Ty Talks Comics Reviews: The Snyder Cut

What a strange position to be in.

Initially, when the groundswell of support for the Snyder Cut began, I found myself in full support of a filmmaker that I had been crapping on for his bad movies since the end of Batman V. Superman. I felt sympathy for the reasons that Zack had to leave the original Justice League project and even lightened up my criticism of the aforementioned BvS. Justice League under Joss Whedon turned out to be a mediocre mess of tonal dissonance and try-hard humor from a guy that, in retrospect, should never have been put in the driver seat after his actors’ criticism of him after Age of Ultron. I didn’t expect the Snyder Cut to actually exist, but the sliver of hope was there.

Then one after the other, the actors in the movie began to voice their support and tell of its “existence” and slowly, the sliver of hope became more real. The pressure was on Warner Brothers and then after years of speculation and cries from the fans, we got an announcement. It was vindication. Blog after blog, website after website said that it wasn’t real and that it would never happen. We would finally get Snyder’s original vision – and then he started tweeting and I remembered why I hated the man in the first place: He’s a giant, goddamn, edgelord.

Granted yes, Chris Terrio and David “She Hulk was a Giant Green Porn Star” Goyer, wrote the screenplay for BvS, Snyder still defended the murderous nature of Batman, the Martha moment and in general his love for the flawed Batman of The Dark Knight Returns and there’s a lot of bias coming from me going into this movie, but I tried my best to be as fair as I could and well, here we are.

The Good.

One of the biggest criticisms that came out of the original movie was how underdeveloped and forgettable Cyborg was. He had no arc to speak of clearly the director had no amount of care for the character at all. Thankfully the Snyder Cut vastly improved on Victor, not only as a character, but as an integral part of the team that had a lot to contribute. Watching him struggle with the pain of being mostly a robot and his own issues with his father before coming to terms with his new life and relationships was refreshing to see. Granted, Doom Patrol handled the arc a lot better, Zack Snyder did his best to show what his overall vision for Victor would have been and given how great of a character Cyborg is, it was much appreciated.

I love that Snyder actually made use of the awesome football scene that was a big part of the original movie’s marketing, but never made it into the final theatrical cut as it serves as some of the better character work as we’re able to see what a star football player Victor was. In many ways it reminded me of the animated Justice League War movie where his story played out in much a similar and more explosive way, with both of them acting as the eventual conduits to the defeat of the main villains through their understandings of the Mother Boxes.

Wonder Woman and the Amazons were filmed with an uncomfortable gaze of disrespect and oversexualization in the theatrical cut. Wonder Woman’s opening rescue scene deemphasized her heroics and the invasion of Themyscira portrayed the Amazons as being weak and ineffective when Steppenwolf set foot on the island and just wrecked them without regard. The Snyder Cut allowed all of these women to breathe, be leaders and warriors in every scene that they showed up in and I was much more hyped to see them on screen. If there was one thing that Snyder knew how to do, it was portray historical warriors as buff, badasses that didn’t flinch in the face of danger. The music during the scene was good, the camera shots were always well placed to get the most out of the Amazons and surprisingly the color wasn’t awful! They took the fight to Steppenwolf and Diana even made the final blow in the movie’s climax.

There’s not much I need to say about Superman’s resurrection scene that I haven’t said in the past review of this project. It remains one of the most epic and powerful scenes of Superman in a movie as he just systematically takes out each member of the League. It’s still fun and brutal and sort of sets the stage for how his mind would be susceptible to the Anti-Life Equation that would bring him to Darkseid’s flock if Snyder and Geoff Johns’ terrible sequel ideas ever came to fruition. I also liked the addition of the black suit, though of course he didn’t have a mullet, so this was really nothing more than fanservice.

Finally, the reshot War for Earth was definitely one of the coolest and best scenes of the movie overall as, instead of Steppenwolf getting his ass kicked by the warriors of Atlantis, Themyscira and Humanity, it showed a younger Darkseid (or Uxas as he might have been known then) leading the invasion. This scene worked out well because it showed just how united the armies of Earth were, alongside a surprise Green Lantern while at the same time showing just how viscous and effective Darkseid himself was as a younger conqueror. The battle also looked really good from a filmmaking perspective as well since the CG blended well enough with the color so nothing looked too fake while also looking grand and bombastic. This scene was especially great as Darkseid was allowed to be defeated, giving viewers the idea that he wasn’t completely invulnerable and could be defeated by a powerful enough force.

The Bad.

Oh. There was so much.

One of the biggest criticisms I have with Zack Snyder is that he takes his artistic expression to the nth degree and comes off as an edgelord looking to make all of his works dark and serious. His form of film directing values more style over substance, best exemplified with his version of Watchmen, which mostly stripped away Alan Moore’s criticism of fascism in superhero comics and Cold War era politics. His version placed value on how cool Rorschach was as hero that had a “code” once and then realized the world was too grim for it, as well as how COOL Moore and Dave Gibbon’s heroes were instead of the dark impact their existence had on the world. Granted, I do love his version of Watchmen because I’m capable of having nuanced opinions, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be criticized.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is dripping with his style and while that style made this movie a lot more cohesive than the theatrical cut, it is still plagued with the same problems that the rest of his movies suffer from, which is artistic over indulgence, awful color grading, and terrible dialogue in some parts (oh we will get to the Knightmare, don’t worry).

First off, I think Sucker Punch is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It was the film that awakened me to what Zack Snyder wants all of his projects to be like if he were given full creative control of things and it wound up being a confusing mess of interconnected music video moments and Justice League has most of that, but with a tighter focus. There is one scene in particular where a bunch of Icelandic women sing a song of lamentation as Aquaman is leaving their town after providing them with fish for the winter; for someone who proclaims their movie is supposed to be realistic, I don’t think that’s something ANYONE would do out of nowhere and not induce a cringe reaction.

Aside from that, a lot of the scenes that establish characters personalities in the beginning are, as previously stated, just music videos with water splashing, rain falling or something else happening in the background, all in slow motion while melancholic tunes play in the background. While I did manage to enjoy them for what they were, there were around four of these moments and soon wore out their welcome. Very easily these could have been shown as them committing heroic acts, but in Barry’s case (which is coming next), heroism is treated more as a joke than anything else.

Barry’s hot dog scene, second only to the Knightmare, infuriated me to no end. I love Ezra Miller with a passion. He’s a fantastic actor and, for the most part, steals the show in every movie he’s in! However, his Barry Allen is the most annoying, creepy and grating version of the character I have ever seen. He makes me question my tolerance of people with ADHD because he just never stops and his interpersonal skills are almost non-existent as while he’s in the middle of saving who I presume to be Iris West in slow motion, he just stares right into her eyes, almost brushes her skin, steals a hot dog and then proceeds to save her and get back to his job interview. It’s unsettling and that’s on top of his already bad humor during the rest of the movie.

As far as the color grading goes…yeah, it’s a much darker movie than it was before. There are so many scenes that either have their colors washed out or are simply far more shadowed than they need to be, giving the movie a much more bleak tone. One of the clearest examples was Wonder Woman’s first heroic rescue scene in which there was a light layer of blue over everything. I much preferred the colorful nature of the theatrical version given that Diana is one of the more hopeful heroes of the DCU. The color change seemed needless and seemed to want to fit more in line with the look that Snyder favors in his movies. I understand cohesive presentation, but one should also tailor scenes to each individual character and their respective personalities.

That’s not the only instance of this, however, as Snyder somehow manages to get the editor to grade Batman’s trip to Iceland in search of Aquaman to be darker and that takes place in the snow, one of the most reflective and white surfaces possible. The contrast does work well in the end, but it almost has a stubbornness to it, like everything HAS to be darker to be cool. One of the things that I was looking forward to from the original trailers was the bluish tint of night during the final stand against Steppenwolf, but somehow even that gets made EVEN darker and my buddy Matt Dennis of the Fan of Everything Podcast (of course I had to plug him) explained that it might also be because of a Dolby Picture filter that they apply to their movies to give them more of a cinematic quality, but how hard is it to consider the audience that may not have larger TVs or the time to watch the film at night?

And finally, the dialogue of this movie is…something to behold.

I honestly don’t believe the movie got its R-Rating from the violence within the movie itself because it is heavily tame in comparison to move other comic book properties like even the recent Invincible, but rather the R-Rating comes from its three (?) uses of “Fuck.” One when one of the Wonder Women terrorists just uses it to portray an air of “maturity,” another where Victor says “Fuck the world” as he laments his robotic transformation and finally when Batman says “I will fucking kill you,” to the Joker in the Knightmare scene. I love a good fuck every now and again, but either when they have meaning or are as gratuitous as a Share Size of “M and Ms” for one person. Breaking Bad had ONE fuck per season and they made use of it for full effect, The Boys has several fucks in each episode almost as a transition word at this point. The Snyder Cut has three and each of them just made me cringe and recoil with laughter.

From Flash asking Cyborg if Diana would go for a younger guy and Cyborg replying that because she’s 5000 years old, everyone’s a younger guy to Steppenwolf proclaiming that “the Great Darkness begins” there are a number of cheesy and bad lines, but most of them can reasonably be contained to the Knightmare itself.

Not only do I hate Jared Leto, the fact that he’s a cult leader and possibly one of the worst Joker performers I have ever seen only makes me hate the final scene of the movie so much more. From his offering Batman a reach around to not so clever lines alluding to the fact that he murdered Dick Grayson in this universe, Jared Leto hams up his lines so much that it almost feels like he’s part pig. He wants to seem intimidating and crazy, but all that I can see is a cringe mall goth from the height of Marilyn Manson’s popularity. What makes matters even worse is that he even alludes to some of the plot that would have been part of Justice League 2 with Bruce and Lois being a couple after Clark died (remember those pregnancy tests in her drawer next to her Press Pass?)

This whole scene is clouded in a shit brown and Jared Leto is still the biggest piece of shit in it. If you look closely enough, you might be able to see two other turds in the form of Zack Snyder and Geoff Johns as their crap ideas just waft away in the billowing wind.

And there you have it. It has taken me a full week to collect my thoughts and put it to paper for this mediocre mess of a movie. Not everything was bad and it did have some quite enjoyable moments in it. Zack Snyder, Chris Terrio and David “I hate Green Characters, so why did I include Martian Manhunter in the Script” Goyer did manage to pull everything together back from the horrid state that Joss Whedon left it in. They are all talented in their fields and I applaud the crew of the movie for getting those additional shots, the long hours of editing and everything else, but fucking hell this movie was overhyped and underdelivered on both its cringe and possible goodness. Here’s to hoping Snyder and co. move on to better films after this and Johns continues to do well with Star Girl and comic projects…but after Doomsday Clock, who really knows?

Best of DC: Week of December 11th, 2019

Best of this Week: Ocean Master – Year of the Villain One-Shot – Dan Watters, Miguel Medonça, Ivan Plascencia and Wes Abbott

Ocean Master was happy once.

With a loving surface dwelling girlfriend, Erin, and a potential new stepson, Tommy, he threw away his lust for power and hatred of his brother in order to live a peaceful life. All of that was upended, however, when Queen Mera came to his doorstep asking for help. With his homeland in political peril, he chose to leave his happiness in order to restore it to proper glory, hoping to return back to his loves. However, seduced by Mera’s relatives from Xebel with promises of power, he betrayed the Queen only to be defeated and imprisoned.

When he resurfaced shortly after during the Drowned Earth event, free of Atlantis’ prison. He did everything in his power to make it up to Mera and Aquaman himself. He aligned himself with his family to take down the old Ocean Gods, but was defeated then as well. It was a long time before he was heard from again until now.

This book begins with Erin walking out to the shore that her home sits on, calling out to a mysterious figure she noticed in the darkness – Orm himself, somehow still alive. She responds to his reappearance with anger, saying that he abandoned his family and demanding answers for why he left. He recounts the story of his fall with amazing art by Miguel Medonça, capturing the grand scale of Atlantis, accentuated by Plascencia’s fantastic colors. He then tells her of how he lived among the homeless of Atlantis until he was finally able to escape.

Erin questions how a kingdom like Atlantis could possibly have homeless and vagrants of any sorts and Orm responds with one half of overall theme that this story lays out, “Atlantis has beggars, madmen and other rejected people of the street.” Amongst the homeless, Orm hears of a fairy tale, the story of Dagon, and learns of a mad king that sought to control an ocean elemental with an amulet around his neck. Dagon’s people, fearing his encroaching madness, slit his throat and cast the amulet into the deepest depths of the ocean.

Soon after, the madman who believed the tale found a way out of Atlantis and allowed Orm to follow him towards the calling of the amulet. Erin interjects in the middle of Orm’s story that at no point has he apologized for abandoning them and asks him why he was there. He replies that he missed them both and asks to see Tommy, but she declines. She has every right in the world to be furious at him for the way he disappeared. Granted, Mera could have told Erin what happened, but that likely would have made things even worse.

As Orm continues his story, he reveals that he had every intention of returning once he escaped, but the madman that he was following was kidnapped by someone, so Orm chose to go and save him instead. Mendonça shows the trepidation on Orm’s face as he decides what’s the best course of action and when he arrives to some kind of rig, he’s met with a daunting structure that he had no idea about. When he enters, he encounters many horrible creatures and Palkor, the madman. He then draws the conclusion that all of these creatures were once vagrants from Atlantis turned into monsters.

Before he can commence in freeing them, he is attacked by F-List villain, Marine Marauder (the female one). She tells him how Lex Luthor offered her one of his Gifts and how she’s using it to sell mutated sea life to various militaries. She and Orm engage in a fight which sees Palkor mortally wounded and Orm needing to escape and regroup. Mendonça and Plascencia give the escape a real sense of gravitas as Palkor’s blood pours as they reach the water. With his head shaped like a clam, he weakly says Dagon, insisting that he finally reach his calling before his end. Mendonça actually makes Orm look like a caring guy in the moment as he carries his dying “friend” to the trench.

Mendonca then draws a sequence of a dead Palkor falling into the depths and Ocean Master following just to see if Dagon’s story had any merit. Mendonca shows how the walls of the trench encroach on Orm, getting smaller and smaller as he descends into absolute darkness. Plascencia accentuates this scene by showing the water getting darker and darker the deeper he goes. Watters dialogue gives the situation some poetic weight as Orm describes how the weight of the ocean is pressing down on him, but his curiosity is stronger.

Amazingly, the story of Dagon rings true as Orm discovers the water elemental, a girl named Lernaea and upon seeing that he stays to speak with her, despite the weight of the water bearing down on him, she gives him the amulet and raises him from the ocean floor into the sky, calling him King Orm. The scene is beautiful as Leraea looks at him like he’s saved her from a terrible fate of loneliness and the moon shines on him ever so brightly. He looks regal, even as shadows obscure his face. It’s as if destiny called to him.

Soon after, he returns to the rig and confronts Marine Marauder. Though we do not see their fight, Ocean Master returns with her defeated body on his trident and rallies the mutated creatures of the sea and forms a new city, the City of Dagon. He tosses Marine Marauder into the crowd and tells them to feast and cheer. Soon after, Luthor appears to Ocean Master, offering him a gift. In quite possibly one of his biggest flexes, Ocean Master shows Lex that he has an amulet that could control Lernaea and make her do as he commanded…and breaks it, granting her her freedom from all control. She chooses to stay with Orm and Orm, in turn, says that he needs nothing from Lex or Atlantis as Lernaea sinks the rig.

After everything, Erin asks Orm what he wants and he wishes for Erin and Tommy to come to Dagon and rule beside him, but Erin declines. She tells Orm to never come back to her home after a tender embrace that could have seen them become one again. Orm is hurt, but unsurprised. As he walks back to the sea, he adds one final note that he considers Tommy to be his son and that when he’s older, he may come back to see if he wishes to rule beside his father, which sends Erin into a fury. Our final shot is of Ocean Master sitting on a throne of his own, something he had actually been avoiding since his arc in the New 52.

Here we get the second half of the theme. Atlantis has those it has cast aside and Orm is there to take and keep them safe.

I never thought I’d see the day where I’d look at Ocean Master with anything other than pity and disrespect. Sure, he did cause a giant flood in his attack on the world during War for Atlantis, but he’s always had this… sadness to him. His new 52 characterization portrayed him as a man that just wanted a normal life without a throne, but destiny pushed him towards that kicking and screaming.

Dan Watters portrays him as a more tragic figure than we’ve come to expect, seeing him full of regrets of lost love as well as a newfound confidence similar to that of General Zod in Bendis’ Superman right now. Mendonça and Plascencia stunned with amazing visuals and colors. Ocean Master stands out as being a dark mirror of Aquaman, being far more ominous and melancholic. With this creative team, we really feel how low he’s fallen and how he’s had to claw his way out of his despair.

Overall, this is a very good showing for a villain that I have a newfound respect for and I actually can’t wait for the ensuing Aquaman story that’s soon to follow. High recommend!

Best of DC: Week of July 3rd, 2019

Best of this Week: DCeased #3 – Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudiano, Rain Beredo and Saida Temofonte

Hope is dead.

Tim Drake, Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne lie dead on the floor of the Batcave as Alfred makes his way to the Batwing, unable to mourn their deaths and wanting to help stop the zombie threat. Harley Quinn finally gets the catharsis that’s she’s been looking for by pumping an infected Joker full of lead. With her face full of glee, it soon turns into a look of determination as Batgirl, Catwoman, Huntress and Batwoman are set upon her, bloody and rabid with infection.

These first few scenes are horrific and shocking to the extent of which this infection is spreading. The Batfamily is normally the most prepared for things like this to happen, but in one fell swoop, they’re almost all gone. That’s the brilliance of Tom Taylor’s plotting with this story, the inability to know what the hell is going to happen next. Batman would have come up with a cure, a plan, but with Tim and Dick being infected and him unable to fully prevent himself from succumbing to his wounds, the world’s greatest planner is no longer a factor. Barbara would have been an excellent second, but any hope of that was lost the moment she showed up covered in blood.

The world has turned to hell and even Superman can’t bring himself to smile or be hopeful as he looked into the faces of friends and companions, their eyes replaced with the rabid rage of infection and none of the love that they once had. He removes the infected from the Daily Planet office and shores up defenses on the outside before promising Jonthan that everything will be okay before he flies back home to Smallville.

The best way to describe Clark’s emotions as he makes his way through the Planet is hope being replaced by despair. The captions say it best, the hardest part of dealing with the infected is dissociating. These people are no longer Clark’s colleagues. They’re rageful monsters bent on killing, thankfully none of them can make a scratch on him, but the internal scars are far more painful than anything on the outside. Even when he promises that he’ll be back to his son, there’s this underlying feeling of doubt. We don’t know that he will, he doesn’t know that he will, but he’s Superman, right? He has to have hope?

Elsewhere, Garth and Mera are working to make his magic stronger before noticing the sky grow darker, dark with blood. They watch as Aquaman tears through Atlantis’ warriors, infecting and spilling their blood as it flows through the water and gets Garth. Mera barely escapes, but the fear on her face is palpable, she knows that all is lost.

Even Atlantis isn’t impervious to all of this, granted it’s because Aquaman was attacked by infected diving out of a boat, but that doesn’t make things any less terrifying. This also helps us to learn that the infection can spread through blood and given how fast Aquaman and Tempest can swim through water, and how far spread the infection already is, nothing is safe.

On his way to Smallville, Superman does his best to save anyone not infected along the way. He catches up to Jefferson Pierce, aka Black Lightning, and his daughters, telling them to head to the planet before reaching the home of the Kents. Martha is okay, but Jon… Superman makes one final act of kindness before flying his mother to safety, leaving any hope that he might have had in the barn with his father.

That’s what I loved about this book. It is hopelessly nihilistic because of how tragic everything is and how all of it can even break Superman. Hairsine’s art invokes the feeling of terror that I felt the first time I watched 28 Days Later, seeing these ridiculously fast and violent killing machines tear through everything in their path. The shading on everything makes the inkers inks feel even more dark and bleak especially as Aquaman is slicing through Atlantis in a nice double page spread with a black background.

DCeased is definitely much better than I initially gave it credit for. With Hairsine’s art and Taylor’s bleak writing, this is definitely worth checking out, high recommend!