Three Scenes That Define Zack Snyder’s Justice League
A look at the scenes that best encapsulate everything wrong with this monstrous mess of a movie.
When HBO Max dropped Zack Snyder’s Justice League on March 18, it dominated most film discourses across social media over the weeks that followed. After a massive campaign from fans of the director who’d spent years petitioning Warner Bros. to release what was (supposedly) his original vision of a movie that had been massacred by studio interference, his director’s cut of the 2017 blockbuster was met with excitement and curiosity from the general public. Regardless of their level of familiarity with the DC Extended Universe or Snyder’s larger body of work, everyone it seemed, was now inquisitive about the massive, four-hour cut of this movie, and eager to give their own two cents. (It goes without saying that Snyder’s story does not absolve the film of criticism—even if this development comes as a well-deserved blow to Warner Bros. and a massive win for creatives against their corporate overlords.)
As someone who isn’t the biggest fan of Snyder, the DCEU franchise or superheroes in general, I didn’t plan on watching this movie originally. Because it was all the rage however, my friends Marcos and Veronica convinced me to give it a go together. None of us ended up liking it very much but anything is fun in the company of friends, and four hours flew by despite the many pauses we made to get snacks and have Marcos explain the dense expository dialogue. Fresh after this lengthy viewing marathon, we all sat in Vero’s kitchen, trying to make sense of what we’d seen. Because our brains felt like mush, I made a prompt to help us sort our feelings: If you could come up with one scene from this movie that summarizes your feelings towards it, which would it be?
Here’s what each one of us decided on. Warning: spoilers ahead.
1. The CGI Sesame Seed
I had heard plenty about Barry Allen’s (aka The Flash) introduction before watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League—and boy, did it not disappoint.
An hour or so into the film, we see him save Iris from a car accident. Iris, if you didn’t know, is a stranger he’d been staring at from a distance a few moments earlier. I refuse to call her a love interest because she has no speaking lines and is never referenced again in the entire four-hour cut, which makes me wonder if her inclusion served a purpose other than foreshadowing the romantic subplot of future Flash installments.
Barry first uses his super speed to break through a glass door, run onto the street and catch Iris in mid-air after she accidentally drives into oncoming traffic. The world around him appears frozen as he gently moves hair out of her eyes and brushes away flying wieners from a nearby hot dog stand that also suffered a hit in the accident. In an attempt to show off the sheer technical prowess at his disposal, Snyder spends several seconds fixating on an extreme close-up of an animated sesame seed coming off of a bread bun.
Isolated from the rest of the film, the scene feels like a poignant tribute to superheroes in their purest, most virtuous form, with Snyder using signifiers of classic Americana—fast food, blue jeans and red sneakers with white midsoles—to reflect superhero mythology’s footprint on our culture and liken the genre’s aspirational kindness to our own. In the context of this visually pleasing but ultimately hollow movie however, it never amounts to much more than that, and risks coming off as self-parody from a director often criticized for being self-indulgent and didactic.
No moment summarizes the massive scale of Snyder’s passion (or vanity?) project better than this. Whether you find it bold and audacious, redundant and obnoxious, or something in between, how you feel about that CGI sesame seed probably reflects how you feel about the film as a whole.
- Ursula Muñoz S.
2. The “Fight” Between Aquaman and Steppenwolf
Zack Snyder’s Justice League was jam-packed with all things needed in a superhero movie: tacky dialogue, lengthy slow-motion sequences and information dumps that left me scratching my head every couple of minutes. Although the film has gotten praise for being superior to the original, I’m still trying to figure out what makes this slightly less excruciating experience so much better.
One moment that stood out to me was Aquaman and Mera battling it out with Steppenwolf in Atlantis. Various things bothered me about this scene. The characters move so slowly under the ocean, it makes the water look like hand sanitizer. In typical Snyder fashion, the scene looked so dark and murky, you’d think he took inspiration from Tim Burton in muting the color palette.
What stands out the most to me, however, is how little this scene—which takes place under sea—demonstrates any of Aquaman’s special abilities. All he and Steppenwolf do is swing each other around. He doesn’t use his trident or call any sea creatures, and it feels like a wasted opportunity in what could’ve been a great execution of Aquaman's skills. The scene could take place on land and not be much different.
In 2017’s Justice League, Arthur Curry was given tattoos, long hair and a rebellious attitude in order to contradict the “silly” and “boring” Aquaman from the comics. The “badass” spin felt superficial and obnoxious to me, especially since he still came off as useless to the rest of the team. I went into the Snyder Cut with low expectations but some optimism…and still left unsatisfied. The least this movie could’ve done was make him cool, but I’ve seen more exciting underwater fights between sharks and their prey in Netflix documentaries.
In the end, the fight between Aquaman and Steppenwolf was a waste of time that didn’t redeem the character for me—much like the film itself.
- Veronica Amos
3. The Martha Manhunter Cameo
There is plenty to enjoy from Zack Snyder’s Justice League, just as there is plenty to criticize about it. As great as Cyborg’s arc was, one could form a drinking game out of how frequently Wonder Woman’s theme plays for no good reason. But despite any issues I may have had with this director’s repetitive gimmicks, nothing sucked my enjoyment from this movie more than the pointless Martian Manhunter cameo.
Two and a half hours into the film, Martha Kent visits Lois Lane to talk about the impact Superman’s death left on them. The scene was pretty good as it gave two previously unexplored characters some interesting depth…until Martha’s eyes start glowing red and we realize it’s not Martha at all, but Martian Manhunter—one of the most powerful heroes in DC.
You might be thinking “why would something so small & insignificant to the plot be that big of an issue?” I feel like the question sort of speaks for itself. Other than being pure fan service the cameo felt purposeless. And yet, Snyder’s inclusion of this character raises a series of questions that the original Frankenstein abomination of a film didn’t.
A quick Google search will tell you this motherfucker has been around since Man of Steel—the movie that kickstarted this franchise. So going by the timeline of events in this series, this martian didn’t do shit when past villains attacked, nor did he try to make the world a better place after Superman’s death. And he still doesn’t do anything against Stephenwolf in the events of this film.
Some people may brush this off as a nitpick, but as a fan of the lore of these movies, plot holes like this can get really distracting from a storytelling perspective.
A few days later, I explained my beef with this character to a friend who loved the movie. He said that Manhunter is an observer who doesn’t act unless it is absolutely necessary. All I can say is that if this guy didn’t consider the end of the world to be a big issue on multiple occasions, then consider us fucked if he was the only superhero on Earth.
- Marcos Comas