Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021 Snyder Cut) Review

It is worth stating what this replaced. The 2017 release, finished by another director after Snyder left, was a shortened, brightly regraded thing with a digitally erased moustache and gags that landed nowhere, and it is the low point of the whole run. Given four hours and a fresh finish, the original assembly is a genuinely different film. Ray Fisher's Cyborg becomes the emotional spine, a young man grieving his body and his father, and every scene the earlier version deleted turns out to have been the connective tissue.

The Themyscira siege and the Flash's rescue of Iris are real set pieces. Fabian Wagner's photography, presented in a boxy frame Snyder chose for large format screens, is heavy and handsome. It is also enormously indulgent. Steppenwolf is a spiky lump who wants three boxes, chapter headings and slow motion inflate scenes that would play at half the length, and an epilogue spends twenty minutes teasing sequels that will never be made. Better than it had to be, and far longer than it needs to be.