Contemporary Cult: Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

You said the age of heroes would never come again.

I didn't grow up reading Danny Peary's Cult Movies books and I'm not of the following generation who created podcasts inspired by them - though I listen to and love those podcasts. Folks of my half-generation need our own canon of contemporary cult cinema. It's time for us to define our "classics, sleepers, weird and wonderful," as Peary puts it. We'll debate the definition of a "cult movie" by stretching the boundaries, make predictions about a film's future cultability, and honor a new generation of artists in this new, on-going series called Contemporary Cult. 

Some editions of Contemporary Cult will be for paid subscribers, while others will be unlocked for all. Make sure to sign up here to receive all editions as they come out. 

Typically, cult movies become cult movies when a population of film fans rally around something that they feel is their own, special and unique to them. But often you have to, you know, see the movie before you decide if it's for you or not.

No film in the modern movie landscape created a buzz before it even existed like Zack Snyder's Justice League. In fact, the cult response to even the idea of the film is actually what brought it into existence.

In the wake of Marvel Studios' massive success launching their Cinematic Universe, Warner Bros. wanted DC Films to be the same kind of hit factory, relaunching Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and others in an attempt to replicate that same sensation. While the Marvel approach was organic, finding out what worked and what didn't about their characters to better shape the outline of the larger story, DC's approach was to slap it all together quite quickly. Marvel's first Avengers film hit in 2012 and the next four years saw four DC films in quick succession: Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), and Wonder Woman (2017). There was no time to waste as they were barreling towards their own Avengers, 2017's Justice League.

They were the antidote to Disney's Marvel characters in every way: gritty vs. glossed, monochromatic and muted vs. colorful and cheery, usually not-very-good vs. typically above average. They weren't comic books, they were traumatic socio-political thrillers about terrorism - largely shaped by studio suits and computer algorithms doing their best impression of those things. They didn't feel particularly crafted in any way, and while Zack Snyder (then of 300 and Watchmen fame) seemed to be the main architect, everything felt asterisked by boardroom decisions. Each of the movies to that point had the air of test screenings and data collection. This is what we think people want out of our movies.

Now, I must admit, I'm an apologist for some of these DCEU flicks. I actually really like Batman v Superman and it was, to that point, the Snyderiest that Snyder ever got to be. Big, dumb, bold, silly. He was only supposed to take it up another notch with Justice League, but that wasn't the movie we all saw in the fall of '17. The movie we got was a complete mess from start to finish.

During post-production, Snyder's daughter tragically passed away and he had to step aside from working on the film. Warner Bros., never one to shy away from a buck-making opportunity or terrible decision, knew just the guy to call: Joss Whedon, director of Marvel's megahit Avengers film and the man seemingly responsible for that billion-dollar clearing payday. Snyder and Whedon, however, are two very different kinds of artists: Snyder was interested in creating his version of a classic myth, and Whedon was most interested in comic book panels. Neither is particularly wrong in their approach, but the two concepts felt counterintuitive. Along with Whedon came another $25 million, two months of reshoots, and a studio-mandated runtime of under two hours. Snyder's vision soon compromised, the final version of the film felt like a neutered version of both his concept and Whedon's previous success, capturing the achievements of neither. It was a bomb in every sense of the world, commercial and critical.

It didn't take long for Snyder's groupies, a fanatic and devout cult themselves, to begin asking for the original cut of the film. The hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut quickly started trending on Twitter (remember when hashtags could blow up on Twitter?), a notable petition gained more than 100,000 signatures, and even members of the cast, like Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, and Ray Fisher, publicly called for what they considered to be the real cut of the film.

To be honest, it was largely pretty obnoxious. Snyderists have a reputation online for being the most diehard and toxic fandom, and while the extremist minority should never represent anything, this cult following can sometimes feel like a cult cult. Bullying and harassment of decision-makers were not beneath them and they were often relentless. And for what? After all, this seemed like an effort to release a film that would only be as good as Batman v Superman.

But that energy, if pointed in the right direction, could be instead considered persistent or tenacious. Different campaigns raised over $500,000 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in honor of Autumn Snyder and to show Zack not only their condolences, but their backing.

Warner Bros., between Snyder's willingness to give it another go and the fan's insistence that it exist (and the dollars and cents they saw for their new streaming platform, HBO Max), not only greenlit the new cut in early 2020, but the $70 million and over two months of reshoots that would go with it.

When audiences finally got the film they had longed for in March of 2021, more than three years after the original cut opened in theaters, they got exactly what they wanted: a big-ass, dumb, crazy, thrilling, bloated, unique, auteurist miracle that improved upon the original in every way. As Snyder is wont to do, the 242-minute project was epic in every sense of the word.

as in: sweeping, legendary, heroic, mythic. In what is now the definitive film version of this superhero team, Snyder uses a well-cast group of heroes to tell a modern-day folktale, using his four hours to introduce three new characters, bring another back from the dead, and flesh out a story that only made some sense in half the original runtime. It's a story of space and time, of history and the future - it is cartoon as opera.

as in: exactly how we used it in 2011, like "that's super epic, bro!" Rattling with a Junkie XL score, a shocking amount of the film is in slow-motion, which is cool, dude. It's so grim and overly serious that even the in-color cut of the film feels like it's in black and white - that cut of the film is called the "Justice is Grey Edition" - it is cartoon as opera.

It was, as Bilge Ebiri of Vulture wrote, "the best and worst of Zack Snyder."

And it was exactly what his fans wanted.

Variety reported that Zack Snyder's Justice League was the 4th most streamed film of 2021, which was probably a decent consolation considering the $100 million post-marketing price tag, and it’s definitely nice not having to hear about it anymore. But, sorry David Ayer fans, that's not gonna be enough to get that #ReleasetheAyerCut movement for another version of Suicide Squad anytime soon.