How Did This Get Made? - Matinee Monday: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

In a special HDTGM and Blank Check crossover episode, Griffin Newman and David Sims join Paul and Jason to discuss Zack Snyder’s Justice League aka The Snyder Cut. They talk all about the differences between the theatrical version and the Snyder cut, Cyborg’s fleshed out arc, the Knightmare epilogue, the Icelandic folk song, and much more. (Originally released 03/25/2021) For more Matinee Monday content, visit Paul's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/PaulScheer Go to www.hdtgm.com for tour dates, merch, and more.Follow Paul on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/paulscheer/HDTGM Discord: discord.gg/hdtgmPaul’s Discord: https://discord.gg/paulscheerCheck out Paul and Rob Huebel live on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/friendzone) every Thursday 8-10pm ESTSubscribe to The Deep Dive with Jessica St. Clair and June Diane Raphael here: listen.earwolf.com/deepdiveSubscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: listen.earwolf.com/unspooledCheck out The Jane Club over at www.janeclub.comCheck out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hdtgmWhere to find Jason, June & Paul:@PaulScheer on Instagram & Twitter@Junediane on IG and @MsJuneDiane on TwitterJason is not on Twitter

Today's episode is being broadcast in 320 megabits per second to preserve how did this get made's creative vision. We saw Zack Snyder's Justice League, so you know what that means. Hello people of Earth. I have gone by many names. Some have called me Martian Manhunter. Others call me Tall John Shear. Welcome to How Did This Get Made and Hold On to Your Mother Boxes. Today we are talking about Zack Snyder's Justice League. It's an epic. Consider it Bat Her Return to the Superman. Here's the premise. Batman and Wonder Woman team up with the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg to protect the Earth from an evil that threatens to eradicate life on the planet. In doing so, they must revive Superman and it all ends in Russian. Now that's the plot. Now if you're

wondering what is Zack Snyder's Justice League, let me explain it as quickly as I can possibly do it. Zack Snyder, he had planned on a five film series in the DC universe that's Man of Steel, Batman versus Superman, a Justice League trilogy. But because of Batman versus Superman and Suicide Squad not really working people being upset with it, they decided they would bring in somebody to make it a little bit lighter, a little bit more fun. So they brought in Chris Terrio who is responsible for Rise of Skywalker as well as Argo. They shoot the movie. They finish it. They're like, okay, this is pretty good. 90% complete. Warner Brothers watches it. They say this is unwatchable. They hire Joss Whedon to come in and rewrite the script and help with the reshoots. During this

time, Zack Snyder suffers a terrible family tragedy. He leaves the project. Joss Whedon then gets full control of the production. He adds 80 pages to the script. Only his 10% of Snyder's original footage changes the score and the movie comes out. And basically people are like, at best, it's a Frankenstein movie. It's just in Congress tones. People don't really love it at all. The movie kind of tanks. They go away from the franchise as they go into these individual films and then online this growing movement of release the Snyder cut comes out. It seems like a joke. It seems like this is never going to happen. They get 180,000 signatures on some virtual petition. And all of a sudden, in 2019, we hear that it's happening. The Snyder cut is

happening. It initially is going to involve some reshoots. It's going to cost about $30 million to finish. Zack Snyder comes in. He adds five minutes or less of new footage. And the budget is now at $70 million to complete the film. That is what we watched four hours and two minutes of a film that was 90% complete, you know, not including VFX shots. So this is the version. And this is what we're going to get into today. And there's no better person and there's no better people to talk about this with today than our guests. But also, my co-host, please welcome Jason Manzuchus. Paul, wow. This was wild. This has been a wild journey to watch the, as you said, like the progression of Zack Snyder's larger DCEU, the creation of it as it's been going,

I have not enjoyed it as it's been going along. I was a Marvel kid, not a DC kid, but I'm fully open to DC movies. I liked the Richard Donner Batman, I mean, Superman rather. I enjoyed Nolan's Batman. Same. But these movies, Man of Steel, and then just in preparation for this, this is, this is the nightmare that I've decided to live in. In preparation for this conversation, I have watched the Batman V Superman extended cut that is three hours long, a mistake, and is like, it might as well be a concrete, brutalist piece of architecture. It is so insane. And then I've watched Whedon's cut, and I watched the Snyder cut. I did that. So for those of you complaining that you just watched the Snyder cut,

fuck you. I watched all of it. I did too, and I'm excited to talk to you. And I've got takes. I've got takes for days. Bring these guests. Let's do this. I cannot wait. This is going to probably be a different episode. I have the feeling it's going to be a different episode. I suspect it is. And never have I been so thankful that June Diane Rayfield is out of town and unable to record because we would never have a chance to do this episode. She would not stand for it. And rightly so, rightly so. I don't think she would even let you watch this movie at home. I don't believe so. Yes. So don't you have, doesn't she have parental blocks on certain channels for

you? She does it on my computer and on my phone. I can only watch YouTube Kids. Look, I will say that my history with June in superhero movies is very... I've been banned from YouTube Kids. The only... Well, that's because you make those weird, like... weird Mario walkthrough movies. All right. So yes, June's only... The only two superhero movies I think June has seen, well, definitely Wonder Woman, definitely Ant-Man, and she fell asleep during Guardians of Galaxy One. That's where I know where she's at. So this would really be a tricky one for her to get into. But we have decided to cross over, share the space with one of our favorite podcasts. I'm going to introduce them both individually, but talk about their podcasts. First of all,

you know them as together as the hosts of Blank Check, which reviews directors, complete filmographies, episodes, specifically auteurs whose early successes afforded them a rare blank check from Hollywood to produce passion projects. Each new miniseries kind of breaks them down, gets into great detail. Right now, they're doing this amazing bracket, directors against directors going up against each other, which is just fantastic, but individually. Individually, they are also hashtag the two friends. Yes, they are. Don't worry, they are also hashtag the two friends. And let's not forget that sometimes, you know, those checks, they cash in, sometimes they bounce, baby.

Please look up our first guest, Griffin Newman. You know him as Arthur on The Tick or Watto on the George Lucas talk show. He also lends his voice to the upcoming Masters of the Universe revelation on Netflix. Griffin, how are you? I'm doing all right. You know, Jason was throwing down his his bonafides for how deep he had gone into Snyder in the last week. I did all of that plus Man of Steel and Dawn of the Dead. So I feel like I spent. Yeah, I want to go back to the beginning. I want to go back to the beginning. Yeah, you see the whole thing. All right. And and our next co-host for today's show, also a host of Blank Check. Please welcome David Sims. He's a film critic at The Atlantic,

and his interview with Chloe Zhao is excellent. If you have not read that, she directed No Manland. So please welcome David Sims. How are you, David? Thank you. I'm doing well. It was fun. I feel like Chloe and I mostly talked about her dogs. We kept swinging back around to her dogs in that movie. That's what I remember most. I would like to say that I watched the Snyder Cut, and then I said to my wife, like, you know, maybe I throw on the Joss Whedon version, because I only saw it once, and she was like, I don't want you to do that. And so all I did was I watched the Snyder Cut. But look, I saw it all before. I've seen all this stuff. We should say that David has a one month old. So the fact that you were able to even steal

four hours to watch this is impressive. We pulled you out of paternity leave, and we appreciate you doing this. And it's something that we are excited to have here. I want to, before we even get into this film, is there any hot takes on where you rank, like the DC universe? I'm opening up to everybody. Jason, I know we talked about you already, like, more of a, you know, more of a Marvel guy as I, as am I. You know, I have not enjoyed the Marvel. I've not rather enjoyed the DC movies almost at all. You know, like they have been, I would say largely for me, with the single exception of Wonder Woman One, they have been unexceptional, uninteresting, and kind of overwhelmed by this Zack Snyder gloom. I'm going to disagree with you right off the bat and say

Aquaman. Shazam is fun. Shazam is fun. Aquaman. Yeah, actually. Bird of Prey and Shazam are all, I really, I, I, those are movies to me that are, they are good in comparison to these other terrible movies. But if, but none of them, I think what I put up against Thor Ragnarok. Well, that's a hard, that's a, that's a, that's a, why, why, why can't they do that? Or why can't they do, why can't they get there? That, because that's like, we're still in the beginning. We're not in the 10 year anniversary yet. I mean, Thor Ragnarok came out after the 10 years. But DC's acting like they're not at the beginning. That's my problem. DC is like drowning the marketplace with stuff like, and, and we can get into it. But I mean, my hottest of hot takes is, and I hate to

say this because I believe that the only reason we have the Snyder cut is because of toxic fandom. And because toxic fandom was rewarded, which is now only going to embolden toxic fans, because toxic fandom was rewarded, we got the Snyder cut. And I'm here to say, the Snyder cut is a better version of the movie, Justice League, full stop. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yes, far better. Well, far, far better. I mean, it's also four hours long and has like multiple moments of like minutes long exposition dumps. But nonetheless, it makes sense at least. I want to break it down, but I want to hear where you guys stand, David Griffin, about on just the DCU, where you're at. What do you feel? What do you like? What don't you like?

I just, let me, before we get into this, I just want to state that we had sort of fallen in backwards into sort of doing an ersatz DC universe mini series on our podcast, even though we don't really like do franchises like that. And it was because of the weirdness of the fact that Warner Brothers seemed to be handing the whole thing over to Snyder. You know, like we were very much about like director visions and the weirdness of, oh, Marvel is so managed, it's Feige, he has control, he hands it to different people, everything has to fit in together. And DC went like everyone reverse engineer your movies from the template that Snyder has set out was fascinating to us. So we did BVS, we thought that was going to be a one off that when Suicide Squad came out so weird,

we were like, I guess we have to do this. And that set us on the track. And we've been trying to move away from doing it because it does feel like DC has diversified more, the films are becoming more individual, more separate from each other. You know, it's like we don't need to cover them all as if they're one thing. And I had been pushing, knowing that David was going to go on to a months long paternity break, we have to do Snyder cut in some way. And David would just go, no, no, no, no, I mean, I get five words into, but what if we know, absolutely not, I'm not taking time. I'm not, I'm not, I figured this was coming in like May. Remember this, this thing kind of just came out. I mean, obviously we knew it was coming, but then they suddenly were just like, yeah,

it's coming out mid-March. Like it's, it's just going to drop. Like I thought it was coming in the summer. They announced it's coming like three weeks after my daughter's birth. I'm like, I absolutely will not watch a four hour movie. I forgot what I think I didn't realize was newborn babies are very demanding, but they are very immobile. So you are actually kind of watching a lot of TV. It's the best time because they don't require, they require a lot, but also not so much. It's like you are, you are grounded. Yeah, you are grounded. You are grounded and you are working, but there is a, there's a simplicity to it. Once they start moving, it's a whole, it's a whole nother ballgame. Yeah.

So are you saying you, your baby's first movie experience was the Snyder cut? No, because my baby's had, I mean, I'm watching a lot of movies right now, but one of my baby's first movie experiences was the Snyder cut. Certainly my two week old baby, she started hiccuping about two hours into it and there was like an hour of hiccuping. What if your baby's first world is mama box? Mama box? Yeah, she calls my wife, Martha, for some reason. I, look, I should, the Martha dig is so easy. I shouldn't do it. It's good. Yeah, I know. I know. Look, I, I remember seeing Batman versus Superman colon dawn of justice at the press screening. I was sitting with a bunch of critics. If you guys remember, there's a scene in that movie where

the flash emerges into a dream that Bruce Wayne is having and yells stuff at him. Do you guys remember what I'm talking about? I'm too early. Right. Right. And it's a scene that is dropped in without explanation. And yes, we're all smart enough to know like you hear this is probably some, you know, larger universe play than that scene, but it is unexplained and we all burst out laughing. Like that's how we felt in 2016. Just all these critics, I remember just sitting in a row, just we watched this. We're like, what, what does this thing think it is? Like, what is this doing? And I'm thinking five years from now, the, I'm not going to call it turnaround, but the sort of evolution I have made on Zack Snyder's whole sincere deal with this DC universe

is surprising to me. That's all. That's how I'll put it. A good friend of mine last night, who is a very big comic book fan, reached out to me and he's like, what did you think of the Snyder cut? And I said, I think he only should make four hour long movies because there was something about this movie that felt like, oh, this is the most complete version of this director that I've ever seen. And I was there for it. I feel like the way he cut it up was like, it recognized that, okay, you could watch it in parts. It was, it, I don't know. There was something about the way that this movie gelled that worked for me like on, on a, sure, there's things to make fun of or whatever, but yes, there is something that really works here. And it is just, it is just,

especially if you watch it in juxtaposition with the Joss Whedon cut, or actually with Batman V Superman, it is simply more cohesive, more interesting, more successful, more successfully plotted, you know, like this, the Justice League movie is confoundingly plotted, right, in the, in the release, in the theatrical cut, right. The theatrical cut was like truly two hours of nonsense, like I really was Russian family, like even like the populated Russian town, that Steppenwolf is the single bad guy, the both, you know, in two hours, they're trying to build a team, fight a world building evil, resurrection three heroes, right, have essentially not been in movies before. Yes, origin story characters who they just simply don't, they just show,

instead, they just show up and are now there. It might be one of my favorite characters now, like, here's how much I enjoyed the Snyder cut to a degree. I was like, the minute it started, my first note is, fuck you, it's in 4-3. I was like, fuck you. How dare you make me watch a different aspect ratio. 20 minutes later, I'm like, I don't care. I don't care that it's in 4-3. This is infinitely better at explaining what's happening to me and tonally, consistently, tonally consistent throughout, which was, which, which the score helped, which his editing helped, I don't know, like, it just worked better. I stopped taking notes. I stopped taking notes because, like, I'm here, I'm in, like, every now and then I might jot down one thing, but I was like,

you have pulled me into a world. And now I also get, like, people like, oh, it's CGI and slow-mo, but it felt like I was going over to somebody's house to have a meal that I'd never had before, right? Like, yes, there are a lot of things that I may not have picked myself. There are a lot of things that may not even be my favorite thing, but in presenting, being presented in a loving way, I was open to trying everything there. And I found myself liking it more than I ever thought I would have, like. Okay, I need to share my hottest take. Okay. That I've been sitting on. And, and I feel like. The kid, the kid Griffin Newman coming in. I'm overflowing with hot already. We're, we're touched on so many things that I'm just like, champing at the bit to. Please, just interrupt.

Champ away. But I will say right off the bat, because you were asking for a previous history, David and I are much like you guys. We're more Marvel zombies than DC fans. I think I like DC a little more than David does. Like, I actually read more DC comics, I think, at our comic reading peak than you, because you never really read DC titles at all, right? Only stuff like when Grant Morrison did All Star Superman, you know, when people would come in and have like some sort of like contained take. But anytime I tried to swoop in and be like, you know what, I'm going to read all the Batman titles, I would tap out really fast because I was just like, I can't, you know, like I reading comic books. If you really want to do it, it's this very time consuming. You got a lot,

a lot of shit to keep up with. Yeah. And so Marvel was always as much as you could handle. You seem overwhelmed by the concept of reading comic books. As a child. As a child. Without a cell phone, I imagine, or internet. I'm just imagining you as a young boy on the streets of New York City going into the comic shop to buy your comics. I have no reason to believe. Waving his arms around. There are too many titles. There's too many titles. I'm just a young boy living in New York City. You know, I know where you're going, Jason, but I was a young boy in New York City. I did go to

the comic shop until nine years of age. And then I went to the comic shop in London. What? And then you were like, then you were like, whoa, give me that judge dread. You're like, give me these. Give me those English. Captain Britain. Yeah, exactly. I can't read to read Dennis the Menace, but the different one. I did read the Beano. I forget if we've talked about this on my podcast, Griffin. Anyway, Griffin, can you wait? What was it? Can you have a take? Yes. So I was just going to say I was less of a DC guy, but the three characters,

the three titles I read semi-regularly and kept up with the universes of were Flash, Batman, and Teen Titans. So like three members of this team essentially comprised the only things I ever seriously followed in the DC universe, right? I'm ostensibly in the tank for. In terms of my rankings, it was always like Wonder Woman's probably my favorite modern superhero movie point blank. Like I prefer Wonder Woman to all the MCU movies, I think. But then I put pretty much every other MCU movie in between there. I'd say like Shazam is close to Wonder Woman for me on that tier. And then I like Birds of Prey and Aquaman with some reservations. And then everything else I could pretty much leave behind, right?

I love Aquaman. I'm a huge Aquaman. Thank you, David. Like to me, I'm just excited to have you on because I also, there's something about Aquaman that I will say, and I've talked about this story. It's, it is in many respects like what a child would want a superhero movie to be. And I love it. Like I just love it because it's like, let's do that. And there's something so pure. And again, like this movie, it's a pure vision. And I think you can, like for Joker's a whole other story, but I don't mind that when people with pure visions get involved in this, they make their version. And sometimes it really works. And Aquaman for me really worked in that way.

I have to say something before Griffin says his take just before I lose the thread. I do think with DC, sincerity is crucial. Those heroes are much more sincere. They are these very simple heroes, not in terms of characterization, but just like in terms of what they stand for. Marvel was the second tier, the second guys coming in and, you know, offering more commentary and more grip. But DC, there's purity, like you say. So Wonder Woman, Aquaman, these successful movies, usually they were, they were approaching their material very sincerely. And that's why they succeeded, I would say. Yes. And I think the difference for me, and I want to make it clear, I like Aquaman just less than David. It's so good. I watched it. I watched it again recently. It's

so good. I think the thing those two movies do really well is embrace all the silliest aspects of the characters that made them feel unadaptable for so long and put a lot of very earnest, appreciation into the sort of pure totemic quality of what they represent, right? And I always was just kind of bummed out by the Snyder, like, oh, they hate being heroes. This world is so bleak. It's so dark. I mean, it always just kind of felt like Zack Snyder hates superheroes as a concept to me, you know? And like even when he was doing Watchmen and doing press for Watchmen, he kept on saying like, I would never make a Superman movie. I don't get that guy. These are the kinds of heroes I understand. They're like drunk and they're angry and they're

bitter and they're washed up, you know? Like he kind of framed it that way. And then the fact that he became the architect of this whole universe kind of bummed me out because it is depressively dark view of this thing. And BVS was kind of like, for me, a real breaking point where I was just like, this is like incoherent to me. You know, beyond it feeling oppressive, this thing just like makes no sense. It is just confounding on a scene to scene basis. And my hottest take is that in my prep week, I watched the ultimate cut and I was like, oh, I get it. I don't even know if I like it. I don't know if it's a bridge too far to say that. But like talking about what you said, Paul, of like, you watch the four hours of this and go, maybe you

should only make four hour movies. Yeah. BVS is like incoherent perplexing two and a half hours and you watch the ultimate cut and you're like, this makes sense on its own terms. I understand it. And perhaps you can only let Snyder go full Snyder and trying to reign him in at all is a recipe for disaster. Well, that's the mistake that is born out of both of these extended cuts is it illustrates to you that he did, he was the messes that came out. The messes that came out were met partially messes because so much had to be extracted to make the, you know, basically Marvel, Marvel phase one is 10 movies long to set the stage for, you know, all of these individuals, then bringing them together into teams, then building out, they pop up in each other's movies,

little bits here and there, you know, they do a good job of walking you into a constructed world of all of these people and how they're now all going to gel or not gel together. In this sense, they tried to do something similar, but I think Snyder's version of it was, let me just make the movies three plus hours long and we'll get all of those character introductions, we'll get all, we just won't do it in individual movies and Warner Brothers was like, no, we get, we need two hour movies, man, we need two hour movies and that's too much. To me, the fact that 90% of this movie was shot, like, I mean, really, it was, I mean, 90% of this movie was done or whatever it was. Yeah, 100% was shot, it was 90% locked essentially, minus final effects, yeah. So that,

to me, it speaks volumes like, oh, he shot a four hour movie, like there's no version, I mean, the only, I guess we're all talking about the same thing was like, he made a four hour, like, how do you make this smaller? Like, oh, we saw what it is, you can't, like, he's not writing within the confines of movie making. No, and this is the most bananas thing to me, which I feel like we need to sort of acknowledge as we get deeper into everything. Obviously, the term everyone used for the Joss Whedon cut was Frankenstein, right? It's, if I dare say it, a cyborg version of a movie, right? Where they like took this much human and they built all these weird robotics around and they're like, this will be normal, right? This thing will not be cursed. But I do

think it is important because the framing of this now is like, he finally got to make his absolute pure vision of the movie, which I don't think is totally accurate because there are two things, one of which you already said, Paul, which is after the response to BVS, which was largely negative, they were at that point, I think six weeks away from starting filming on Justice League. They were so bullish on it that they were like, we're going right in. And then the response to BVS was bad, even though it made money. But I think they felt like, oh, we can't double down on this. So then they like go red alert, Tario and Snyder rewrite this, make it brighter, change the look of the movie, like you have to make this lighter. So there was already an adjustment before Snyder

started filming all of the footage that finally made it into this film. Friends of mine in the press were brought on set for Justice League. They were showing, they were filming the scene where Batman and the Flash meet. That's the one that they push so hard. Yes. And they were really pushing to the press and Snyder included were like, look, look, you know, this one's going to be a little lighter. Don't worry. I know Batman vs Superman was a lot like they were trying to sell like Batman vs Superman was so I mean, and this is what I this is what it is for to be considering when we're if you were to look at these two comics universes, DC and Marvel, unquestionably DC is bright, poppy, like Boy Scout ethic gods, it's it's gods on earth, it's very it's morality tails,

it is it is a blue sky with the exception of Batman. And then Marvel exists in the real world. It is real people who have real problems on top of the fact that they are superheroes. Spider-Man is a kid who can't figure it out. He's really struggling. And then he gets super powers and has to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now I think also for so long DC had the upper the upper leg on the sort of bug nuts cosmic shit. I feel like Marvel had less success with that and a lot of the stuff's been reclaimed now. But like the fourth world stuff, but even just Green Lantern, all these things from early on, it was like the Marvel heroes were grounded and DC was able to deal with like it's gods, it's aliens, it's interdimensional, it's alternate

realities, things that Marvel has now caught up to that DC really nailed first. When I watch these movies, it's as if the lesson learned was, okay, Nolan's Batman is all of DC. Like in these movies, there is no real discernible difference between Gotham Metropolis and Central City, genuinely. Like Central City is in the Snyder Cut when you get the, when you get to have that scene with Iris, which is an incredible introduction for Flash. And the fact that they cut that out is absurd. Every introduction in this movie is phenomenal. Like phenomenal. Is great and 15 minutes long. Both of those things. It's both of those things. But it's so helpful in understanding and putting this character in

context in the team. Especially if you're not going to take the time to do a Flash movie first, a Cyborg movie first, an Aquaman movie first. Like, let's admit another advantage that Snyder Cut has watching it in 2021 is we've seen an Aquaman movie already, right? There's like retroactively heavy lifting done there. And it does help that this movie, in the in the restored version, Flash and Cyborg are the two characters who get the most development and the best introductions and the clearest emotional arcs within the film itself. And they benefit. The movie benefits for having a better understanding. I mean, without a doubt, way for Cyborg, it's night and day in terms of like how much more you

understand about this character's journey and arc comparatively. You know what I mean? I mean, Cyborg is literally the heart of the movie in a way. But I mean, but it's like, but it's like, it's the reason why Superman comes back. It's it's it is the all the emotional, all the true, like big hearted moments. It's not between the character saving the day. It really is about like the sacrifice of of of Joe Morton, who look, this guy, we know if he's working in a lab, shit is going to go wrong. I mean, we know this now from Terminator 2. Don't have him near any metal men. It's not good. But on the other hand, how are you Warner Brothers and you look at this cut and you go first thing

that has to go all the Joe Morton scenes like Joe Morton's in like two minutes of Joss Whedon. That guy's fucking money in the bank. Yeah, so good. Here's the thing. Look, hiring Joss Whedon to make a sequel to Batman versus Superman, let's say, forget that Justice League, they literally they make Batman versus Superman, and they're like, Joss Whedon, soup to nuts, make Justice League. That would be a bad decision. That would be a tough thing to pivot. Having him make a movie inside of a movie that was already made is a worse decision. Well, the most insane decision is telling him also it's got to be two hours long, 120 minutes, no more, no less, which has been widely reported. They insisted on for

whatever reason. I mean, I will say I will say this like there's something I'm a let's just take away the allegations right now and just talk about I'm not trying to separate the artists from the thing. I just want to just talk about it in a pure way and go, I love Joss Whedon and what he did on Buffy. I was a big fan. When I first saw the Avengers, I was like, this is good, if not my favorite, but it was good. Like, I was like, I like it. I really didn't like Age of Ultron. And when I saw what the Russo Brothers did to Civil War, I was like, oh, that's that's my Avengers movie. Like, that's like, that's how you do a team movie in the Marvel Universe that feels like it's got the right tone. My thought was,

why do you take the guy who essentially fucks up the team movie in the Marvel Universe and then bring them over to fix up your problem in the DC? And it's like, oh, he he's already proven that that's not his strong suit. Like he messed it up, right? I'll say this. Like David and I, David and I are definitely Whedon Avengers fans over Russo Avengers fans. But even still, it is very bizarre to hand that to him after Age of Ultron, which had a similarly complicated reaction to the degree that also Whedon like kind of like steps away from Marvel. And there's this like, he fought with the studio on that one at whatever. And hiring Whedon was bizarre is all I'm saying under any circumstance. It's on multiple levels. It makes like just the idea

of bringing anyone in to do it is already going to be problematic. But somebody who's so totally different is like, yeah, it just speaks to the fact that they were, I think it sounds like Warners was so panicked at how hopeless and dour and dark Snyder's worldview was that they were like, let's bring in, you know, like you watch these two, if you watch, and I don't recommend anybody do this ever, if you watch both the Snyder cut and the Whedon cut like back to back, you see how there are reshoots that are like keeping a Snyder Aquaman line and then just change reshooting Batman's response line just to be a quip. All Joss does is introduce like Buffy style, Joss Whedon style, jokes, quips, the ironic guy roles.

You're watching a script polish, but it's in a movie like rather than just on a page, right? He's like, you know, an infamous script doctor, you know, and punch up guy who did that for so long before he had his own success of doing his own stuff. And you're like, yes, it feels like you're watching him going through the script page by page and going, what if you added this? What if you added this? But it's like something that like Shane Black can do effortlessly for Iron Man one. And it actually probably, it probably cements why Iron Man one works and thus we have the MCU. Right. But in this instance, it doesn't make sense at all. Yeah. Proof is in the pudding as far as like Ben Affleck in this movie, like this Batman and the

Snyder Cut is, I'm like, oh, I like this Batman. Like that other Batman is bizarre. It's, I don't know. I just feel like it's more consistent. There's, I mean, it's hard to to have an actor do one version of the character. And then the rewrite is they're not even quips. They're out of, they're out of the voice. Like, I remember one of my friends told me that they did a punch up one time. It was a movie where aliens were in the house of this like young teen star. I forget the name of the movie. I would say it if I remembered it. Aliens in the attic. It might have been aliens. Yeah. I mean, yes. All right. So yes, I think it was. And the idea was that when they shot the movie, the aliens didn't speak any discernible

language. And then the studio is like, ooh, we need to now add language, like as if they were speaking the entire time. So everyone had to come in and like generate language around the movie that they were shot to not have them responding to language, which is, you know, an insurmountable feat. But that's kind of what it feels like here. Where it's like, like, like, well, how can he in one scene be like the Zack Snyder Batman? And then another scene be like the Joss Whedon. They're they're very different characters. Well, it also, it feels like, you know, with most of like punch up jobs, you know, they bring people on right before the movie shoots to go, can you make this any funnier? Right? Yeah. That's the best and

cheapest way to do it. You add the jokes in before the cameras start rolling, right? Yes. Then the two things that people tend to do after the fact, if a movie isn't working at plot points or mess, you need more jokes or whatever, are how much of this can we fix in editing and ADR, right? Because, you know, we can't change too much of it. Or we only have the budget and the schedule to do like one week of reshoots. If we could only add five scenes, what are the five scenes we need to add or less or more or whatever, right? And this is like, it's like they handed it to him and he went, well, if I was there on the day, I would have done this, but obviously we can't. And then went like, no, don't pitch anything. We'll fix it in CGI. Like it's like it was an

animated movie where he was like, yeah, I can't change that now. And they were like, you can, we can bring Affleck in, put him in front of a green screen. It's a year and a half later. His drinking problems have risen again, but we'll get the one line from him and then edit it into a previous conversation. And you're talking about Batman feeling different as Affleck has said, like he was supposed to do his solo Batman movie that he wrote and directed right after this. And he stepped down and the story that he said recently in interviews is he showed the script to a friend and they went, he went, I don't know, do you think I should do this? And they said, I think the script is good. I think you could make a good movie. I think if you go through this

Batman thing again, you're literally going to drink yourself to death after what happened on Justice League. And you do feel like there's, there's a very specific performance in BVS, right? And then here is like, he's a little bit responding to the negativity of BVS and he's trying to get a little bit lighter, right? And then Justice League is the, the Whedon version is like watching a man who is just dead inside is regretting this. Why did I do Daredevil again? I wanted to ask her, what am I doing here? I am now an established director, by the way, trusting a guy that he worked with on Argo too. Like I, you feel like, okay, I'm, I'm, I've protected myself in every possible way. And now I've been someone pulled the carpet right out from under

me and yeah, and screwed me over. This is the one other thing I want to say about the, the weirdness of this not being a complete vision even still is the plan was Chris Terrio had written two complete scripts. There was Justice League part one and Justice League part two. They were going to be shot back to back and with the, the trepidation after BVS, they went, let's pull the brakes, only do one now, do two later. So what we're watching now is the four hour cut of what was only supposed to be the first half of a two-part movie. There's still a whole second half they never got to. And I think in some ways, like the reshoots and some re-editing and effect stuff he's done, he's tried to retrofit some of the stuff he would have done in part two into this

movie. But like Darkseid was not even supposed to be in this, this much. I think they added more Darkseid. He was just supposed to be like even less and then two was Darkseid, right? The end of one is, I believe he has kind of talked about there being three like movies, but yes. So I think there were definitely two scripts ready to go though. Right. They were, they had this back to back plan. They also had, you know, the Riddler was in the Ben Affleck movie and he was going to like solve the anti-life equation. You know, there was a lot of like track leads that they then dynamited, but the only thing they reshot for this movie with people, obviously. And it was Jim, it was Jim, to be clear, it was Jim Carrey's Riddler.

Yes, of course. He was back. It was back. It was Jayden back. All the classic Jim Carrey characters coming back in the Warner Brothers canon. Right. He had the popcorn machine mind reading thing. The epilogue is the major reshoot, right? It's the only reshoot. They shot three days to do that epilogue. Now they may have added other stuff with CG or whatever. I think that the flashback scene is, oh, I think the flashback scene with Darkseid is a reshoot, but because it's not human act, I think it's CGI. They did a lot of CGI motion capture stuff with Darkseid and Steppenwolf. Right. They fully redesigned Steppenwolf. I mean, just on an effects level. They redesigned stuff. And I will say, I liked all of the Darkseid,

introducing Darkseid and letting there be a bigger bad than just Steppenwolf and the Parademons was beneficial. It gave context to Steppenwolf and why he's doing what he's doing. Also, like in the Whedon cut, I don't understand what mother boxes are at all. And in this one, in the Snyder cut, the only reason I mostly do is because Wonder Woman does a three and a half minute exposition dump to Bruce Wayne. She's like, well, I think all I can tell is, and then she talks for three and a half minutes based exclusively, I believe, on cave painting. Yeah. I think her knowledge, her minutes worth of knowledge is from looking at like pictographs. I was like, what is this? I'm not scared. They understand. They go deep. I mean, they understand. She's

an antiquities expert. Yeah. By the way, I do want to talk about that. Like, there are, in the good way, there are very funny things in this movie still. Like when she is in that museum, wearing what looks to me like an outfit that you might wear on a premiere. She's wearing like a very form-fitting white, just a gorgeous, like you would see it in... Christine clean cuts. Not the kind of thing you take to work where you restore art, where you got like a chisel and a brush. And she's not in any, no, like there's no smock over it. There's no, there's nothing. It's just like, it didn't make me feel like, that is an odd choice. That's an odd choice. He makes odd choices. I honestly, the thing that most surprised me in terms of when

you're watching this, I honestly figured that the Weedon had added in the Wonder Woman Museum rescue sequence because that felt so tacked on. And it plays better in this kind. I'm sorry, my biggest surprise, I was 100% certain that Weedon had tacked on the cyborg and flash go grave digging and bond sequence. I could not believe that that was in the original cut and not only that, it's like 12 minutes and all of them are there. Few things were surprising, but that was great. I thought that too was surprising as well, only because Weedon, you know, with Buffy, has spent so much time in graveyards. It's like one of his, it's one of his signature settings. To him, it's like Frazier's recording booth in Frazier.

It's Central Perk. He just thought this was a good set to have some characters share funny quips. That, I mean, Gunter was in there. Gunter was in, he's in the Snyder, that's in the Snyder cut. That's what's so weird is Gunter is just there in the graveyard. He is CGI. But all fully CGI. Because we talked a lot about the movie, like the general sense of the movie, let's talk about this epilogue because that is the new footage. Like that is this, I think what you're talking about, this idea of like this is throwing towards the overall vision. I think that there's a couple moves here that he is basically going like, this is what we were going to do and now suck it. Like, you know, like, I think that that like, or maybe making a play to

be like, let me take the Justice League in my own world and now I will exist separately from this and let me go make my things and I think you should make them exclusively for HBO Max. But that ending, I'm going to go in the most suspect of Jared Leto being in this ending as the Joker. I'm going to go in and I got to say, I was even like, I was like, am I, is it four hours and two minutes? Like, am I three hours and 15 minutes in and going, am I worn down? But I kind of like this. Is this Stockholm syndrome? Yeah. But I like this, I like the scene. I like this in between Batman and Joker. Let's talk to me about this. Well, here's, I just want to say something. We're at this point talking about,

this is the second to last ending in the movie, right? Yes. So we're talking, I believe it's, is it called Nightfall? It's the Nightmare with a K. Nightmare with a K. Yes. Nightmare. It's the episode. Now, because the movie ends, it fully ends. You see every hero, you know, has rediscovered their sense of purpose. You see the flash running. You see Superman opening his shirt, you know, right? Like it's the ending. Everyone's happy. And then it's like, and 20 more minutes, you know, and where it's like, I do think the movie would be better as a movie if it actually ended at the ending, at Superman opening his shirt. The epilogue feels like you say more like Snyder kind of being like,

and look, here's a bunch of stuff I had planned. Right. Interested? You know? Yeah. Big picture plan was like, by all accounts, movie one was Steppenwolf, right? Teeing up movie two, Dark Side, that's the escalation. Movie three was Nightmare. Movie three is Evil Superman. Right. Like his whole thing was, because you see this in BVS, it's the first of the two dream sequences that then amounts to flash showing up and saying, I'm too early, right? Is he was so obsessed with this alternate timeline of, and he's made this clear now, but Warner Brothers shot it down. The thing was supposed to be that Batman slept with Lois Lane. And then Lois Lane... Say Cucks. Batman Cucks Superman. That was his pitch. Yes. Right. And then Superman goes apocalyptic,

and it creates just a horrible hellscape for everybody. So that's what he was working towards. You see that in BVS, and then I think he just was like, well, I'm never going to get to make my other two movies unless I leave people salivating at the end of this one. It's a grand play. I mean, it doesn't make sense. It's like, he knows the movie is finished, so he tacks on truly the next time, the next time on, the end of like, it really is. It's a teaser. The Lex Luthor sequence, and then the dream sequence of the future, and then the Martian Manhunter saying like, by the way, Bruce, good job. See you later. When was that, by the way, when was that, because I remember Joe Manginello,

there was like a post that maybe Ben Affleck put... In the Whedon one, in the established Deathstroke. It's different a little bit in this one. It's weird. There's a lot of examples of this in the movie where, having watched the two cuts pretty close together, too close together, there are a lot of examples where it's like, oh, this wasn't reshot by Whedon, but they just chose different lines from the same scene. Or the ADR, different responses. I don't know, but it is like, the dialogue in the Manginello, Eisenberg ending in the Whedon cut is entirely different, but it clearly wasn't reshot. That one, the whole build up is, it's time we build a league of our own. In this one, it's Batman's Bruce Wayne, go do the business. Madonna from a league of their

own is in the scene. By the way, Lex Luthor is like, there's no crying in villainy. I will say that Red Letter Media did this thing that I loved, where they were breaking down Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And in the trailer of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Indiana Jones, the Shia LaBeouf Indiana Jones movie, Shia LaBeouf in the trailer yells up to Indy, like, you're a teacher, and he looks down, really bad ass, and he's like, part time. And then in the movie, he says it like, part time. It's a very, it's like, the trailer has the better delivery of the line that you're like, yeah. And the movie, it's like, and you watch the movie, like, why did you pick that? You had it. You had it. And that's what this movie feels like. It's like, well, you had it,

right? Why would you? Why would you go over here? That's the most surprising thing is when you watch it and you're like, oh, they had all those pieces. It's not like that was the thing he reshot. They just chose the worst takes and the worst lines to keep in. What was I going to say, though? You have you have the Eisenberg, Banji and Ella thing, which was shot at the time by Snyder. And then the other two prologues were the two things he shot new for this. Now, I did read an interview with him where he said that his original plan was he wanted to be Green Lantern at the end of the movie. Yeah. And it was first he wanted Ryan Reynolds, Hal Jordan. Yeah. And then that was just like a non-starter. So then it was, I want a different Green Lantern. I'll work with Warner

Brothers. We can pick which character it is and who's playing them. And they went along with it for a while and then said, JJ Abrams is going to do this big Green Lantern HBO series. We want to keep that clean. Can you change it? So the Affleck side of that was shot with the assumption that they would film a Green Lantern later or do it with CGI. My understanding is he shot a Green Lantern with a gun. He shot a Green Lantern with a gun. And he said, fine, if I can't do Green Lantern, nobody can do Green Lantern. But wait, my thought was, and why I really like the final and reveal of the Martian Manhunter and how they see it in the beginning is that that character has been established throughout all of the Zack Snyder films. He's in Man of Steel. Right. Right. Which felt

to me like, oh, well, that's way more interesting that Martian Manhunter has been here affecting, you know, like, I just feel like that was maybe one of those happy accidents because it makes the movie look way more complete. He shot the thing with Lois and Martha during the original shoot and had storyboarded that when she walks out, turns into Martian Manhunter. And then that was cut even before he got pushed off the movie. Like that was they never did the effect. So he was able to salvage that and the seeds had been planted. Yeah. Here's the here's my big question to you guys, though. Look, I think like, well, everything we're saying here, this movie is four hours long. I think there is a three hour version of this movie that is theatrically viable. Right.

Obviously Warner Brothers is never going to release a four hour movie, but you can there's this movie is full of sequences that you would horse trade with a studio where they're like, can we take out the Icelandic folk song? Yes. No, you can't. Look, I'm not saying like, no. Okay. David, how dare you? That's like my favorite part. My favorite part of the movie is like the Icelandic dirge. Can I keep four of the seven slo-mo sequences? Right. But just like here's the, that's what I was going to say, speed up any slo-mo just a little bit. You saved 30 minutes right there. He's speed ramps within slo-mo. He will, he'll go anyway. Sorry, go ahead. Here's my question. Here's my question. Okay. Okay. So every time Aquaman walks out of the ocean,

like when he, when he rescues the guy off the boat, right? He rescues the guy off the boat, he brings him in and he throws him on the table. Aquaman is wearing a shirt. Where did he get that shirt? Because then when he walks, then when he walks out, he takes it off and jumps in the water. Well, so he's got an opportunity between jumping on land to grab a shirt that he's only going to wear while he's on land because then he got to get rid of it. He does that twice in the movie. Drop boxes all across the planet. He's got like shirt piles. He's got shirts because he also, he doesn't leave the shirt there and be like, Hey, I'm going to pick this shirt up later. He tosses it into the ocean. Yeah. The girls, the women of the town take a shirt. They take it,

like- They sniff it. They sniff it. They sniff his sweater. I mean, maybe they place it in places, but I guess my thought is, what would you rather have on a wet shirt or wet boots? Because just kick the boots off at a certain point, like you're walking in. I mean, I know it's rocky there. I will ask this about, because we're kind of picking some parts of it. Do you believe that the cameo in the Aquaman world was intentional? I believe it was, and the cameo I'm talking about is the drummer from the fire battle, and I'm talking about the octopus. The octopus got a nice close up in this. And you know, the last time we saw him, he was playing the drums. And this time we, I did think- Much like in The Little Mermaid, how Sebastian the Crab,

the court composer, is a crucial member of like policy making. It seems like the drumming octopus in Aquaman world is- David, I'm not going to let you, I'm not going to let you get a plug-in for the recent blank check mini-series about the Disney animated films, including Little Mermaid. Well, how Krista is she in band, yeah. And one other thing I want to bring up that is an odd, we talked about like bad choices, Amber Heard in the Whedon one, no accent. This is bizarre. Amber Heard in Aquaman, no accent. That's the thing that pushes it over the edge. Like I was trying to do the math on this. I'm like, is it possible she shot it with a British accent when Whedon came on? He was like,

she should be American. They ad-arded because the footage is shared largely. And then when Juan makes his Aquaman film, they're like, well, the one that got released, she had an American accent, so let's go with that. I will say this. I think her dropping the accent was the right call. I think she agrees. I agree. More comfortable in the part with the American accent. The phone doesn't have an accent. There's no world building where we're saying, it's like Star Wars, the Imperials are, that's for the most part, that is, they're played primarily by British actors, with some exceptions. But there's no, like the Aquaman world does not, doesn't have that same kind of a thing. No, no, it ends up being a funny Star Wars thing,

where it's like, why does Princess Leia have a British accent for that one scene and then never again, you know, where it's like this weird remnant of like, it's so bizarre. Let's talk about this epilogue too, because I mean, I know we keep on dancing around. So this epilogue, he takes, I mean, this is again, what I think is the masterstroke of this movie, where he says, I think Zack Snyder says, hey, you know the character that is universally hated the most in the DCU, I'm going to put him in this movie and make him palatable. Like that, to me, felt like the biggest fuck you, it's not a fuck you to Joss Whedon, it's a fuck you to, like, I don't know every, like, it's almost like I am the rightful heir, like it's like,

like he has come home to roost by putting Jared Leto in this thing and directing him the way he does and giving that scene between the two of them. Let's say though, this is fundamentally, for all intents and purposes, a different character, right? Like, not only has he so thoroughly changed the look of this character, got rid of all the visual stuff, which is the easiest to clown on. An evil club owner or whatever. He's no longer like covered in tattoos. Right. He doesn't have the damage and the grill. He doesn't look like he's a, he doesn't look like he's a DJ at all. Right. And Leto's like, has a different energy. He's doing a different voice. Like it feels like Snyder going, I'm going to just reset and give you another chance to play

the Joker. Is there anything you want to do differently? Like he, he, he saves Jared Leto in this whole mix. Like he goes like, he's like, I'm going to bring you back in and in my like rebirth, I'm saving you. It's a very selfless act in a way. Yeah. It is dangerous. Can I ask you guys a question in that scene, in that team up that we see in the, the, um, this dystopian future that in, for all intents and purposes would have been, I'm assuming the next movie. And you can tell, like you, you can tell how on board Ben Affleck is for the potential of what could have been simply because he shows up for all of this reshoot. Yeah. He's, he's, he commits to doing all of these extra days to just shoot this stuff. Anyway, when that team, when they kind of run through that

team and death strokes on that team and jokers in there. And so it's, it is a, it is, yeah, it's a suicide squad. Yes, exactly. Um, a group of heroes and villains. Was that Flash Ezra Miller? Yes. It was. Okay. He just has, he has his like time travel armor. That's the cost of me warring Batman v Superman. Right. That's how he looks in that weird dream sequence where he comes back to what I wanted to make. Cause I was like, are they telling, are they, are they intimating that this is a different flash? But okay, that makes sense. That's fine. Okay. Wait, this is the question I was kind of wanting to ask. Say this movie comes out in a three hour cut. It's this movie, a little chop down. That's all. I'm sorry about the Icelandic folk song, Jason, but I'm just saying, like

exact sliders justice. That's still your cut, David. Look, look, just give me a second here. It comes out in 2017. I think this movie would have gotten fairly bad reviews and I think it would have done okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like I think that people in 2017 would have been like, no, we don't like this tone. Like we already told you, you're doubling down on it. Like there would have been a little more pushback. It's setting up a future apocalypse. Then the flash is going to have to travel through time to save it, which is something Marvel literally does, like right around the same time with their universe. I think people would have rejected it. I think the time, you know, the sort of Snyder weird kind of transformation into an

underdog, same with Affleck, same with like a lot of the people in this movie. Like people kind of have come around on Henry Cavill a lot more. The racefisher stuff, obviously. There's just a lot of rooting for this movie. Yeah. Exactly. It's so crazy. But I went in and also going like, I'm not a fan of like, I did not like Batman v Superman. I watched Justice League. I found it to be boring. Like, and I was, and we picked it for this podcast before it came out because it was like, it will be an interesting conversation on whatever, like on this level or it was terrible. Right. Right. Right. But so I guess I'm saying is like, I did go in maybe leaning more towards critical, less towards like, I was like, how could this possibly be good? How could it be good?

But then how I saw it was good. I agree with you, though. I don't think this hits in the theater, but it's like, I didn't go in 2017. In 2018. Yeah. Here's, here's what I'll say. I'll say on top of that is, you know, yes, 2017, one year into the Trump presidency, like do not even like, are we going to want this dystopian worldview? And the answer is categorically, no. We don't want like this. I think the only reason any of us are reacting positively to it at all is simply because it's an improvement on something that was legitimately unintelligibly very bad. The framing helps this movie in so many ways, not just when we're seeing it, how much emotionality has built up in most multiple different storylines of people working on the movie, the, you know,

warranted, weed in backlash, like all these sorts of things. But also, it's literally, I just think the way he presents this movie, the fact that it's on HBO Max after a year of lockdown, we all haven't seen this. It's just one of the only reasons I really think this movie got to be made in this form. 100%. They had it. They had a multi-million. Yeah. Right. That they were like, we need to drive subscribers to HBO Max. And also, we can't produce that much. We're willing to put $70 million into something that will function like a blockbuster. Whereas before, I think we would have been lucky if we had gotten a release that was more like the Richard Donner Superman 2 cut, where it's like, oh, we're giving you an indication of what it could have looked

like, but none of this is really finished. Yeah. What I feel like, though, is whether it was in 2017, right now, you're right, we're all predisposed to look more favorably on this. In 2017, I would have been so disappointed because for me, this doesn't look like my understanding of the Justice League. These are movies, like it's absolutely categorically true in all of these instances, is every time they are showing Themyscira, it's fantastic because Zack Snyder's style works because it looks like 300. Yeah. It works so well in that hand-to-hand armored kind of individualized combat. And once they get into all of the cities, all of the destruction, all of the death, all of the grief and mourning, once all of these characters are killing people,

they are responsible for near-genocides, these are, these are, these are, the characters are so dark, dystopian and suffused with his einrandian kind of nihilistic worldview that like, I don't, I didn't want it then, and I'm certain I wouldn't have wanted even a coherent three-hour cut of this. I would have been like, yeah, the movie made sense, but I didn't enjoy it. But can I, maybe let me offer this. I think we also, and again, the 2017 version, I agree with everything we were saying, but I also believe that I don't know, and this is a weird thing to say, and I maybe so jump on me if I'm saying it the wrong way. I think you can be a great filmmaker who also is better served in a world like HBO Max. Like you don't have to, and there's something

about that where I'm like, like Damon Lindelof doing The Watchman, like he could only tell that story on HBO. I love The Watchman, but that's not a movie, right? Like, and this is not a movie, it's, it is, but it's something different. The framing also helps with literally putting in like the chapter titles, having it be so egregiously long, putting it in a weird aspect ratio. Like it does feel like all of this stuff is sort of laying out the track of like, you need to view this differently. This is the very weird specific analogy I kept on thinking about watching this movie and being so surprised that I was sort of being won over by it. And I do want to say, I mean, to Jason's point, like a thing I just categorically hate in this movie is just how

fucking gray it is. Like watching the weed and cut, I was like, this is the absolute worst execution of more what I would want a Justice League movie to be versus this movie, which is like the best execution of what I don't necessarily want out of a Justice League movie. But I have to respect it more. And you look at like the original trailers for Justice League, the color timing is right in the middle. And then when Whedon came on, brightened everything, saturated the colors. And then when Snyder took back over, it went back down to gray scale. I hate that step in wolf is gray, that all the parademons are gray, that most of the team is gray, that they fight in underground like pipeline that's gray. And the final battle happens in a city that's gray. Like

it's just right. It's a movie. It's a city that's red. Right. Like, yeah. And Superman puts on a suit that is black. Right. Super black with a gray. Why would you change that? Why would you change that fucking suit? Like, why would you put it? Like, it's such a great moment. And yeah, it's like it's so it speaks to the character. I love, look, I like all these characters more. But again, I think it all just goes to he's telling a large scale HBO miniseries. He's telling a different thing. Not for nothing. He's about they're about to release a black and white. They are. Right. Of the Snyder. Once again, I'm, I'm sort of just like, I guess that's better. Like, I just want him to go all the way with all this fucking shit. Do your thing. Like, do that. I think we like,

he they're trying to like Warner Brothers. It seems like Warner Brothers is putting people in a box and what they've found is a mother box, a mother box is that it doesn't work. It's like, when you put Todd, like, let Todd Phillips make his Joker. You didn't want to make that. It gets Academy Awards. And I'm not talking about the quality of that movie or whatever, but you want to, you know, you, you, you make your Aquaman, you, you let your, you let everyone, and I think Margot Robbie as much as, is it Kathy Yan who made Birds of Freak? I think Margot Robbie is is so held onto that character as much as I think they take control. And they're like, this is the story that we want to tell. And everything starts to feel like there's more

ownership. And that's when Marvel works like Marvel works with ownership. It doesn't work with, this is what Marvel is doing. We need to copy this. It needs to be two hours. It needs to be that. This is another framing thing that I think helps this movie a lot now versus watching it four years ago, right? Which is DC has, I think, very wisely decided their approaches. We're going to do the anti Marvel. We cannot do this unified thing. What we're going to do is anything goes. We'll have five versions of the same character between TV and animation movies at the same time. It doesn't matter, right? Like, let's just own the variety of these characters, which it's a thing like if it's like comic books, right? You go on the shelves and it's like, they're four different

Batman titles. They're all written by different people and different artists and one of them's for kids and one of them is like a vertigo title, whatever. Yeah, like do that, throw caution to the wind. I think I was bummed out with the Snyder movies when they came out because I was like, these are going to be the versions of Superman and Batman for a generation. Aside from the fact that it felt kind of like gatekeeping to make these versions of these characters that are fundamentally not for kids, right? Like that are so in your face, like this is intense, right? This is not for fucking kids. And not only that, I wish it was rated R. I fucking resent my babies. I think you're really right. That's the bummer with, you know, Batman v Superman is like Batman

and Superman are responsible for our murder. Right. And Batman and Superman are straight up murderers. They're also like sad assholes. Yes. And they are all of them confronting the issues of adults. Right. They are all confronting the issues of adults or God. They're also movies that feel like fundamentally they would be boring to children. Like it's not just above them. We're scary. Right. But now you watch this like five years later and you're like, well, this is Zack Snyder's Justice League. This is not taking up any real estate. It's not, it's not The variety is making it maybe. So maybe that's what it is. Like we are, we have now accepted that you can have the hilarious Harley Quinn animated show. You can have all these things that,

yeah, so funny and so great that can live. Yeah, maybe that is also the case. Oh, this is just going to be like Zack Snyder. And I think what happened was, and maybe for better or for worse, like Zack Snyder's vision was influencing Suicide Squad was like everyone had to buy into this world. And the minute they broke with that, they've had success. But you can also live in Zack Snyder's world, but he's not the figgy because there isn't a figgy. There doesn't need to be a thing. Right. Like there's more diversity in how these characters get represented in different mediums. He's no longer claiming squatters rights over, I get to be the only person doing Superman and Batman and everything. And then the second thing is the movies have broken out of this so

much that you're like, this is no longer casting a shadow over everything. If Shazam can exist and be that cartoonish, then I don't care if Snyder makes his movies this bleak. Right. But the thing I keep thinking about is I have a friend named Christopher Compton who has been writing this like fantasy universe since he was like 10 years old. It's what he would write in school when he was bored. And it's like all like his whole life experiences, relationship to his parents and stuff. He's just been working on it for like decades. Right. And once a year, he'll like have a party during the summer. I just follow me here for five seconds where he like stands in front of a captive audience and he tries to explain the universe as much as he can. Right. And people go

like, so who's that person? And he goes like, okay. And he's like chain smoking. Right. And he's sort of like gesturing like there's a map. And I got invited to one of these ones and I said to my friend, like this thing's fucking amazing. He has to write a book and it's like, it's impossible. He can't do it. This doesn't exist in any linear narrative form. This is this like wide ranging sort of like idea. So it's an oral history. It's an oral history of a universe that doesn't exist. And fundamentally, the only form it can exist in is this guy in a backyard chain smoking trying to conquer like 10% of it. Like every time he does this, only 10% of it gets covered. And it's decided by what people are asking him to focus on. Right. I love this. And there's a

purity of it where you're just like the only way this can exist is in this form. There's no way you could wiggle this into a book or even a Martin or like it's like, it has to be like, it has to be this, this explosion over multiple books and thousands of pages. And, and you know, it's even like, you know, talking with the like, you know, the similar, uh, similarity on you or whatever. Yeah. And this movie is the same thing where it's like, it's still only one third of the movie he wanted to make at twice the length of what DC wanted for one movie. And the thing doesn't really function like a movie. It doesn't have traditional narrative promotion. Well, I mean, did any of us watch it straight through? I could not. No, no, I did, but I, I zoned out for the

last 45 minutes and then rewatched every time there was a chapter break. I took that opportunity to stop, go do something, whatever, come back, started again. I fell asleep sometime. I started watching it late at night. I fell asleep, but I fell asleep because there is like, I was watching it late at night, but like, it does, I think, require like a reset. And I think those breaks are in there for a reason because yeah, it can get like, I know this is like, we're saying, I'm saying two things out of the side of my mouth. It's like, it can get numbing at a certain point too, because it is like, it is, but I think the refreshing, I, when I watch it more like what you said, Jason, where I took breaks in between chapters, I was like, Oh, I can, I can enjoy

this 40 minutes for it's basically enjoying like three 40 minute movies. And it feels incredibly digestible that way, but almost insurmountable. And like, okay, more Somo, more this, more music, more that, yeah, right. Yeah. So the one thing I want to bring up to you all is what I have found a little bit on our, how did this get made discord? And I made a post about the Snyder cut. And I found this to be true as well. This is a 50 50 movie, people love it, or they hate it. And I want to acknowledge that other percent people who probably already tuned out by this point. But the hate for this movie, this Snyder cut film is real, like, and I want to also remember like, how do we even like,

I don't know if I totally get it. Do you feel like that hate? I mean, I'm just curious, because I haven't looked at it or anything. But do you feel like that hate is is basically hatred towards why we have this Snyder cut more about how how the toxic fandom kind of needled and cajoled and threatened and bullied its way into getting this movie released? Or is it I watched this, I hated it. Like this is like, you know, people hate the introduction of the flash scene, you know. Oh, see, that was I was blown. Okay, so that's a perfect example of I was blown away that they took that scene out. The introduction to the flash. Also, I want to, because David has it as his background. So I want to call it out. This movie fully rips off

the idea of pocket dogs that I pioneered, that I that I pioneered on the TV show, The League, the flash takes a hot dog out of midair, puts it in his pocket for later, i.e. a pocket dog, you're welcome, Zack Snyder, you can you I guess you can steal from the best. But that scene is such a good, incredible set piece to introduce us to this new character. I'm I was blown out that they took it out. You've got also Kiersey Clemens, as Iris West, was amazing as Iris. Who is now coming back, right? Because I mean, they were like, she's cast in the last movie. She is coming back for the flash way, but crude up is not weird. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Okay. I don't know what happened there. Yeah. But what I was gonna say is like, here's a great explanation

of why some people hate this movie, right? Snyder is just so specific in what he does. It's one of the reasons I rewatched Dawn of the Dead this last week, because that's very much my favorite movie of his. But that's the one movie where it's like, it's a James Gunn script. It's got all this James Gunn in it. And he was very much a director for hire, trying to show off and do a snazzy job. But it's not a movie that's in the same way as I would argue, pretty much every other film in his filmography, so reflective of his worldview, and all of his aesthetic interests, right? And I just feel like when you make choices at this specific, it's going to piss some people off, which it generally has for me,

I just go like, this guy's not my flavor, right? But you get to a scene like that, which is like really good in and of itself is really kind of elegant character development introduction. But you can start pulling apart threads of just like, and this is a thought I kept on having, the guy fucking loves slo-mo, right? He just thinks everything looks cooler in slo-mo. He cannot resist, but use it anytime. He also uses slo-mo. He uses slo-mo as well, which is when he puts snow into the movie. There's just inexplicably snow inside of the set pieces. But you realize like, okay, strategically, if you've decided that the way you're going to visualize the Flash's powers is that he goes into slow motion, right? That everything is slow

down around him, you have the lightning, then maybe don't use slo-mo the rest of the movie. Maybe that's the visual language you've decided on. That's the visual power set for this character. Maybe you can't do it every time Connie Nielsen fucking takes her sword out. Well, then what you have then is essentially what, you know, and they cheat it, but any sequence that has slo-mo as a part of it, in which the Flash is also inside that sequence, I believe the Flash should appear as though he's either at a complete standstill or he should be invisible. Yes. Yeah. Like, he should be, he should appear to be actually at a complete standstill because of the double combination of the visual language of the Flash's slow motion

and the language of the film is slow motion. So it should appear as though he's just standing stock still. But that's why this is, it is easy to hate this movie because you start pulling at any one thread like this and it all just kind of completely falls apart. Well, I guess you're right. Well, it's like that idea that the Atlanteans can only talk to each other if they create an air bubble around themselves so that they can use their vocal cords. Wait, what? Yeah. Which they dumped for Aquaman wisely. Like there's stuff like that they dumped for Aquaman. There's the thing, there's certain, like there's this moment, I saw it sort of going around on Twitter and it is hilarious when Superman returns, Snyder cuts to the cop pulling his gun, like going like, wait, the

second, where I'm like, is your plan, one, why are you pulling a gun? Two, your plan is to shoot Superman? Yeah, you literally are the security guard guarding Superman's memorial. So you would arguably know more about Superman than anyone. So you also understand that he has these powers that are pretty amazing. He has people make choices every step, every character has makes choices that are so, when Joe Morton, like when he and Cyborg are having their kind of back and forth and Joe Morton is like, don't you understand, I've given you all of this power, I've given you all of this access, there's so much you can do, you've barely scratched the surface of what you could do. He says, you are in, you have access to the entire nuclear arsenal. I was like, wait,

what? Okay, why, why, wait, Joe Morton, why did you do that? Why should not have? You have an angry teenager. This kid is very unstable right now, based on what you've put rental locks on there. Speaking about like losing a shirt and putting a shirt on, Cyborg is dropping that sweatshirt off and on. Like how many Gotham sweatshirts does he have? There's a sequence in this movie that if you're talking about this as being a 50-50 thing, where Cyborg sees a poor family in need at the ATM and uses his Cyborg powers to give them money. And I've seen people say like, this was one of my favorite parts of the movie. I love that this was included. And I've seen people say like, that was so dumb. What the hell is going on in that

sequence? And I kind of came down on both sides. Or like on one side, I kind of, I just generally liked obviously that this movie actually gives Cyborg an arc and lots to do. And like you say, he's kind of the heart of the movie and his whole relationship with everyone is very crucial. But at the same time, I'm also like, wait, he can redistribute wealth? Are we, why even care about Steppenwolf? Just work on that. Don't even go to fucking Moscow or wherever. Just wait a second Cyborg. How powerful are you? Yeah, it really does. It makes us understand though that like, I guess what we're to understand is like, he's still just a teenager. Right. And so he's like, you know, he's dipping his toe. Are you saying that it's easier, well the movie says

it is easier for Cyborg to redistribute wealth than to fix Batman's plane. Correct. Because that one takes a lot longer. Or to fix a personal tape recorder. Yes. Right. There's stuff, but then there's stuff like, there's an arc for Batman's gauntlets in this movie, a whole arc. Oh my God. Like a spanning hours of the movie. There's stuff like that, that I kind of have to applaud the four hour maximalist ridiculousness of that. But I can also hop over the line and be like, that's dumb. You know, like I can see both arguments on this. Here's another thing. He puts two Nick Cave songs in the movie, both of which have lyrics that seemingly describe what is happening on screen. Like I remember reading a Scorsese interview where he was like, when I pick a song,

it's about adding something that the scene isn't otherwise communicating. And then this movie has a scene where Lois Lane is going to the memorial site for Superman and the lyrics of the song are, they said the gods would outlive us, but they were wrong. Well, I guess like, are you, do you think that, because he's a, you know, comes from a music video background that he is going, I want this Nick Cave song and then writes to the Nick Cave song or does he, or, or does he do like Nick, because he's not writing. He's a needle drop guy. He's a needle drop guy. And he's also, he's a corny motherfucker. I mean, this is one of the reasons why it's like, you know, you, you really got to reckon with his work. It's either like very much your thing,

very much not your thing, or you got to do what the four of us did, which is really try to work with it. Because I am a 50 50 Zack Snyder guy. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And I'm like, I'm out. I'm like, I'm hard pressed to find a Zack Snyder movie that works for me. I like army, I like the zombie movie. I like a lot of man of steel. I do too. You know, especially the first, the first half of it is really very good. And then I like this. Yeah. And I like 300. Like those are, those, if I, those are like, I don't like 300. I don't like 300. Like, none of those work for me. I'm not, I'm not going back to 300. I wonder if I went back and sought now what I would feel. I think it's the avatar effect,

which was like the first MSI avatar. Like, whoa, this is cool with 3D. Yeah. Again, I'm going to be the lone dissenting opinion that is like, I'm pretty sure. Like, I couldn't tell, like there, there isn't a movie whose has a starker difference between box office or, or, or, or, or cumulative money made and, and like invisible cultural footprint. David and I talk about it all the time. David and I talk about it constantly. I bought his newborn baby, a baby Navi onesie so he can dress up his daughter like a baby Navi complete with tail. But does it, did you have to buy a real one or did you have to make one of your own? I bought it from the Disney store. The Disney store is like, by the way, I've been

to Navi at Animal Kingdom. It's the best. There's more. Oh, you know, the puppets. Wait, to Pandora? You've been to Pandora? Is it the world of Pandora? Yes, world of Pandora. And, and it was, by the way, one of the best amusement park rides I've ever been on in my life compared to one of the worst. Yeah. Speaking of also like the corniness of him, I will say that the character I probably have the biggest issue with is flash, like flash to me feels to like a character that is like, I feel like it's a non-funny person being like, this is my funny character. And at certain points, it's a little bit too much. But at the same time, at the end of the movie, I kind of felt like I have a hard relationship with it. I think it's hard inside

of this movie, which is to be very clear, humorless, dour, sullen, grief-ridden. Every character is dealing with essential traumas that have happened to them every single cut. When they cut, they cut to another character who is experienced loss or is in the midst of a personal catastrophe, every single one of them. And so when Ezra Miller really is the, the flash is the only, his dad's in jail, which is bad. That's like, that is a trauma for killing his mom. But he, the very least, they try and structure him like he's a kid. He, you know, in this Snyder cut, there's a girl, there's like, and he, he has barely used his powers. He really is. I mean, they're simultaneously, they're putting so much on this character because like the flash

is the only like, you know, A-list DC hero who is funny, I would argue, right? Whereas a lot of the Marvel characters are funny. I'm sorry, Hawkman is hilarious. Well, but that's like, that's like, if you get him at a bar at three o'clock in the morning, he doesn't say that shit publicly, you know? Behind closed doors, Hawkman is the funny guy. Right, but there are like DC characters like Booster Gold and like, but they're gods. Right, the gods are very solemn and self serious. Flash has always been the one character that's kind of funny. Ezra is the only actor in this film with any sort of comedic background, right? Yeah. So it's like, I feel like they're simultaneously putting the weight on this one character to both be their

Spider-Man and their Tony Stark, right? Yeah, I think you're right. It's just overstuffed. And like, sometimes the character strains from them putting all of that. Like, you need to be the fun, emotionally relatable underdog. And I think that we didn't try to do that for Momoa. I think we didn't try to like, create this other version of Aquaman that was like less of a loner and more of like, yeah. And that was not successful. Well, and Whedon's Flash is like a coward. Like, he's like too scared. Yeah, he needs to be like coached through the set pieces from what I remember. Yeah, in the set piece, he's like, I can't do this. And they're like, and Batman has to be like, save one person. Right. And he's like, what do you mean? Just save one person, you know? And

it's like, well, no, you know, like, it's so dumb. But it's no, no, no, but it's really true. It's so dumb because it and it really takes agency away from the Barry Allen character because, you know, we've seen him participate. We've seen he's like the introduction. He might just be green is him saving one person. And then in the Whedon cut, it's an hour into the movie him saying, I don't know how to save a single person. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there's something about like, it's it's tricky. The Whedon cut has like two sequences where they're describing what they're going to do when they get to Russia. And this movie obviously way longer. But I understood that they were doing in a much cleaner sense in this film than I did in the Whedon version of it,

where it was like also like, I don't know, I mean, I just just to say like the Whedon versions building popsicle stick bridges in order to cut out 40 minutes in between two points. Like, can you, right? Josh, can you write one scene that enables us to skip over all of this? Oh, yeah. And the Snyder cut takes that 40 minutes that Whedon cut out and makes it 90 minutes. Doubles it. Yeah. Right. He doubles it. He doubles it. And he shows you how everybody gets to every location like literally. Right. And if you every if you hate Snyder, which like I'm I'm with Jason where I was like predominantly out on Snyder. And now I feel like after this and rewatching everything, I begrudgingly come to like a 50 50 state with him where it's like, I gotta just

respect the thing he does, even if it's not my thing to a certain degree. But I do feel like if you don't like him, it is probably it feels incredibly oppressive to watch four hours of this. I wonder if these weren't characters that I do know. I wonder if these were just movies. That's another thing. If I would, if I would find more enjoyment out of them, if these were just stories of gods and or whatever, like, yeah, let me be clear, like, like, like Zack Snyder is an incredibly compelling visual stylist, you know, like he's not a bad filmmaker. I don't, I don't like his worldview or his point of view. And so the movies don't tend to to resonate with me. But I still like them. It's like, he's straight out of the Christopher Nolan School of

impeccable filmmaking. But inside of it, like, tenant for me felt hollow, you know, but but so gorgeous to watch. I loved, I loved watching tenant. But I was like, what story did I watch? Sounds like you could use a temporal pincer movement. That's speaking of another speedster. Look, here's the thing I've been thinking about with with Snyder with his three DC movies, because I like a lot of Man of Steel. I love the Krypton stuff. I struggle with certain things in it. I still don't really understand why he couldn't rescue Kevin Costner from a tornado. Like there's certain things in that movie where I'm like, I get that you're building to a moment here, but I just I can't I can't handle the logic

and founding story decisions in that movie. Yeah. And Batman versus Superman, which that the ultimate cut or whatever it's called does improve. I agree, Griffin, but still that movie is about people making really stupid decisions constantly, like because they Batman has to fight Superman. So you're kind of watching both Batman and Superman be dumb. And you're like, well, you guys just have a conversation for crying out loud. Like you can figure this out in two minutes. Instead, you have to do all this bullshit. And then Martha, like, you know, it's like that movie only works if you do it through the prism of I'm supposed to hate both of these characters. Right. And then in Justice League, no one is stupid. That is my point. Right. There is no longer anyone burdened

by ridiculous plot contrivance. It's like, look, guys, we got to come together. There's a step and wolf, you know, like it's a much simpler thing. I feel like I feel like he got the note after Batman V. Superman evolve. Yes. Like, you know, in a way, like, and I don't know, like, obviously, you said that was like shooting very quickly afterwards. But on set, even I feel like they made some choices that that when he shot it, that helped make things make sense. I will say it was confused when like I get Superman fighting Wonder Woman and Aquaman and and even the flash sequence is awesome. Like that's cool. Superman and the Flash. So cool. But when he fires his, his, his, you know, his laser eyes on on Batman there, like, what, what, what does he got there that's

going to protect his arms? His power absorbing gauntlets. Sorry. Jeremy Irons. Jeremy Irons made them for him. So I guess I missed that detail. And now when you say gauntlets, now I'm pulling it all the way. You might have been sleeping. The one thing Whedon added that I think was logical is that Whedon adds that it is an active decision to bring Lois into that scenario to calm Superman down, whereas in the Snyder cut, she just kind of is hanging out and then he's in the neighborhood. Right. Which just that feels like classic, you know, script polishing thing where Whedon's like, well, why this should be an active rather than a passive decision. That feel. That's the only change I noticed. I just wanted to shout it out that it's different

between the two cuts where I'm like, I think I wanted to read this quote that I thought was interesting. So Joss Whedon just talked about why he added in the fan because we could argue that the family in Russia is one of the biggest things that Joss Whedon adds in. And so Joss Whedon says for him, the most important thing is for what is it like for the people on the ground? That's always going to be important to me. Like there's Hawkeye helping people off the bus. You have to have someone who works on ground level who's taking care of the smaller stuff. And he's talking about this as far as like what he added into Age of Ultron, which is very similar, which is like they have a lot of helping people. And the Sokovians, right. Yeah. And so yeah. So, you know, he said

like basically he brought that Sokovian attitude into Justice League because he felt like he's like he's like he's like I shot three days just tracking civilians on the ground because I wanted to see I mean, you know, like real devastation. But I also like a movie this big, I don't care about it. Like I don't care about it. Yeah, it's a thing I agree with conceptually that does not work in execution at all. And perhaps if you were designing that to be part of the movie from the ground up, it would work. But in its form, it's just like this is so clearly shoehorned in. It works in the boys. When the boys is built around that idea on some level, right? Like a normal person who's been affected or even that like one shot that Lindsey.

Lizzie Kaplan. The Marvel one shot. Yeah. The Lizzie Kaplan did. It was like, oh, well, this is interesting. But you almost need to almost that's an island. It's not like at the climax, I feel like that's the problem in my mind. Well, the thing in Batman vs Superman that I like is that opening sequence where you're seeing Man of Steel from the ground. And it's this sort of like apocalyptic 9-11, you know, thing. And that's where Ben Affleck, the Batman is getting so mad. And you're like, okay, okay, this is very powerful. But then most of that movie is Lex Luthor being like, I heard Superman doesn't like you. And Batman's like, what a punch ship, you know, like you're like, why is Lex Luthor getting over on you like this? It's literally like it's like

gossip. It's high school gossip. It's absurd. But I agree with you, the extended cut of Batman vs Superman, just like the Snyder cut, proves that if you give Snyder a long enough, you know, give him a long enough runtime, the movie will just make more sense. And it will trick you into thinking it was more satisfying, I think. I think it's a magic trick. You give it more time, but it makes more sense. So when you look at it, you're like, well, I understand it at least. Like when I watched the original cut of Batman vs Superman or the Whedon Cut of Justice League, partially what was what's so difficult about those movies is there is an inherent tension based on what is missing, making the movies not really make sense. The movies are asking you to

do too much work. And as a result are unsatisfying. And these, because they're doing more work for you, feel more satisfying. And you mistake that, you know, you can mistake that for them being better, and they are just better constructed. But like I said before, they are better constructed, like brutalist architecture. That like if I saw it in Russia, I would be like, wow, that's an impressively solid concrete slab of a building. But you know what I would love? More windows. I would like more windows to let more light in. I don't want to live in that building, you know, and that's what it is. The buy-in on this thing is huge, right? And it essentially asks like, you got to just check your reservations at the door. You got to be pot committed.

Because you ask like, Paul, why do 50% of people hate this? It's because if you're not really giving it a chance and you come in with your like, my general taste, you do not have to. But it's like, if you're coming in looking at it as scans, you will find 15 things a minute that just boggle the mind. Like in the sequels we talked about, where cyborg starts to see that he can manipulate the financial markets. The like pretentious self seriousness of Snyder, combined with shit like he feels the need to visualize that by showing a CGI bull. Oh my God. Wrestling of bears. So you understand. He also does the same. Doesn't he also do the same? Does he do the same for like political parties or something? There's a lot of weird imagery in that background. Although I did

like the way that you got into his mind scape. But then I would also say that there's a way that he treats these characters. And look, I am more of a Marvel person. I probably in my DC world, when I was a kid, I read a little bit more Superman, then I really read a lot more Batman. And so I can't speak to the character of Wonder Woman. I will say this. Watching that opening sequence of her in the bank, that I thought was an awesome sequence. Like a very cool, better than anything on Wonder Woman 84. Like that mall sequence and what like if that was whatever. I liked that sequence. I did find it confusing that she immediately, she does murder them. She does murder all those people and then goes up to that kid and goes, well, you can be

whatever you want. It is like, oh, my understanding of Wonder Woman is not that she is this kind of a murderer. But again, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But I think in Zack Snyder's universe, they all kill. Like they all kill in this world. That's part of the language of, I mean, and that is what, again, if you're playing by the rules inside of Zack Snyder's universe, then I agree with David, what you were saying earlier, the opening of the extended cut of Batman v Superman, which is this, like the movie opens with like 10 minutes of what is, what might as well be raw footage of September 11th. You know what I mean? It is, it's, it is so driving around. Metropolis is being ruined. Driving around Metropolis in a jeep, in a very product

placement jeep while, while tens of thousands of people are dying inside of the buildings that are being destroyed by the Kryptonian fight between Michael Shannon and Superman. Right, Michael Shannon? Michael Shannon played himself in those movies. No, he didn't play himself. Yeah. Yeah, no, he didn't play. Yeah, that was the secret. Everybody thought he was going to be Zod and he was just Michael Shannon. Yeah, even more intimidating, honestly. Yeah, that's exactly terrifying. But yeah, his superpower comes from the state. That's the thing though. It's like, as much as he has this sort of like complicated, big picture vision of the thing that cannot be reduced to a tidy two hour package, Snyder for me is fundamentally a filmmaker who thinks about

what is the coolest thing I could do at this moment. Yeah, whether it's a story decision, a visual decision, a tonal thing, whatever it is. And he doesn't really care about those things budding up against each other in a way that sort of works against itself, you know? And I mean, in a weird way, he's saying, I think, you know, as Marvel is exploring the multiverse, we are, I think we're, we're on the precipice of that opening up in a much larger way. And I think Flash, Flashpoint, the Flash movie that they're making with where Michael Keaton is coming back as Batman, it looks like DC is opening up the multiverse in the way that they're going to be, I think, tying their all their worlds together is by saying,

anything can happen. There's multiple worlds and all this sort of stuff. I think that Zack Snyder kind of is re-inviting himself into the party and going, this is where I'm going to, my multiverse is this, I'm going to exist in this world where I can live by my own rules and it can look cool. And that's, I don't know. I think it's a very interesting, I think you're right. I think it's like, his idea is like, there could have a version, there could be a situation in the future where Zack Snyder makes the nightmare movie. And it's not, it's just, we're out, like, at a certain point, if Flashpoint kind of gives us the multiverse, then we are, we have the opportunity to not have there be a status quo. Yes. Like every, the Snyder's thing can be in just Snyder's

thing. It can be, everything can be siloed in its different universe and it, and they can mix if they want, I guess. I don't know. I'm curious how they're going to, how they're going to approach this. It could be very interesting. Well, now he's already talking about a sequel. This is the Monday after it's been released that we're recording this and he's already saying, well, now, yeah, I guess people want me to make a sequel. And so that might be something that we see. The thing, I never would have predicted that this thing would exist. If you went, when the first, you know, Snyder cut talk started, I was very much like, there's no such thing as a Snyder cut. Sure, he may have had an assembly cut of a movie, but like, that's not the same thing. And I never

would have predicted that Warner Brothers would pony up 70 million bucks to let this thing drop on streaming, essentially. I would never imagine they would have to pony up an additional $300 million. God knows how much fucking money you would have to pay to get Affleck back, Cavill back, you know, like, you know, but never say never. I guess at this point has to be the, you know, even though like Ray Fisher is calling for like CEOs of Warner Brothers to step down and like Tana Asi Coates is writing a black Superman movie for JJ Abrams, but like it still could occur. All these things can exist. Yeah. And I think I guess I guess like the way I feel about it is, regardless of how you feel about Zack Snyder and this film, I think I'm going to butcher

this name. So please, all of you are much smarter than me. What's that movie? It's a Kona Quatsy or Koyana Scotsy? Yes. You can view this movie like you can view that movie where it's like, just sit back. Do you mean stoned? Do you mean stoned? You should view it stoned. But in a way, yes. Yes. In a way, like just like if you take your functioning brain off and just want to look at like some purely beautiful visuals, see some things, like I think this movie does work on a base level. Just like, I think you could be, I mean, I felt that at certain points, it's kind of swept up in it. Why? And to follow Jason's analogy, it's almost like you got to just kind of respect brutalist architecture, even if it is not your thing. So maybe just like

walk by it, take a look at it, go, huh, that is wild that someone wants to make a building that way, and that this much work was put into constructing a building that way. And then you think to yourself, glad I don't live there or work there on about my day. Yeah. And that's kind of how I feel. Like this is not, these are not movies that I will ever return to the way that I return to. There are Marvel movies, like I have rewatched Thor Ragnarok. I've rewatched the Spider-Man, the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. I've rewatched, there are so many superhero properties, never mind into the Spider-Verse and some of the animated stuff. But like these are movies, those are movies I go back to over and over again because they vibrate at the frequency

of superhero storytelling that I'm interested in watching in a way that these Snyder movies do not. Does that make them bad? No, it just makes them not for me. You know what I mean? And that's fine. They make more sense now that they have seen these longer cuts. The story lines line up in a way that if he did make another one that was this nightfall, you know, kind of dystopian future or a nightmare or whatever, this dystopian future, I'm curious. I'm also curious for a movie in which the new gods come to earth. There's, like I'm, I like Kirby, like I want Darkseid, like I'm curious, you know, like there's something there. I just, I just am always like, man, Zack Snyder stuff just doesn't hit me right for it. If you don't like, if you don't like Italian,

you're not saying don't put an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you about to say something like offensive against Italian? Who are you? Mike the Spoon Man Mitchell? Two hours in. What is this? The Doe Boys? Is this a Doe Boys episode? Can we night slice in here? I guess what I'm saying is like, are we, are you Mr. Snice? Mr. Slice rather? I'm combining all of his. I just think that there is a thing where, unfortunately. The Night Spoon and Mr. Slice. Night Slice. Night Slice. Night Slice. Which is my new Chris Terrio scripted, uh, Zack Snyder produced HBO Max. But I guess what I'm saying is this, it's like the, my whole opinion on this is, I think unfortunately Marvel has set a, I love Marvel. I love what they're doing. I'm on board,

but I think they have set a, an unrealistic expectation for what superhero movies are, what people expect from them. I think you can see that in the Sony films, not to say the Sony films are perfect, uh, that they have done, but it allows very little, uh, it, I think that people view them as anything different as being bad. Where I think what we need to do is go, we need to expand this, this thing, but, but it's, but Marvel has created the template. And I think when you break the template, it's very hard. And I, you know, to, I think when Marvel has done beautifully, is made movies that feel like comics. Right. Right. Like they, the Marvel movies feel the most like comic books. Like, like going to the store every week, keeping up with a naughty, like

expansive universe where characters cross over and meet each other and D and blah, blah, blah. That is what they have replicated for movies. Yes. But that the movies and, and characters are differentiated from each other in tone, in style and in performance. Like there is, they're not all doing the same thing. Right. Just the way that if you pick up a Thor book, if you pick up Jason Aaron's Thor, you know, uh, and you read the, the, you should, which everybody should read Jason Aaron's Thor drawn by Esad Ribic. I never liked before Jason Aaron took over Thor. Oh my God. You read that book and you're like, I'm reading something incredible. Then if you pick up Nick Spencer's Spider-Man, totally, totally different. Subject matter,

totally different. And nonetheless, incredibly compelling. But, but Marvel gets that. Key difference. Key difference. Marvel has never let anyone make anything as individualistic as one of the Snyder movies. That's the thing. It's like, we'll make these different from each other, but we're never going to let someone go that far. Well, at the end of the day, it is, it is, and what I think works really good for Marvel is Kevin Feige is the gatekeeper of all things Marvel. He's a showrunner. Yeah. And by, when we've seen, when it, when it hasn't worked, which is Jeff Loeb and everything that has come out of the Netflix, uh, Marvel world. And, and, and it's like, those were, I think, disappointing to Marvel fans. And I think it was disappointing to some of those

characters. And it's like, yeah, well, let the person. Wait, have you talked to some of those characters? Uh, sorry. I mean, have you heard from those characters? Iron Fist? I talked to Iron Fist. He was very upset. But Danny Rand, like Paul, I, I would love to talk to you. Like I should have stayed, I couldn't, I should have stayed and could live. But I mean, you know what it is. I just think it's like, you look forward to those characters and you waited for the Marvel, like I think, especially with Daredevil. And I think people really, but I love Jessica Jones, but it's like, it was a very hit or miss thing. And I think Marvel has said, I think more successfully than any franchise ever, we got this. Like, we want to give you at

worst a B. You're like, you know, like a movie can come in and it's like, ah, was it fine? Like, and then, or, you know, maybe a B minus. Like, you know, it's like, but I think they're getting less. Thor the dark world is like a straight D. We're on the other side of that one, Jason. Hey, look, this I will never understand. It's his own episode. You know, we can have it some time. We can have the world. We'll come on blank check. I want to talk about that. But I would like to rewatch it. But I think, but I guess what I'm saying is, and that is cool, but nothing, that everything does have to be that like James Bond isn't that like James Bond gives it over to different people to take over and drag. It's I just think there's room for all of this.

Yeah, I have totally given up any sort of preciousness about IP at this point, because that's what it is. It's fucking IP. They're going to keep on milking this stuff over and over again. It will never end. They reboot it every five years, but they'll do four versions of the same thing at the same time. And to Jason's point, like, I love the fucking fourth world stuff, I would love to see a gonzo banana pants, bright, colorful, goofy fourth world movie. Ava DuVernay is supposed to make this movie and is writing it with Tom King. My fear watching, you know, this the the Whedon Frankenstein version in 2017 was, man, is that fourth world movie going to have to fit into this version of Steppenwolf and even the para demons and this

kind of grayscale shit. But now I'm just like, if he gets to do his fourth world stuff and someone else gets to make a fourth world movie, that's silly. You know, I don't care, like let everyone do their own thing. And, and you know, look, and there will always be opinions, which is why we're going to quickly get into some second opinions. Alright, so these are second opinions that are from the Joss Whedon Cup. These are five star reviews of Joss Whedon Justice League, which I wanted to bring up because there are some good ones. These are all cold from the Amazon.com. Nate Kiley pulled them and and here here we go. Okay, this one's written by Fan Out West. Do not hesitate to buy this movie and enjoy it.

Unlike the Zack Snyder films, the cast actually looks like they're having fun making it. In my opinion, the cast of Marvel movies look like they're worn out and tired. The mustache that was removed via CGI is very short and not noticeable if you're not looking for it. Jason Momoa is off the hook is Aquaman and Ben Affleck's Batman is great. Yes, I said it. Ben Affleck is a great Batman. Don't listen to dirty rotten tomatoes. They haven't been right about a movie in years. And if you don't want to have fun watching the movie, then throw the arrival or Grand Budapest Hotel in the big old Blu-ray player and bore yourself silly. Wow. The big old Blu-ray player? Do I look like a jumbo one for the Grand Budapest Hotel? Dirty

rotten tomatoes. There's so much to suffer. That's the dirty rotten scoundrel sequel we need. And we should work on that. Arrival and Grand Budapest notably well received films that also were commercially successful, both entertaining in very different ways. Like they're not like similar. One film is serious. One film is a very goofy, like madcap caper. Well, this is a five-star review and it ends with this line here. It says, Warner Brothers hire some Disney PR people and give us JL2 and bribe yourself some critics. If the mouse house can do it, so can you. Five stars. Then we go into this one. This is written by Mark. Great story. Extremely well executed by cast and crew. I hate Lex Luthor. Is that

wrong of me? I think not. Zack Snyder has always been great at putting it all together, but I also love Zack Snyder's sucker punch. Why doesn't someone kick Lex Luthor's butt? I don't mean a superhero. I mean a regular dude. You know, catch him in the bathroom. Have him sip on a bar of soap a couple of times. Five stars. Just wants to be, just took that time to say he wanted to beat up, beat up Lex Luthor. And then I'll finally end on this one. This is by Thomas Lernahan. Should have been shelved by the WB and DC when Snyder could not finish the picture rather than allowing another person to take the reins who had no business in the DC universe. While I do not like what Snyder was going to do with some of the

characters. Overall, this movie was pretty good. Five stars. Twist? A real twist there at the end. So those are some five stars. There has not been enough reviews here about this one. But any final thoughts, guys? I mean, we really talked a lot. I think a lot about, I mean, a lot about, I mean, we didn't break it down in the things because I think you're right. This is a movie that can be literally torn apart on every level if you're not buying in on it. And if you are, I think it's a pleasant surprise. At least that's what I feel. And who knows if it's perspective or the history or I don't know. I thought, you know, just a couple of things. Like I thought Amy Adams just, you know, has so little to do in this movie. Third build!

I mean, Cavill's second build for Cridao. So brutal. I think that's probably like how they order in which they got into the franchise. Yeah. But I thought she's great. She's so watchable and she's so great. You know, people are giving performances that are very good in circumstances that are, I would assume, as an actor, very bad. And by the way, I want to just call it one of my favorite moments in the movie. I just looked at my notes, force majeure, the pregnancy test. Oh, yeah. That was a great prop design, force majeure. Incredible. Really, really. Yeah, she's pregnant. Yeah, she's pregnant. They're gonna have baby. I hope that force majeure pregnancy tests become like Zach Snyder's red apple cigarettes that they remain

a product in every movie from here on out. That would be incredible. It is hard for me to imagine that we live in a world. A society, say it. We live in a society. That we live in a society in which Diane Lane is ma Kent and Marissa Tomei is aunt May. This is like, I don't even understand how we've gotten to a point where the older moms are the hottest women on earth and I'm here for. It's also funny that Diane Lane is almost going full opening of Edward Scissorhands. They put so much gray on her. She's like doing an old lady voice there like, Diane, you got to be less hot. Anything you can. You have to be less vivacious. You can't make Diane Lane not hot, by the way. You can't. You can't. She is so compelling. I think they did a great job of like,

her and Kevin Costner were a very like, they were not like what you would like. They were great. It's fantastic. They just look like, yeah, like these are like, they weren't just like, well, you know, they had a life to them. I like Kevin Costner in that film as well. Even though his picture only makes an appearance. Yeah, I do too. Now on the flip side of that, J.K. Simmons has announced his commissioner, Gord. Everyone goes, oh, that's cool casting. He shows up in Whedon for one scene. You're like, Jesus, how, why did they shank J.K. Simmons this hard? All this J.K. Simmons stuff must have been left on the cut room floor. You watch this movie, the exact same amount of footage. Right. Yeah. In fact, Ray Fisher said

that's the only footage that he, that was Snyder shot that's in the cut. Two scenes. Yeah. Right. I feel like he, and by the way, Snyder, yeah. You've got a figure that he was just going to be in the Batman movie, substantial. Yeah. I think what they were doing was what you all have been saying, which is he was trying to build 10 years very quickly. So it's like, let me just drop these things like, I'm seating the world, I'm seating the world. And, and so yes, I'll cast a big named person to come in for one scene, knowing that it will pay off. Like he's, I think doing it the right way. So it's not a bunch of recasting. And it was like, you know, Kersi Clemens clearly is going to, I mean, now she's not, but was going to be a part of the world. No, she is again.

No, she is. Oh, she is. Okay. Okay. She is again now. It was like, it's gone four different ways. But as of this moment, she's back in the movie as the female. Okay. So that's, okay. It's so interesting, interesting. God knows. It's all weird. It's all super weird. All of it is as weird. All of this is as weird as the fake upper lip on the weed and Superman. Absolutely. I will say one thing too. One time when I was directing something, I was doing a table, I was doing a scene around a table and I was trying to figure out, oh, how can I shoot this in an interesting way where the camera is moving? Because there's a lot of exposition and dialogue. And I was like, I'm going to, I will have the camera spin around the table. And I did like two takes of it. And I was like, this is nausea

inducing. Like I can't, this is not going to be good. It will not cut. It's, it's going to look like shit. Zack Snyder really embraces that spin around the table to a point where I'm, I was dying, laughing at how much we were going, like it was like a merry-go-round. We were around that table a lot. Like it was like, that's it. He's committed to that directorial choice. And in a movie that is so slick, that did stick out to me as being a little bit bizarre. He makes weird choices. There's a goofiness. Yes. He's got weird taste. And at the end of the day, when we're talking about like, well, you have to buy into this movie, they're going to love it, you're going to hate it. It's like, I think all four of us are appreciating this

from the exact same perspective, which is what a weird thing that this exists. What a bizarre history to get to this point. Having it at this state in such an expanded object is such a curio. You kind of have to view it on a very different, through a very different prism than any other movie you've ever watched. And you're sort of holistically taking in all the baggage, along with actually considering what's on screen. Well, not for nothing. The fact that all of us rewatched stuff, simply to simply to give context to it is significant. You know, like never intended to rewatch any of those movies. No, guys, I was excited to watch last night as a guy. Here we go. Let's get into it. This is like, we are all like, these are the stories that we're

all like, pulling apart and trying to find meaning in some combination of all of these characters and all of these scenes. You know, there is there is something about this that is very, it's very interesting and compelling to talk about. But again, I'm hard pressed to think if I would ever watch any of these movies ever again. And I suspect the answer is no, unless called upon in something like this to do it. Like, like these bring me no joy, but I'm deeply curious. Yeah. You know, I'm like so compelled by the story surrounding the making of this story, I guess. I agree. But I also can could use, I could use a break, I will say, from the whole Snyder fight and the whole superhero movie discourse. I could use a half an hour. We did it.

Yeah. Yeah. We know what I mean. Guys. Okay. What's this? Guys, I have breaking news. I want to break into the pod. I have breaking news. Vin Diesel's son has been cast in Fast and Furious Nine to play Little Dolls. It was down to me and him. They went in a different direction. Wow. It was down. How did you not get this part? I worked really hard. Ultimately, is that why your head is shaved right now? Ultimately, I think he had a little bit of an in that I didn't. You know what? That is, this makes me so angry. I mean, and now I, you know, I don't know if you guys noticed, I am part of the Fast and Furious family now, the animated world of Fast and Furious. Motherfucker. What? Yes. I am one of your structures. I am in,

I have a very small part and I believe two episodes of the fact. Spiracers. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Spiracers. And so I'll talk about it more when I, when I can, you know, I don't want to, again, I don't, look, we're in a moment of mourning, progress here. I don't want to rob anything anymore. I should also mention one more piece of breaking news. Anne Sernoff, who is in charge of Warner Brothers, did an interview that just came out today and they're sort of asking her a bunch of questions about like, where does this go now, this and that? And she was throwing out dodgy answers. And then she finally says, I appreciate that they love Zack's work and we are very thankful for his many contributions to DC. We're just so happy that he could bring his cut of the Justice League

to life because that wasn't in the plan until about a year ago. With that comes the completion of his trilogy. We're very happy we've done this, but we're very excited about the plans we have for all the multi-dimensional DC characters that are being developed right now. And, and Griff, and in Griff, as you were talking, I also want to read one more quote from that article. She also unequivocally says, there will be no David air cut of Suicide Squad. He's trying to leap on the bandwagon. He's trying to be like, look, they edited my movie to death. Where's my release the air cut? And some people are like, oh, release the air cut. And I think she's trying to be like, no, no, this is not a precedent setter. This is an anomaly. We're not going to be releasing

cuts willy-nilly on HBO Max, okay? I would like them to start, I would like them to release my cut of dirty grandpa. I would like to see that. Guys, it's been fantastic to have you on the show. Obviously, you know, we want people to listen to Blank Check, which is a great podcast. But individually, anything we want to plug. Blank Check, this week, we're doing our year end awards episode. And then we're starting a little mini series on the films of Elaine May. That's right. April is May. I'm incredibly excited about that. April is May. Paul and I are both listening to the Mike Nichols audio book right now. It was one of the best books I read. We actually had Mark Harris on unspooled to talk about Mike Nichols. And it was great. That book

is fantastic. And now, I want to dive into Elaine May as much as I have been diving into Mike Nichols. Rad movies. I'm very excited. That was very fun mini series. Yeah. The George Lucas talk show with Jason and Paul and David have all been on multiple times. Yeah. A very odd, hard to describe show I do with the great comedian, Connor Ratliff, where he plays George Lucas. And I play a waddo that's worth dairy and junk shop owner. And we interview real people in character. And it has its own mythology. It's on Twitter. Yes. Sunday nights, 8 p.m. Eastern Time, PlanetScum.live. Okay. PlanetScum.live. Jason, anything you got to talk about? In a week, I will be in a new Amazon animated series as we're talking about superhero stories.

Robert Kirkman's Invincible is coming out. I'm so excited for that. It's great. It is a one hour superhero, brutal, incredibly cool, incredibly fun, funny, faithful adaptation. Kirkman himself scripting an incredible cast. If you've read Invincible, it's, you know, J.K. Sim and Stephen Yuen, Sandra Oh. It's like a Gillian Jacobs, Zussie Beats. It's like an incredible list of people. And I play Rex Spode, guys. It's very fun. That is incredibly exciting. And I will just quickly mention that I am in two things that you can check out. One is on Netflix. It's called The Last Blockbuster. It's a documentary about a blockbuster video. And I am blown away by the amount of people who have seen it. And if you are a fan of this show,

I do talk about my Jamie Gertz experience. And she reached out to me, the girl that I thought, well, the girl who I play, the fake Jamie Gertz in my autograph signing that you can hear about. And so she reached out to me. And this movie that I did called Happily, a documentary by Ben David Grubinski, is out on VOD right now. It's super fun. Joel McHale, Kerry Bache, Kirby Howell Baptiste, Shannon Woodward, Charlene Yee, John Daley, so many people. Stephen Root. It's Twilight Zone meets couples, Retreat Weekend. And I think you will like it. So there's what I got. A big thank you to our amazing producer, Cody Fisher, our sound engineer, Devon Bryant. Of course, our movie picker who we sidelined this week. I told Avril, I was like,

we're just going to go and jump into this. She's like, you haven't even seen it? I was like, I know, but we're going to do it. But Avril, a great movie picker, producer, the best. Also, Nick Kiley for his research and being able to break down the entire trajectory of this film. A big shout out to the ghost of Craig T. Nelson and Kyle Waldron for doing all of our art. A giant shout out to Molly Reynolds, who is my right hand and also a big part of how to just get made and getting the show made all the time. And if you want to talk about this movie, you want to rebut anything that we say, you can do it. You can give me a call at 619-P-A-U-L-A-S-K at 619-Paul-Ask. We will talk about it there. And you can join our Discord at discord.gg slash

hd tgm. It's all there for you to talk about in our mini episode next week. We'll see you later. Bye for now.