This week we took a brief hiatus from Battlestar Galactica, as Mark forces Michael to watch the 2017 DC superhero team-up movie, Justice League. We'll be back on track next week with the conclusion of “The Gun on Ice Planet Zero," which can be viewed here. Justice League's original director Zack Snyder left the film before it was completed, and Joss Whedon was brought in to finish the film. Whedon apparently changed quite a bit, and the film that hit theaters was very different from what Snyder had imagined, leading to social media calls among Synder fans to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. This week, HBO Max is doing just that, with Synder’s completed 4-hour version hitting the streaming service on March 18th. So, we (read: Mark) thought this was a great opportunity for Deja Reviewed to take its first stab at a rebooted movie. Enjoy, then you can decide if a different-but-still-a-lot-of-the-same-stuff 4 hour version of Justice League is worth your time. The 2017 cut of the film can be viewed behind a paywall here.

• Michael heartily apologizes to Gal Gadot, as her last name is pronounced guh-dowt. Call me, Gal, for a more comprehensive apology. Here is her being adorable and pronouncing it.
• Zack Synder was basically given the reins to the entire DC superhero film line (what Warner Brothers dubbed the “DC Expanded Universe” or “DCEU” to compete with the wildly successful “Marvel Cinematic Universe” or “MCU”). He directed the first two films in this iteration of the DC world, Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (which also introduced Wonder Woman), plus sharing writing and producing credits on Wonder Woman (directed by Patty Jenkins) which came out in summer 2017, just a few months ahead of Whedon’s Justice League.
• Joss Whedon is probably best known in fandom as the creator of the TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, but had plenty of experience in the superhero realm, helming the well-received first big MCU team-up film The Avengers, and also its less-well-liked sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron. More recently, he’s been the focus of allegations of creating toxic work environments from the present (including on Justice League) dating back to the Buffy sets. Not being versed in all the details of this still-unfolding story we don’t spend much time on this aspect of Whedon, but obviously it’s going to be relevant context to Whedon’s place in the industry going forward.
• For what it's worth, Snyder never joined in the public bashing of the way Whedon altered his vision for the film and claims he’s never actually seen Whedon’s finished version.
• As Michael notes, the core MacGuffin of Justice League--collecting the three “Motherboxes”--seems eerily similar to that of the MCU’s first ~20 films, which were about supervillain Thanos collecting the six Infinity Stones. This plotline came to a head in the massive two-part all-MCU-team-up films Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame,the latter of which was the highest-grossing film in history for a while. Just this month, Avatar reclaimed that title after a brief re-release in China, which raises the question of which Michael thinks is WORSE to be the all-time highest-grosser, given his past comments about Avatar. (MICHAEL'S NOTE: I don't care about any of this.)
• Michael kind of liked Synder’s 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, which is being followed by the upcoming Army of the Dead.
• The best evidence of directors having unique styles came from last season, when we looked at the first season of the original The Twilight Zone. We learned to identify certain directors by their visual styles, even working within the same structure of TZ. And we had our favorites, such as John Brahm.
• For the record, Joss Whedon was NOT the creator of Veronica Mars, which according to IMDB was Rob Thomas. We assume this is NOT the same Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty, though figuring that out conclusively would take more research than we’re willing to put in.
• Of Snyder’s previous films, we both liked 300 and split on Watchmen.
• Mass Effect is one of Michael's favorite video game series, and he thinks casting Henry Cavill as Commander Shepherd (or really casting him as anything) is a terrible idea.
• Mindhunter is an excellent series on Netflix that stars Holt McCallany, who’s the robber Batman uses as bait to attract a parademon at the beginning of JL.
• Michael heartily recommends author Caleb Carr for historical fiction that's entertaining and tricks you into thinking you're learning something.
• Michael again wants to recommend Life on Mars (the show, he’s not recommending actually going and living on Mars). The BBC version is far superior, but he also didn't hate the ABC version (except for the ending).
• Mark recommends Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns”, whose older retired Batman was what he thought Ben Affleck was going for. Whether that was true or not, this remains an excellent graphic novel and one of the seminal reimaginings of Batman.
• Marvel vs. DC in terms of laying the cinematic foundations, the evidence prior to their “team-up” films:
  • MCU: 5 movies between 2008 and 2011 (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger) before The Avengers in 2012. So of the original Avengers, 4 had their own movies, and the other two (Hawkeye and Black Widow) were both introduced in the prior films, Hawkeye in Thor and Black Widow (more substantially) in Iron Man 2
  • DCEU: 4 movies between 2013 and 2017 (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and Wonder Woman) before Justice League in 2017. However Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg were only introduced in an email attachment in BvS prior to this film, and Suicide Squad was essentially independent from the other films/characters with no Justice League overlap (save a brief Batman cameo). So fewer films, with fewer of the heroes introduced, prior to their team-up, relative to the MCU
• Michael criticizes the contemporary action style of extreme close shots and quick cutting where you can’t tell what the hell is going on, and ties it to Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, but this technique is actually perhaps most linked with that film’s sequels, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, both directed by Paul Greengrass. Film and music scholar Claudia Vernallis has referred to this style, specifically using The Bourne Supremacy as its archetype, as “The New Cut-Up Cinema” in a variety of writings, including her book Unruly Media. Mark also writes some about this style, tying it to particular stylistic uses of surround sound in Beyond Dolby (Stereo) and other works.
• Since we refer to them a few times, a quick list of prior modern-era live-action Batman movies:
  • Batman: The Movie (1966) with Adam West as Batman, a spinoff of the popular campy TV show
  • Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), both directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton
  • Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), both directed by Joel Schumacher (turning the camp up to 11), starring Val Kilmer and George Clooney, respectively, as the titular hero. Though Batman was recast in each and the style dramatically changed when Burton was replaced with Schumacher, they are technically part of the same continuity as the 1989/1992 films, with several of the same actors in all four films, including those playing Alfred and Commissioner Gordon. Harvey Dent / Two-Face was famously recast from Billy Dee Williams to Tommy Lee Jones, with the producers apparently only insisting whoever played the role had a three letter middle name ending in “ee." Side note, Batman & Robin remains the only movie that has caused Michael to physically walk out of a theater.
  • The “Dark Knight Trilogy” (Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012)), all starring Christian Bale and directed by Christopher Nolan, who had a hand in tapping Zach Snyder to take over the DCEU. The Dark Knight is widely considered one of the best superhero films of all time (Michael's Note: It's not.), and its exclusion from the Best Picture race in that year’s Oscars was a big factor behind the Academy expanding the Best Picture category to be able to include more than five films per year.
  • The Batman (2022), directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattison
• For some reason we end up discussing roller coasters, including Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great America (Gurnee, Illinois) and The Raptor at Cedar Point (Sandusky, Ohio) (both good) and Superman: The Ride (also Six Flags Great America) (bad).
• Superman (1978), demonstrating just how dumb a superhero plot can be. Spinning the world around backwards would be disastrous, and definitely would NOT magically make the past twenty-four hours undo itself and turn back time.
• Jerry Seinfeld, we love you, but seriously, what's with the love of Superman, the least-interesting superhero?
• Michael does NOT like Amber Heard, but probably likes her more than Johnny Depp does.
• There was ANOTHER Superman movie between the Christopher Reeve versions and the current DCEU Henry Cavill versions: Superman Returns (2006). This just goes to prove our point that that one was not so much good or bad as just not memorable in any way.
• Lois Lane is supposed to be a strong character. See, well, every prior iteration. Here? Not so much.
• If you're looking for more dark, brooding superheroes, but done better and packing more emotional punch, check out Logan, the R-rated finale to Hugh Jackman’s long run as X-Men hero Wolverine.
• Just to round out the superhero movie primers since Michael has a love affair with this hero, the modern-era live-action Spiderman movies:
  • Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), and Spider-Man 3 (2007), all starring Tobey Maguire and helmed by Sam Raimi. The first one is good, second one really good, third one terrible on the basis of the dancing alone.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) rebooted the series with Andrew Garfield in the lead and Marc Webb as director. A third film in this series was planned but scrapped. One reason the series was rebooted so soon after Spider-Man 3 was that Sony was contractually obligated to put out a new Spider-Man movie every so many years or the character’s lucrative film rights would return to Marvel. Same thing happened here, with Sony needing to relaunch the character once they knew the third Garfield/Webb film was a no-go. Luckily the lawyers were able to work out a deal with Marvel to bring Spidey into the MCU under Kevin Feige’s leadership, but with Sony maintaining ownership and profits from the new version. Thus came...
  • Tom Holland in the MCU spider-suit, first cameoing in Captain America: Civil War (2016) before getting his own solo films in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), and the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), all directed by Jon Watts. Holland’s Spidey also showed up, of course, in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), with some fans complaining that his death in Infinity War lost some emotional impact since Sony’s previous announcement of Far From Home made it clear the hero was not “permanently” dead.

If you'd like to follow us on social media or send us a message, check us out at our website, and you can also send us a voicemail or text. If you're enjoying Deja Reviewed, it'd really help us out if you subscribe and give us a rating wherever you're listening. Thank you, as always, for listening!