1. I Watched the Snyder Cut
So, that was stunningly boring, for about 3/4 of the time. About an hour from the end, when things that were very slowly seeded in the first 3 hours started to come together, I got a bit excited, and started to think maybe it would get good. At some point, pretty people lit well just kind of begin to move me, even if they're doing nothing. But then came the Return-of-the-King-style ending, and the new material with Jared Leto––possibly the worst ending-credits scene ever committed to film.
2. Spoilers
Endless fuzzy extreme closeups, while Leto drags––out––every––word...the pace is miserable, and there is no payoff for listening to the Joker ramble on. This part seems framed for the 4:3 ratio...but framed in the ugliest way possible. I was shocked by how long I was made to sit and listen to Leto, whose acting played a bit like a middle-range community theater audition. Then Affleck wakes up, and it was all a dream, and Martian Manhunter is waiting for him on the deck of his vacation house. Martian Manhunter says he'll need to help with Darkseid, and Affleck's like, "yeah, great." And then Manhunter says "I'll be in touch." And he disappears, without giving Batman any way to contact him. What a cocktease of a superhero. I would've given the movie 5 stars if Affleck and Martian Manhunter took out their phones right there and started figuring out how to exchange phone numbers like old guys playing with cellphones (read: me, trying to get someone's contact info entered on my cellphone). But it didn't happen.
3. I Laughed (The Acting)
I laughed to myself when I saw The Flash running, thinking that only Zack Snyder would ever think to display the power of super-speed by slowing down the footage to this insane degree (true, X-men does it, too, but those scenes have a lot more to look at and be interested in). It was cool at the end,
when he's running time backwards,
but every other time he does it, the power is also expressed in that super-slow-motion. Most of the actors seemed kind of acceptable, but I can't get with Ben Affleck as Batman. I just don't buy it, which is pretty much my reaction to any Affleck performance, but to me he's on the same level as George Clooney's Batman. In that movie, I don't see Batman, I only see Clooney, and it's the same here with Affleck. He is not a good actor. Now, I have heard that the visuals of the movie and the special effects were much improved upon how they looked in the theatrical cut, but, not having seen that, I thought this movie looked quite dark, and quite ugly. In spite of cranking the black levels as much as Snyder always does, or more, I found the special effects just refused to integrate with the relatively few live-action elements that appeared in most scenes.
4. A Father and a Son
...or, Two Fathers and Two Sons? Was I Supposed to Keep Track of the Fathers and Sons? Anyway, This is About the Pacing:
The worst bit for me, though, is the pacing. Scenes move so slowly. True, there is a lot of slow-motion, but also there are these long pauses for people to try and express their anguish, or their warmer movie feelings, and these scenes just dragged on and on, as well. I really felt like, if they'd just act through some of these scenes a bit faster, this could be 3 hours instead of 4. I think I might have kind of dug it if they'd done it at, say, a Tsui Hark pace, because a lot of the stuff with The Flash and Cyborg was pretty cool, especially towards the end. But there was way too much deliberate myth-making, and sententiousness, on the whole. The chapter markers really seemed to point to how seriously they wanted me to take this whole thing. But, come on; Batman vs. Superman directly precedes this. How seriously can you really expect me to take it? Well, obviously, they didn't make this for me. Although there was a part near the beginning where these Icelandic women all start delivering a dour serenade right to camera, addressed to Aquaman. In the 4:3 aspect ratio, I almost felt for a second like I was watching some lost Paradjanov film. But then they cut back to Justice League, and reality came flooding back.