Zack Snyder’s Justice League expands on original cut

Autumn Knight, Reporter

After leaving the previous “Justice League” project in the aftermath of the passing of his daughter, Zack Snyder has returned to make a new “Justice League,” one that is completely his own without the input of the other directors like Joss Whedon, who finished the “Justice League” Warner Bros. for Snyler, which was released in 2017. 

Snyder has created a so-called “director’s cut” of the movie with the added scenes and extra storyline originally intended for the 2017 version. This movie dug deeper into each character and the storyline altogether with the added two hours of footage. 

The plot follows mostly the same story as “Justice League.” With Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot,) recruiting all the protectors of earth to fight back against the main antagonist, Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds.) Steppenwolf’s main objective during the length of the movie is to track down all the Mother Boxes and merge them, engulfing the world in flames in the image of the greater evil, Apokolips. 

Synder’s rendition of the “Justice League ” movie focused on Cyborg’s character (Ray Fisher) more in depth, resulting in more screen time. Throughout the movie scenes, we’re slowly piecing together how Cyborg came to have his “Cybernetic” body, a consequence of an accident Cyborg had endured. This leads to the character expressing how he now feels about himself, his family and the world around him when he is introduced to other characters, such as Wonder Woman. It is revealed that Cyborg is to have a troubled relationship with his father, Fisher later commented on how he connected more with his character because of this. 

Fisher relates in a tweet, “As a Black man that grew up with an absent father, #Cyborg’s story has always hit differently for me. Family and reconciliation are some of the biggest takeaways from #ZachSnydersJusticeLeague. It’s not just a comic book movie — it’s a study of the human condition.” This is a huge thing because part of the idea of a movie is to connect to the audience, to the people. 

Gadot is now a huge icon for women around the world. From her character’s first appearance in solo film; “Wonder Woman” in 2017, people automatically took a liking to her and the character. With the representation of women from Wonder Woman’s homeland Themyscira, featuring the Amazon’s. Taking account for the Amazon’s involvement with the Mother Boxes, this might lead to the possible third installment of the “Wonder Woman” movies. 

There was a big amount of slow-motion featured in the film, it’s reported to have been 10 percent of the movie. Primarily the slow-motion was mainly used for the action scenes, especially  for The Flash (Ezra Miller.) Snyder is known for certain directing quirks and techniques that he does, one of which is a lot of slow-motion. This stands out in fight scenes high-lighting important parts or special occurrences, whereas most other directors use close-ups or make multiple cuts during action scenes. 

In the original “Justice League” in 2017, they had to reshoot some of the Superman (Henry Cavill) scenes after Whedon took over. But Cavill was also filming for another movie, one for which he was required to sport a mustache, so they resorted to Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI.) This was supposed to make it appear like Cavill didn’t have one in the scenes they had to re-shot, causing his mouth to look different than what Cavill actually looked like. In “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” they cut these re-shot scenes getting rid of the terrible CGI from before. 

Overall, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” was a total upgrade from the “Justice League” released in 2017, with all the added scenes, character development and exploration. Also the newer version calls attention to the individual storylines of the characters. For instance, Aquaman (Jason Momoa) had more screentime helping to tie in the Aquaman movie, making it easier for the fans to connect them together.