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Poster Description: The poster is black and white, with “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” written at the top in white. The JL symbol is surrounded by a square with a star-shaped gap between the letters. Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Batman, and Cyborg stand side by side. |
PART 3: Beloved Mother, Beloved Son
1) Gratuitously reduced speed ahead.
Part 3 begins with a lorry driving past a sign that reads “Reduced Speed Ahead” into Central City. Wow, DC, could you think of a name any blander?
Anyway, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is muttering about how late he is to a job interview – at a pet shop, of all things. He sees a pretty girl, they smile, it’s cute, keep that in mind. The aforementioned lorry driver is eating a burger at the wheel – but oh, no! He drops it and bends down to retrieve it by his feet. This is a terrible idea; the lorry picks up speed, and the pretty girl is in her car, unaware of the distracted driver, as he obliviously loses control of his vehicle. The Flash watches in mounting horror as it unfolds, and the world slows…down…
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GIF Description: Each shot happens fast (makes sense, given it’s all about The Flash). Surrounded by forks of blue lightning, Barry stops at a worryingly vertical convertible car with a buckled bonnet. Its lone passenger is Iris West, wearing a short skirt, cream jacket, and brown neck tie. She is seemingly suspended in mid-air, her face blank, arms out like a capital T. Barry then cradles her head, lowering her down, moving her out of harm’s way onto the tarmac as the car flips overhead. It bounces on the other side of the road like a discarded building block. |
It could easily be played for
laughs as a sequence, and it does have its mad moments. The camera lingers just
a little too long on a CGI sesame seed, and Miller’s feet literally explode out of
his shoes. The song used throughout – “Song to the Siren” by Rose Betts –
grounds the whole thing, however, turning it into something quite beautiful.
2) Cyborg was angst-ridden...now we know why.
Justice League threw poor Victor Stone at the audience with barely any context; we had no idea of his life before he became Cyborg, save for some CCTV footage of his father bringing him back to life. In Snyder’s version, at last, Cyborg gets the screen-time he most sorely deserves.
As well as being clever with a good heart (more on that later), Victor was a brilliant athlete. He wins at American football on a snow-scattered arena, still in high school. He looks to the bleachers, where his mother cries and cheers for him, but his father, Silas…isn’t there. In the car ride home, Victor breaks down as she tries to make excuses for Silas’s absence – before they are in a terrible accident.
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GIF Description: Victor is centre stage on an American football pitch, holding his helmet in one hand. He turns around with a giant smile on his face as the flood-lit, snow-dusted arena erupts in joyous applause around him. |
Desperate to save his son, Silas turns him into the character we know. This time, we get to explore Victor’s new abilities with him, as he helps a single mum with her money struggles through some technological trickery. It touched my heart and made me cry. Well played, Snyder. Well played.
3) Wait, Barry has three jobs?!
Similar to Justice League, Barry visits his father in prison, where they have a heart-to-heart over the phone. The difference is that Barry is no longer unemployed – in fact, he has three jobs to fund his law degree.
While the story of The Flash’s backstory has yet to appear on the big screen, this version of Barry is more responsible and – thank goodness – less quippy. We can assume he knows more about brunch, too.
4) It’s so obvious now! Humans are dumb.
In the second part the Mother Boxes were hidden away after the defeat of Darkseid. Two Boxes went with the Amazons and Atlanteans to temples that looked specially made for their protection. There are guards, too, because these artifacts are pretty important, as we now know. But what did the humans do with their Box?
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Image Description: The camera peers over the edge of a grassy, brown hole that looks far too shallow to hold something as significant as a Mother Box. Still, there it is, a dull metal cube with a pretty pattern like a wheel on the only side that’s visible. |
We don’t know how Dr. Stone managed to find it yet, but find it he did, and it’s tucked away in his office at home – just like his cyborg son. With Steppenwolf and his para-demons looking for the Boxes, Victor does the clever thing and hides it someplace else.
In a hole in the graveyard where his mother is buried. Sigh. He might be part robot now, but the human in him still exists, for good and bad.
5) Atlanteans are no match for Steppenwolf (sorry, Mera).
Steppenwolf finds the location of the second Mother Box through the use of a spidery mind-hacker. While the potential for some grisly body horror is not fulfilled, the poor Atlantean soldier still meets a nasty end after giving the secret up. The CGI is a little sketchy when Steppenwolf arrives in the underwater temple, but it’s still shocking to watch the thick streams of blood mixing with the sea with every swing of his axe.
Fortunately, Mera (Amber Heard) is there to at least stall Steppenwolf. Her ability to control the currents almost drowns him (again, rather shocking), but he has the advantage of height and strength. As a small side note, Heard can’t make up her mind on what accent she wishes to use here. It becomes glaringly obvious after Arthur Curry comes to Mera’s rescue, and she offers more exposition around Arthur’s Atlantean heritage. For less tell and more show, I need to watch Aquaman again, but Steppenwolf has stolen the Mother Box, and Arthur needs to decide what to do next.
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Image Description: Compared to its bright red colour in Aquaman, Mera’s long hair looks very ordinary. Wearing a three-pronged diadem and scaly armour that exposes the top of her cleavage (WHY?), Mera looks thoroughly fed up. |
So...?
That’s two Mother Boxes collected and one to go. Eek. Thus far, part three is my favourite. With any other director, many of the sequences would be played out as a joke, but in Snyder’s hands, even a CGI sesame seed can be considered impressive and dramatic. The Flash is still the movie’s main comic relief, but the humour no longer feels like it’s trying too hard, and Miller appears far more comfortable as a result. Similarly, Fisher finally shines as Cyborg, establishing empathy and sympathy with a solid and tragic back-story. Also, his father just got kidnapped, so where will Snyder take that?
My Sources:
Zack Snyder’s Justice League poster - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12361974/
The name of the song in The Flash’s rescue sequence - https://www.looper.com/359023/whats-the-song-during-barry-allens-rescue-scene-in-the-snyder-cut/
GIF: Barry rescues Iris West - https://geekscovery.com/2021/03/21/differences-zack-snyders-justice-league/
GIF: Happier times for Victor - https://www.tumbral.com/tag/victorstoneedit
Image: The Mother Box in a hole - https://www.cbr.com/justice-league-mother-box-atlantis-described-zack-snyder/
Image: Mera - https://www.awn.com/news/amber-heard-may-snag-aquaman-screen-time-snyder-cut
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