I won't do a play by play... but I will be doing as close to one as possible. Before you ask, yeah, I found a loophole on how to watch it AND not give WB/Snyder my money or my bandwith... my time, well, I have to give them that... the method, that's a Mexican Secret... so I can still talk about the movie and sticking to my principles...
Spoilers!!
It starts with Hack Snydurr patting himself on the back and thanking his cultists for their toxicity... and doing a good deed. Then the movie starts with a Previously on BvS. Mother boxes get activated which forces Batman to travel on horse to reach Aquaman and ask him to join... so far nothing too different from the "Josstice League"... but what about the Mustache interview, or Batman interrogator scenes? Not here... we got the BvS recap instead. Also, why are the people singing to Aquaman leaving the village?
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Why is she sniffing Momoa's shirt like some sort of pervert? |
We get a scene with OTHER MARTHA!? And then a pointless scene of Bruce Wayne switching vehicles at an air strip while Alfred delivers some sass. Because we REALLY NEED TO KNOW HOW BRUCE WAYNE SWITCHED VEHICLES! Yay, Zack Snyder!!! I hope Batman doesn't have to take a dump...
Lois Lane buying coffee and opening an umbrella... how do we know she's Lois Lane?The jenius that is Zack Snyder blocks her from view for a moment with a huge ass white truck delivering Daily Planet newspapers. I have to stop the movie and furiously masturbate to the jenius of Zack Snyder! Be right back!
We have a slightly more drawn out bank heist that we saw in the Theatrical release... noticing a pattern here. It's almost as if the "Josstice League" is an abridged version of the Snydercut... and yes, little mortal girl, you can totally grow up to be a clay statue given life by Zeus...
Parademons attack Themiscyra and the Destroyer armor Steppenwolf shows up. Steppenwolf redesign aside, this was on the Theatrical release... Now we reached part 2.
I've been a bit snarky, yes. Mostly because, so far there haven't been any HUGE deviations from the "allegedly horrible Josstice League". Hell, even the Gillette product placement is in this.
Hmmm the Wonder Woman Tomb Raider sequence is a cute addition, but a bit of a time waster. And now finally Aquaman decides to go to Atlantis... all a bit too eerily similar to the "Whedon film"... I'm starting to doubt the "60 pages reshot" rumors. Ooh nifty DeSaad cameo! A bit pointless for casual people who have no knowledge of DC, but the Cult will praise Snydurr for it.
Hello, Mr. Seid! FINALLY, SOMETHING TRULY DIFFERENT FROM THE THEATRICAL CUT!! And it's kinda similar to the Theatrical version with Steppenwolf. I thought the theatrical release was more Whedon than Snyder, yet it looks like I am wrong. I still haven't seen Barry, who will be the Litmus test for the Whedon theory. Glad that somebody googled ancient green lanterns to add in the movie, but so far, this hasn't been as impressive as promised... and I'm keeping my expectations low enough to love an Uwe Boll film! But Darkseid so far has been the only "Huh, neat!" Moment. I spoke too soon, since Darkseid got his ass kicked, like a pussy, by Ares. At least Whedon was smart enough to swap Darkseid for Steppenwolf. So, part 3...
Finally Barry... Oh, Sweet Martha, Barry just won't shut up! Bad one-liner after bad one-liner... So my old notion that Barry was Whedonized is wrong. The Cringe level is OVER 9000!! Neat speed effects but kinda creepy...
Also, Evan Peters did it better on the Fox movies... It's not an awful scene, but I can see why it wasn't on the Theatrical release. And now Steppenwolf is interrogating Atlanteans.
Hour and 20 minutes give or take, we get one of the "racist cuts" according to Ray Fisher. Totally not a having to make an already bloated 4 hour movie into a 2 hour feature. And Fisher delivered his best performance as he was lying still on the hospital bed. Mostly because he's not whining with a growly voice. That was a joke... but in all seriousness, Fisher is doing a much better work than Momoa or Miller. So, I can kinda understand why he kept bitching and moaning about "his cut content". I don't agree with his bitching about it, but we at least got to see more than the single note performance he gives throughout the rest of the Theatrical cut AND previous scenes... BOOYAH!! and now I can truly understand why Warner and DC wanted to trim the fat and cull most of Cyborg...
Snyder and Terrio made Cyborg too OP.
No wonder they had to cut that stuff out. At the end of the day SUPERMAN is DC's flagship hero, not Cyborg. But racism, amirite? Also, what is it with the Internet being this magical realm imagery? Now that we're there, the Snyder Cult mocked the Superstache and PS2 Steppenwolf from the theatrical release, but damn!
Thank goodness for that 70 Million... same quality as Whedon's 30 Million!
That prison scene was similar, but the levity brought by Whedon is gone, because Snyder only knows Misery over anguish... seriously, Where are all the super huge differences from Snyder to Whedon?
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Wasn't this a cringy Whedon Scene? |
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Let's remember that this is only hereto remind us that his daughter killed herself and to shield himself from criticism. It's not there for true altruistic reasons. |
We get a scene of Diana and Alfred discussing bad tech which he literally ripped off from Wonder Woman.
Diana meets Cyborg and he drops an F-Bomb... Sooo edgy! Excuse me while I go masturbate furiously to Zack Snyder's edginess!!
I'm back and Silas Stone got captured. Before that Cyborg did some profane things to his mother's grave.
Now We get to see Jim Gordon demanding pictures of Spider-Man! Yes, I need to make lame jokes because this movie is more depressing than The Last of Us 2...
Goddammit Barry! STOP TRYING TO BE FUNNY! THIS ISN'T A WHEDON FLICK! THIS IS A ZACK SNYDER FILM! THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HUMOR HERE!!
Steppenwolf goes to Atlantis and beats up Amber Heard just as she claimed Johnny Depp did. Again nothing too different from the theatrical version... just longer. I'm nearly 2 hours in and while there is additional footage; it hasn't made the Theatrical cut feel inferior... quite the opposite. All it's done is show how much of "Whedon's stuff" was actually Snyder's.
Steppenwolf has been relegated to DeSaad's bitch. Also, seems like the Russian family in danger was a Whedon thing.
Part 4... here we go! Barry isn't as Whedon-made as I thought... The battle under the Gotham Harbor is very similar to the Theatrical version... getting tired of repeating this... and I still have about 2 more hours to go.
Anti-Life equation, finally something "new". Darkseid cameo... why did Steppenwolf took off his clothes in front of Darkseid?
Wait just a minute... wasn't the whole Motherbox Superman revival a Whedon thing?
A Marthian Manhunter cameo... I know what I wrote! He went to Lois disguised as MARTHA!? Will this cameo pay off? Eh, at leadt it's something "different" from the theatrical release.
Part 5... Let's go! Exhuming Superman, check! Alfred having a heart to heart chat with Bruce on the dangers of necromancy is a nice "new thing". A slightly longer version of the infiltration mission.
Is this a reference to the abandoned Lois and Bruce knock boots? The League activates the box and we get a weird vision which is "new stuff". Darkseid taking a dump I'm the Wonder Woman with two drachma. Aquaman gets killed by Darkseid in the vision and we get black suit Superman with Darkseid giving Clark a loving shoulder rub.
Cyborg tries to abort the mission and Barry dashes prematurely...
Superman is alive and Silas is eyeing the Motherbox.
We get the whole League is forced to fight Superman. Aside a few lines of dialogue and the last part of the scene, they are very similar.
The League lose the last box and Cryborg gets more character development...
Part 6... Finally, the End is nigh!!
We get some scenes of the League planning their attack while Lois and Clark are in Smallville. While similar, they are very different, but they ARE Similar... sounds confusing, but here it is: tone and dialogue are different in the league scene, but the purpose of the scene is similar... this is the pattern throughout most of the movie... and in many cases the dialogue doesn't even change.
Now the Barry scene from MARTHA'S KID V. MARTHA'S KID: YAWN OF JUST US gets some pay off... but not really...
You know what this movie needs? More Clark talking to his dead dad... I was being sarcastic!! Black suit is stupidly used in this movie.
The League preps up in a montage that was a bit between Schumacher and Whedon.
We get a similar battle of JL vs parademons. It's different enough, but not.
Clark and Alfred meet, flies to Russia, kicks ass and Darkseid shows up with DeSaad and Granny Goodness. This tickled the comic book fan in me, but then I remembered Zack Snyder. So he Tetsuya Nomura'd the ending and Barry uses the Speed Force to kinda time travel to jumpstart Cyborg. After the bit inside the Motherboxes, Superman and Cyborg separate them. Then Aquaman, Superman, and Wonder Woman proceed to murder Steppenwolf. Darkseid vows revenge...
Now for the Epilogue:
I bought the Bank wasn't Whedon!? Everything else has been setups for a sequel that won't come. Joker was bad and the "For Autumn" in the end left me a bad taste in my mouth. He's literally exploiting his daughter's death as a shield against criticism!
Now let's get serious for a moment:
The Snydercut vindicates Joss Whedon. A LOT of the "bad things" that Whedon did "to sabotage" the movie were actually Snyder's.
The only 2 big changes by Whedon, mandated by the studio were:
-Lightening the tone (dialogue, not killing Steppenwolf)
-Refocusing the story on Superman.
Despite all the limitations Whedon had, excessive studio mandates, tight deadline, little budget, and an uncooperative cast, the man pulled a miracle. He can be a douche, a dick, or whatever; but as a director, he should be commended for the miracle he pulled. The movie wasn't great, but I blame WB and Zack Snyder for that.
Now the Snydercut: it wasn't a BVS trainwreck, but it wasn't good either. It was a more bloated and convoluted version of "Josstice League". It suffered from being a Zack Snyder film. The 4 hour cut showed that Snyder likes to pad out things and that he has issues with pacing. The sad part is that aside Steppenwolf not dying on the Theatrical release, and the focus on Cyborg on this version, the differences were minimal. Some of the scenes that were cut were OK, but not mindblowing enough that you can say they're REALLY NECESSARY... like I said before, they're more of a huh, neat! kind of scenes. If you thought the theatrical release was bad, then the Snydercut should be just as bad, since they're basically the same movie (aside the ending)
Personally, I think the "Josstice League" is the superior version.
-it gives Superman a chance to shine in a more heroic form.
-For the most part it attempts to balance the dark themes with a bit of levity. (Batman doing quips and one liners is not a good thing.)
-it was able to tell nearly the same story in half the time.
With that said, the fight sequences that were different, were better on the Snydercut.
I mentioned that I didn't like how Snyder is exploiting his daughter's death as a shield against criticism. I'm not glad that she died and I wish for his pain to become tolerable. My issue is that every time he mentioned the Snydercut he always seems to remind everyone that his daughter died. I understand grief and how it can make you attached to something due to a memory of the deceased and said thing. In my case MOTUC Snake Mountain and my Mom. In Snyder's case is his daughter and the movie. So, I understand his attachment to the project. But the difference between me and Snyder are that Snake Mountain is a collectible and I get no "advantages" for mentioning my attachment to it. Snyder's movie is his actual job. Depending on how it does, his career could gain an advantage.
By constantly reminding us of his daughter's death. He's emotionally manipulating us. When a person loses someone, the people around them tend to act extra careful in order to avoid causing them more pain.
The constant and consistent reminders almost feel like he's purposely trying to make us feel bad so we take it easy on him.
If you like Snyder movies, I'll question your taste, but hope you enjoyed it... Me? I didn't enjoy it, but I didn't hate it. All those years, all that effort for an eh it's not a trainwreck is NOT a good thing.