Here’s a theory: fans of the Snyder Cut are reluctant to admit that Snyder took a lot of the same footage, darkened it up, and then added and subtracted footage as he needed in order to fulfill his ‘vision’ for the Justice League. That’s the theory I’m sticking to at the current moment since those that are hailing the Snyder Cut as something wonderful are willfully ignoring that Snyder used a good deal of the theatrical release and then added and lost certain moments that helped to make his version look just different enough that it would fool a great number of people. There are omissions that are a little better, such as the fake upper lip that Cavill and Whedon both caught so much hell for, but apart from that, a lot of the additions beg just one question ‘Why?’. There’s no doubt that Snyder loves the use of shadow since it permeates just about everything he does and only enhances a bit of it, as in 300 the use of shadow gave a very dark and ominous feel to the movie, but in Justice League, one would kind of expect there to be more color and a little more light since the heroes are more or less expected to be a bit more upbeat. But both Whedon and Snyder took things in a direction that made it clear that the heroes are going to be humanized and given their own sets of issues to deal with, which is cool to be certain, but the shadows make it feel dreary and without hope in a way that’s hard to push past. During the fight between Superman and the rest of the JL, it’s easy to see how the lack of light kind of makes it apparent that things aren’t as they should be, but it doesn’t feel as though there’s going to be any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
The Justice League wasn’t a great movie, no matter what anyone says, but the Snyder Cut, which people were calling for and signing petitions to bring to the screen, was essentially the Justice League with a few snips and added footage plastered on since there’s not a huge difference between the two when it comes to the similar footage. There are plenty of people that would look at this and likely say that there’s a lot of difference between them, which would only make it even more necessary to roll your eyes when realizing that some folks refuse to see what’s right in front of them, even when someone is pointing it out in slow motion. The Snyder Cut added more than it took away, and it did so in a manner that shored up a few disjointed moments but also created one very disjointed moment when the Knightmare footage rolled right before Martian Manhunter’s impromptu meeting with Bruce Wayne and his eventual exit that admittedly made a lot of people wonder what in the hell just happened. Seriously, MM just kind of pops in to say hi, then heads out after announcing himself. It was one of the most slapped-on endings that a movie has ever received, and MM’s turn as Martha Kent kind of sucked all the emotion out of the conversation between Martha and Lois Lane, since it might have been a useless, but touching, moment, up until Martha was revealed to be MM.
But this fight, huh boy. The things it added and the things that were taken away in each cut aren’t such a big deal that they make the fight any different since there are only seconds taken out and added. The one good thing is that the mustache incident was taken care of, which was one thing a lot of people had a serious gripe about since in the Whedon version it was just horrible, and it was actually the subject of many an article when it first came out. In fact, for a little while, that’s all that people wanted to talk about since the removal of the mustache was such a horrible job that the mockery didn’t stop until someone finally found something else to talk about. But in terms of the Snyder Cut vs. the Whedon version, a lot of people have willingly deluded themselves into thinking that the Snyder Cut actually made things quite a bit better. The Snyder Cut was longer, there’s no doubt of that, and breaking it into chapters apparently gave people time to go and use the bathroom so that they didn’t miss anything, but apart from that, it wasn’t much of an improvement. Even if the fight scenes were marginally better, it was because Snyder employed the use of blood splatter in his movie, whereas Whedon appeared to go for the family-friendly version where blood is polite enough to come out only when it’s really needed.
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