Opinion Piece/ Review; Zack Snyder's Justice League: Should we #RestoreTheSnyderVerse?

 With the Snyder Cut out, it's safe to say that DC is right now enjoying a lot of time in the spotlight now. I'm sure a lot of people here are at least somewhat familiar with the story. Zack Snyder was removed from directing the Justice League film due to tragic events that happened to his family. Joss Whedon was brought in to get the movie to a releasable state; that version was a disaster due to conflicting tones and visions, leading to a campaign to get Zacks version finished. AT&T heard that, though it would make great content for HBO Max, and so it was done, giving the public a four-hour movie. If all you're looking for is a review comparing the two, well, there is no comparison as objectively, Snyder's version is better. But is the Snyder Cut a good movie on its own merit?

The big thing of note for Snyder's version of the movie is that it's far longer by necessity. They've added in many scenes that help fix the pacing issues of the theatrical cut and give characters like Cyborg a more critical role. There are also inclusions that, as it currently stands with the fate of this take on the characters in limbo, forced in for the sake of building up later movies that might not happen. There are two scenes with the Martian Manhunter that can be summed up as him telling Lois "stop being depressed" and another asking Batman after the final battle "hey, you mind if I join in next time?". Darkseid is brought in for more buildup, which feels redundant due to his presence in the movie, thanks to Steppenwolf.

Why are you in this movie?

 

In contrast, another part of it is frustrating: the continuing focus on the nightmare future from Dawn of Justice (but I'll get back to that later). I think they could have easily cut over half an hour off the movie by trimming down these rather pointless inclusions (when looking at the story itself, taking out the director's desire to direct a scene with these characters). It's just padding out the run time, setting up sequels that will only really happen if AT&T get involved again, which they may not even do!

Remember this picture for after this coming paragraph...

One other issue that I have when it comes to how the movie was released is that the film was rendered and released in IMax resolution, which doesn't work on a streaming service release. Most people have 16:9 Wide Screen TVs, projectors and Monitors. There is a lot of dead space on either side of the screen because of this. When you combine that with the fact that the movie has a very cold, dark pallet with a lot of harsh shadows, night time shots, and not a lot of brightly lit shots in general, it makes the movie look a lot darker than it is when you have two very distracting black borders on the left and right of the screen. 

This is how distracting the black boarders can be.

Though I'm not sold on some of the designs, Cyborg reminds me a bit too much of Michael Bay Transformers for my liking; the CGI and effects in the movie are well done, with moments like the final battle looking a lot better with the lighting the costumes were designed for. That, and the scenes added to help expand on rushed moments from the theatrical cut, is why I'm not saying much about the actual movie itself here. As I said at the very start of the review, this is the best version of the film to watch, even if there are decisions that don't make much sense given the context for release and current standing on upcoming movies. The big question about the film isn't "Is it good", it's "should we go back to this style of DC movies?". I don't think we should.

I don't think it would be a big shock to say, "I'm a fan of the Marvel Movies". I think the fact that I've talked about every movie released so far and have done yearly Marvel reviews now for the last few years goes to show how much I enjoy them. They have problems, don't get me wrong, but the quality of the movies overall has kept me invested in them. When the worst movies in the MCU can be described as "Ehh, it ok." you're doing something right. Two of the big reasons for their success and the two things DC need to get right are the characters and the pacing. Looking at the three Snyder movies, Man of Steel, Dawn of Justice and Justice League, none of the characters feel faithful to the material because "deconstruction storytelling" has been baked into them from the start. That's not necessarily bad, but it does mean that none of these characters feels like the source material due to the conflicting ideas going into them. Introducing characters, deconstructing characters, modernizing characters, subverting expectations. I don't know who any of these people are. Can we start with introductions, please?! At no point in the three movies have I felt like I've gotten the character, something that I've done with every Marvel movie, and the versions of these very same characters in the DCAU. The only character in the DCEU that I can safely say, "ok, I get what this character is like, what their personality is, I get why they're a hero", is Wonder Woman, thanks to her standalone movie.

Really? You're doing a Flashpoint this early?

This takes me to my next point. Why are we here, at this point that we're at by the end of movie three with Snyder's films, four if we're going to count Wonder Woman (and no, I'm not counting Suicide Squad because that feels bolted on at this point)? We've got a four-hour movie trying to introduce three new heroes, revive a fourth that shouldn't be dead in the first place, getting them all together while also trying to introduce the madness that is the New Gods before establishing the Old Gods. It's the fourth movie directly focusing on members of the Justice League. One of the biggest reasons the MCU has succeeded is pacing character introductions, letting people get to know characters in their movies before they start mashing them together. Batman and Superman shouldn't have fought in Movie 2; they should have fought/ worked together after a Man of Steel 2 and a Batman movie introducing people to this new version of Bruce Wayne. Superman should not have died in Movie 2 (that shouldn't have happened for several years) to give the Justice League time to establish itself properly. Superman shouldn't have been immediately revived either because that kills the moment entirely! This version of Justice League (minus resurrecting Superman) should have happened after Flash and Aquaman had standalone movies. The DCEU shouldn't be building up to an Injustice movie, and you people want more of this? You want more of WB's corporate meddling, rushing to get crossovers to happen, forcing iconic characters to suffer as a result?

Why are you in this movie?

I want more DC movies too. I would love for a shared DC Cinematic Universe to rival Marvel's, to give them a run for their money as both companies are at their best when they're building off each other. But I want more movies like Wonder Woman, Shazam, Aquaman, movies that keep to the spirit of the character, with the movie's tone complimenting the character. Movies that show the world why these characters have fans, not trying to contort them to "the sensibilities of the movie going audience". The answer to beating Marvel isn't to make a grim, dark, cold series of movies where the idea of a smile is a rarity because "older people don't like smiling!", it's showing why DC's characters are beloved by fans by showing the good, the bad, the silly, and everything in between. There's a reason why WB Animation frequently mocks Snyder's movies because of how dark and edgy they are; that should show you that we shouldn't want more; we should want better. 

Why are you in this movie? And why the hell didn't you help earlier?!

As nice as it is to finally see a version of Snyder's Justice League, for as good as the movie is, anything would be better than the theatrical cut, and this should not absolve all the previous movies problems. This doesn't change the fact that Man of Steel tried to make an idealistic hero realistic, defeating the point of the character. This doesn't change the fact that the version of Batman we were introduced to was so far removed from what Batman should be that the final "look, he's Batman again!" moment feels cheap. This doesn't change how bad Joker was in Suicide Squad, how bad Killer Croc looked in Suicide Squad, and how bad the course correction from Dawn of Justice was because of how botched the theatrical cut was to try and cut down the run time. If the reason you want more of this was so that you could have something with a tone completely different from the MCU, you need to rethink your priorities.

Detective Pikachu (Movie): Gen 1 pandering done right?

Pokemon brought into live-action, brought into the real world in a way that made them look like they belonged, not just using their original designs for merchandise and parading armies. I won't lie, I was sceptical at the news. Ignoring the fact that video game movies have a reputation for being really bad, thanks to many, many examples from the past (take your pick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games#Hollywood_(live-action) ), what really made me cautious was the fact that there has been concept art of real-life Pokemon put up in the past made by one of the people who helped work on the designs used in the movie, and others following the trend. Nothing against RJ Palmer, I won't deny his talent as an artist, but the more dinosaur esque approach to the designs did not look good, and with other pokemon like many of the bug type Pokemon, object pokemon like Jigglypuff, even some like the Eeveelutions, it wasn't hard to find versions of these live-action interpretations that looked like they were at the bottom of the Uncanny Valley. To me, the normal design but with more detail was what I could see as real-life Pokemon, it's why stuff like this (https://www.deviantart.com/badafra/art/real-live-pokemon-Blaziken-303463061) interested me more than Palmer's work (though that picture of Groudon is somewhat terrifying.

Frozen 2: At least they kinda broke the trend of sequals sucking?

Remember when the idea of Disney making sequels was code for "this is going to suck, don't buy it!"? These things were seen as absolute disasters, cheap cash grabs that only exist to capitalize on direct to home media. While they've certainly improved on this, my guess is that the Frozen Shorts were akin to the traditional Disney Sequels, acting as placeholders until this movie came out, and got rushed to Disney+ when the DVD and Blu-Ray sales were going to tank due to the lockdown. Was the 6 year wait worth it though?

MAYvel Phase 3: Spiderman Far From Home: "We felt the need to remind you that Iron Man is dead."

And so Marvel's Phase 3, and the Infinity Saga comes to a close. 11 years, 23 movies, and with the next batch of content looking to be even bigger thanks to the Fox acquisition, it seems like the only thing that's going to stop Marvel is a Pandemic. Let's see how well that actually works out, because... actually probably better I don't finish this joke... With this being the last movie of Phase 3, I thought it was fitting to end MAYvel Phase 3 here, the original plans of reviewing the 90's Spiderman and X Men cartoons will happen at another time.

MAYvel Phase 3; Avengers Endgame: See, they're only mostly dead...

So... where do you go after Infinity War? Most of the characters people know are dead, and those that are alive are either stuck in a different dimension, stuck in space, or stuck on Earth with no idea what the hell to do. The answer? Time Travel, that also conveniently sets up Disney+ shows that are still apparently coming for characters that are actually dead, not mostly dead. So... sucks for Vision I guess? Oh, wait he's in Wandavision... As you can probably tell, I was struggling to come up with an intro to this, so frag it, here's my review of Avengers Endgame.

MAYvel Phase 3; Captain Marvel: "Oh boy, another movie no one can agree on and one where every opinion is hated!"

Because those are always fun to cover, and in no way at all nerve-racking, even if I cover media after they're done in the spotlight.

I was not looking forward to MAYvel Phase 3 this year purely because of this movie. Not because I hated it, I was honestly pretty impartial to it when I first saw it, but because it was another one of those movies that no one could agree on, where there was no middle ground in the discussion around the movie, you either loved everything about it or you hated it with everything you had because you're sexist. Yes, this movie is in the same camp as Ghostbusters 2016, in that it was held up as one of the greatest movies ever made because of female representation in the media and discussion surrounding the movie, and it was hard to discuss the positives and negatives of the movie without coming off as an apologist, or a sexist. Without going into details on the movie itself, I do think that kind of talk does a disservice to movies and media as a whole, as it not only brings to light the biases many people have about what they want in a movie, rather than the quality of a movie, and it also drags down positive representation of characters as people assume that it's bait for specific demographics, instead of being an interesting character and story to tell. That, combined with the increased pressure by automatic comparisons between this movie, the previous year's Black Panther and 2017's Wonder Woman, the release on International Woman's Day, and it felt like very little talk around Captain Marvel was actually about Captain Marvel. So, a year later, was it all worth it?

The Lego Movie 2; The Second Part: That feeling when you're outclassed by a 7-10 year old...

Going off of the logic of the movie, I swear the younger sister in this movie builds better than most AFOL's.

For all the positives and negatives that can be said about the four Lego Movies, one thing I've found interesting is the embracing of the meta context of the movies. From the first Lego movie being a reminder to kids and adult fans of Lego that Lego is still a toy, meant to be built up, played with, and then broken up to be rebuilt into something new, the Lego Batman movie making a mockery of the Live Action Batman movies and how depressing DC has gotten lately, the Ninjargo movie... being a Lego version of one of those cheesy, over the top kung fu movies including a giant monster (I'll admit the Ninjargo one is the one I've seen the least of the four), and now the direct sequel to Lego Movie being... a critique on making everything dark and edgy, and a stab at toxic masculinity in the form of showing how siblings don't get along due to how mean an older brother can be using the disguise of the younger sister distorting and brainwashing everything to be more girly... and ironically enough, my younger sister probably hasn't seen this movie, and will likely never see this review because all she knows about my sites is that they exist... anyway...

G.I Joe The Movie: Coma my fragging ass

October is a time for horrors all around. Everyone online goes for a spooky theme for their accounts, all the scary movies come out, stores try and get a country to care about a holiday that doesn't work in the southern hemisphere because of daylight savings, the usual stuff. Though the controversy surrounding it has been expected because the phone game market is a disaster of shovelware and glorified casinos, Transformers Earth Wars still has my interest, and recently they announced the next batch of characters to come to the game. With the timing, you would think that we'd get some horror-themed characters or a scary story event. Monsterbots maybe? What about some more beast wars characters due to how many people are afraid of bugs? Pull from the darker side of Transformers with some truly terrifying villains like the Decepticon Justice Division? What about scaring everyone by including more movieverse characters that acknowledge they're from the Bay movies other then Barricade? Or how about Duke and Cobra Commander from G.I Joe... wait what?

Yes, it turns out that the next batch of characters is a G.I Joe crossover, and after seeing the trailer, it did get me in the mood to dig further into it, mostly because G.I Joe hasn't really been a thing since the 80's, at least versions of it like the incarnation people remember. While it's lived on in comics, television endeavours haven't really gone anywhere, toys are nonexistent (at least outside of the US), and the live-action movies... are better saved for another time. So, let's see why they keep coming back and killing Transformers off for the sake of proving human superiority... Are we sure the Joes weren't the inspiration behind Sector 7 and the army in Bayformers?

In another case where it feels like the movie is a long episode of the show, the easiest way to sum up the movie is "it's an eco-terrorism plot". After joining up with a alien snake civilization that uses weapons made from biological materials and giant insects, Cobra plans to capture a Joe developed device that can wirelessly send power to machines, in order to power a series of space flowers that will release a spore that will turn any human on the planet into a mutant snake with low mental capacity, leaving Cobra to rule the planet. The Joes, "with a focus on a new batch of Joes", including Duke's half brother Falcon, must find a way to stop Cobra before it happens. It's extremely basic, but unlike something like the Transformers movie, this feels like it's a story thread from the show with a larger animation budget, mostly due to how many of the original run of GI Joe's episodes had 5 episodes to tell their stories. The story itself though is overall fine, but it doesn't feel any larger than the show.

One big part of that though comes from the similarities between it and the Transformers movie, in that it feels like they wanted to do a movie like the 86 film, but for the Joes. Kill off the characters not on shelves anymore, focus on the new team with the new vehicles and new threats. The only problem is that you barely spend any time with the new team. A large focus is on the older heroes and villains, and while Falcon gets the most of the screen time compared to... actually I don't even remember the rest of the names, his big moment was diminished due to the feedback from the Death of Optimus Prime, that's where the "Coma my fragging ass" comes from in the title. Duke was supposed to die, and being stabbed through the heart by a snake shape spear would do that, but a last minute change, only done through voice acting rather than reanimating footage, Duke falls into a coma. The only on screen death was the Cobra Commander, and even then that was more "I'm going insane so you'll never see me again!" It's these two factors that make the movie feel unfocused, and the lack of stakes makes it feel watered down compared to the Transformers movie.

The animation also looks uglier at times. The copy I was able to find (because finding anything related to GI Joe here is a pain at best), was very dark in terms of lighting and colour tones, which made a lot of the bright flashes from the guns very hard to watch at times. What would have helped is if the overall colour palette was brighter, as it would make the flares less obnoxious, same as how shining a light into your eyes is easier to do when in a brightly lit room, compared to a pitch-black room. The soundtrack is on par with the show as well, further adding to the "was this meant to be a movie, or just a part of the show" feel to the whole thing.

Coma nothing, that guy is straight up dead!

On the whole, while it wasn't bad, I find it very hard to remember anything about it, and probably won't watch it again after this. It never hooked me in, though the same can be said about the franchise as a whole. It's a shame because there are parts of it I do like, and going back to watching the show to get some context for the movie, parts of it have aged surprisingly well considering the political culture of the day, mostly by way of representation (I mean it took 2 years for a female Transformer to get attention, and the first toys of them didn't start showing up until Beast Wars). If I could get some help sourcing media from the other shows, I'd honestly be up for seeing how the series has evolved since the 80's incarnation, but the problem with a show with the subtitle of "A real American hero" is that finding it outside of America seems to be more of a hassle then it really should be.

Kim Possible; So the Drama: At least it's a streamlined plan compared to Xemo's

I hate writer's block...

In an attempt to get back onto a consistent release schedule before the busy period of the year comes up, I'll be skipping the show this is based on, and tackle one of the movies. Due to the popularity of the show (one of the better "teenage girl double life" stories on the Disney Channel from what I've personally seen and experienced), multiple movies were made for Kim Possible, a show focused on the title character who fight's supervillains with combat skills gained from cheerleading, along with a handful of secret gadgets, with a rogues gallery including an evil scientist, a rich old man and his son, a half-human, half-monkey that has an army of ninja monkeys, a golfer, certainly a... interesting rogues gallery to say the least, and that's not including the standard "High school students are a b*!&$" members of it. A good way to tell though what you're getting into when it comes to these kinds of shows though is to look at the movies, which tend to blow up the positives and the negatives. So, welcome to Kim Possible: So the Drama. Be grateful this isn't that live-action movie, do not even bother asking because you have to actively convince me that a live-action Disney Channel movie is good.

Top X List: Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie

To close off MAYvel (on this site at least), I figured it was only fitting to look back at what's been, and see how they stack when compared to each other. It should be said that all of these are purely subjective, based on how much I enjoy watching the movies, 

21. The Incredible Hulk

I'll start things off with the movie everyone forgot was in the MCU until Civil War brought back General Ross. While not a bad movie in terms of execution, it isn't really memorable either, as the only interesting thing is the behind the scenes dramas that went on with the movie, and everyone's attempts to take control of it. It's a shame that we can't get a dedicated Hulk movie now thanks to Universal's hold on the rights, but at least he gets to stay in the MCU. It would be cool to see more Hulk villains though going forward because while I don't know how many could hold a movie on their own, they can at the very least work as hired muscle for a bigger threat. It would also be a good excuse to get the other Hulks into a movie. 

MAYvel Phase 2; Ant-Man and The Wasp: Still the best use of product placement I've seen in a series of movies.

So while giant spaceships were falling out of the sky and most of the heroes were either off-world or in Africa, it would appear that Ant-Man is having issues with ghosts and the government, and sadly not the ghosts of all the heroes. Time to return to the size changing shenanigans with Ant-Man and The Wasp.

MAYvel Phase 2; Avengers Infinity War: One week after it's sequel came out. Perfect time to review it!

Put it this way, to those who hated Captain Marvel, the same rule holding it to 2020 is the rule that kept Infinity War to today.

Welcome to MAYvel Phase 2, the one-month marathon that goes into two months because of how much media Marvel has put out that doesn't include the actual comics. Unlike last year where almost all of Phase 3 was reviewed, from Ant-Man to Black Panther. This year, only two MCU movies are being reviewed, Infinity War, and the Ant-Man sequel. Two shows are going to be reviewed as well, along with a list marking almost every MCU movie from worst to best. Endgame won't be on that list because I don't want to spoil the Endgame. So don't worry, there won't be any spoilers of the movie in this review, and in the Toybox reviews this month, which will be reviewing the Avengers Endgame sets. So then, before you go to see Endgame, even though you probably already have, let's look at its direct lead-in, Avengers Infinity War.

Deadpool 2; Super Duper Cut (and Once Upon a Deadpool): Time to beat the dead horse that's beating several dead horses again

See, I was tempted to make a joke in the title about this being a "family picture", due to one of the opening lines of the movie saying it was, but the X-Men Origins review got enough comparisons to the Nostalgia Critic, even though I reviewed the first three movies before he did, that I'm not going to take one of the jokes he actually came up with that isn't just making a mockery of something in the movie itself.

Time to wrap up Marvel catchup month once again, by looking at another one of Fox's successful movies with mutants, Deadpool 2. I'll be reviewing the Super Duper cut of the movie, but I also want to at least address Once Upon a Deadpool, a toned down cut of the movie that was released... even though I haven't seen it myself. I've seen the Super Duper Cut, it's why that's the one I'm officially reviewing, but you'll see why I want to address it later.

Spider-Man; Into the Spider-verse: Spider-Man 4 as you always imagined it.

Alright, let's start from the beginning one last time. My name is Liam Sanders, I wasn't bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last five years, I've been making content for this site. I hope you know the rest, but probably don't, but even still I'm not continuing on with this joke.

Logan: Watch as a group of kids are more violent then any of the X-Men could be.

It's nice to see a movie come around that goes so far against espectations that it can't help but be admired. As I said before, I had lost interest in the X-Men movies as they went further on, and I think I'm not the only one who wasn't expecting much from Logan. Origins was awful, The Wolverine was ok at best, and while this had the advantage of being rated higher compared to them, thanks to the success of Deadpool, no one thought this was going to be as good as it was. How did this happen? How did a trilogy that started off so badly stick the landing this perfectly? Well I think one reason is going to be repeated this Wednesday when Endgame comes out here. For now though, let's look at Hugh Jackman's last run as Wolverine.

Venom: We... are getting motion sick

And you thought Bayformers was hard to keep track of...

Ahh, Sony. Always one for jumping on bandwagons, yet always getting cold feet when doing them. You do love you Symbiotes don't you? Like I said at the end of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 review, I wanted Venom to fail. Not because it looked bad, because the trailers only looked unfinished, even to the point of showing scenes before the CGI was even implemented. The reason I wanted Venom to fail is that Sony has a habit of overdoing things when it comes to this style of movie making. Why just make one movie that might not be a success, but you can plan out the next 20 cause the character means it will be a success. Yes, that is the MCU formula now, however, there is still a set standard of quality, and with Sony, that quality isn't there. To use a gaming comparison, EA can make all the claims in the world that they're getting better, I'm not going to believe them until they show consistent quality. Excuse me if I sound bitter about this, but because this was a hit, I now have to keep an eye on a Kraven the Hunter movie, a character who I honestly question if anyone cares enough about to warrant a solo movie, but then again we are getting Dora the Tomb Raider and "Not The Killing Joke in live action", so what would I know?

The Wolverine: I hope you can understand Japanese

While I won't be going into them this year, as it will be better to them all next year, Fox's timeline for the X-Men took two distinct splits. The Wolverine trilogy, which is being covered this year, set in the same time as the original trilogy, and a second timeline with almost a whole new cast. Why? Because I'm guessing X-Men Origins: Jimmy did well enough to try and keep this thing going, which leads us to The Wolverine. Is it better than Origins? Yes, but that ain't saying much.

The Wolverine: Now with less Japanese

While I won't be going into them this year, as it will be better to them all next year, Fox's timeline for the X-Men took two distinct splits. The Wolverine trilogy, which is being covered this year, set in the same time as the original trilogy, and a second timeline with almost a whole new cast. Why? Because I'm guessing X-Men Origins: Jimmy did well enough to try and keep this thing going, which leads us to The Wolverine. Is it better than Origins? Yes, but that ain't saying much.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Stuffed with content is not always a good thing.

If there's one thing that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all of its imitators have taught us, it's that rushing things like world building and sequel baiting is never a good idea. There are times when it works, a nod here, a cameo there, but stopping the movie for the sake of sequel bait never works, especially if the sequel isn't in active development yet. Build it up slowly, and people will be willing to accept it because you could tease a movie that is years away and people will happily accept it because they know it's going to happen. But if you, for example, tease the appearance of a team of six villains by forcing three of the potential candidates into one movie, and have scenes teasing the others, including ones that people know can hold their own movies, especially in a sequel to a less then critically acclaimed film... At least this wasn't the Dark Universe?

X-Men Origins: Jimmy. Out of all the names, why Jimmy?

So after the commercial success of the three X-Men movies, a logical thing to do would be to give a spin-off to one of the most recognizable members of the team, Wolverine, giving him a backstory that was barely told in X-Men 2... and jumping the gun a bit here, barely told in this movie as well. People hated this movie, and can't say I blame them, though I at least have a few more personal things to add to the story, such as somehow ending up with a leaked, unfinished version of it on my R4 when I was younger, so I have the distinct "pleasure" of saying I've watched a full movie on my DS... no, I am not reviewing that one. It doesn't need it.

I swear, take the title out of that and I'd believe you if you told me this was a poster for X-Men 3