Snyder Cut Discussion

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am always up for a comic book movie but I am not deeply passionate about comics, so I'm sure a lot of the details went past me. As a writer I found it very interesting to compare the two versions of Justice League. I'd love to hear other writers' thoughts.

I thought Snyder's screenplay was better at establishing sympathy for each character and giving them clear motivations/goals. Cyborg has the most obvious increase in screentime but Steppenwolf and Batman also stood out as characters where I understood their story better with the added scenes. Of course, any comparison may be unfair because of the huge runtime. I was unable to experience it as a movie. So one lesson that I took from it was to respect the wordcount limit on short fiction... it's hard to maintain momentum when your reader/viewer is starting and stopping at places you didn't plan! And I think the thought experiment of how you would cut this down to a usual movie length is an interesting one.

By comparing the two we see Whedon's major changes, like his decision to add and follow a family through the final fight. His storytelling instinct was to put an everyman in danger instead of an epic clash of the superhuman. Two very different approaches to making the story more intense. I preferred Snyder's ending but I think the choice to follow civilians could work.

Personally Snyder's movies don't usually hit my favorite stuff, but I am really glad for him that this cut was released because it feels so much more consistent than the 2017 version.