse Justice League 2 will almost certainly never happen. But hey: someone paid for all this Darkseid CGI, so they might as well use it, right?
Speaking of CGI: Snyder also showed a “Motherbox” animation clip that serves as a promo for the movie, in what could are the best called it spiritual feeling. Which means that it features slow, melodramatic pans over heavy metal depictions of the Justice League members, while a Tom Waits song sinks into the dust in the background. It is, like so much of the material around it Zack Snyder’s Justice LeagueJesus Joker, the special “Justice Is Gray” version is coming for people who are too overwhelmed by the unsaturated version of the new cut, the pure Leonard Cohenness everything-brilliant, in his total immunity from parody. How to make fun of Aquaman’s haunted religious iconography fighting tentacle monsters while mournful folk rock plays? What aspect could you possibly increase for a comic effect? It’s the critical equivalent of the rope-a-dope, exhausting all mockery with the blatant invitation to mock.
Basically ‘exhausting’ (with a side order of ‘exhausting’) is the general mood of this whole project, and this latest press blitz on their behalf, from speculation about who that big “hero cameo” Snyder was promising in the movie’s ending (Martian Manhunter is the easy money, although those with very short memories hope for the Green Lantern Corps instead), to the director’s repeated claim today (doubled on previous feelings that Ray Fisher’s Cyborg is the heart of the movie, and the team. The last even comes as Fisher and Warner Media have been concerned yet another round of mutual attacks on each other today, with Fisher continuing to claim that DC Films’ Walter Hamada was involved in the investigation of alleged misconduct on the set of Joss Whedon’s version of the film, and that Warner back by recruiting a statement from one of the researchers involved, defend Hamada’s character and behaviorSnyder’s defense of his star is admirable, but it also points to what a weird one-off this whole Snyder Cut project has been, with a director actively promoting the work of an actor who is now essentially at war with the studio producing the film, for unclear and uncertain benefit or gain.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League releases on March 18. Rest.
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