Prospero | Salvage operation

The long, expensive gestation of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”

Why did Warner Bros give the director $70m to remake a box-office flop?

IN 2012 MARVEL STUDIOS, a subsidiary of Disney, released “The Avengers”, a superhero team-up film which became one of the most lucrative blockbusters ever made. Naturally DC Entertainment, owned by Warner Bros., wanted to emulate that success and released “Justice League” five years later. Just as Marvel had brought together Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and Captain America, DC squeezed several of its best-known characters into one film: “Justice League” had Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) joining forces to save the world from a tediously generic alien demon, Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds).

“The Avengers” it wasn’t. Audiences stayed away, the film flopped, and most critics assumed that it would slip into obscurity faster than a speeding bullet. Instead, a “director’s cut” of “Justice League” has its premiere on HBO Max on March 18th. This isn’t the same film with a few tweaks here and there. Its director, Zack Snyder, was given $70m for a top-to-bottom overhaul, complete with reshoots, redesigned characters, new visual effects, new music and a running time that has expanded from two to four hours. “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” must be the most expensive and extensive salvage job in cinema history.

When the film was originally being made, it was what journalists call “a troubled production”. Mr Snyder’s two previous DC films, “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”, had been gloomier than the average superhero adventure. In “Man of Steel”, Superman was a conflicted outsider who broke his arch-enemy’s neck. “Batman v Superman” presented both men as perpetually scowling misanthropes. When “Justice League” was shaping up to be almost as depressing, Warner brought in Joss Whedon to make the screenplay more jocular. Mr Whedon had written and directed “The Avengers” and its sequel, “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, both of which had taken more than $1bn at the box office, so who better to boost the commercial appeal of a superhero buddy movie? Mr Snyder then withdrew from the project altogether after a bereavement, and Mr Whedon took over as director. But the troubled production had yet more troubles.

In June Mr Fisher, one of the actors, accused Mr Whedon of unspecified “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behaviour in the workplace. (Mr Whedon has declined to comment on the claims.) Whatever happened on the set, “Justice League” was condemned as a muddled compromise between Mr Snyder’s dark, operatic and largely po-faced take on superhero lore, and Mr Whedon’s wisecracking sitcom approach. Most viewers were underwhelmed and Mr Snyder’s fans felt cheated. They campaigned on social media to see the epic he had envisaged, but their #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign seemed doomed to failure. Why would a studio pay to revamp a film which had already flopped? And why would they entrust their money to a director they’d sidelined the first time around?

The answer to both questions is that Warner has just launched its own streaming platform, HBO Max. Keen to attract subscribers with some tantalising exclusive content, the studio gave Mr Snyder the go-ahead to answer his acolytes’ prayers, and he spent much of last year fashioning “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”. The bad news is that the film’s story, as scripted by Chris Terrio, is much the same as it was. There are three cubes hidden around the world which contain limitless destructive power. With Superman out of the way—he was killed at the end of “Batman vs Superman”—Steppenwolf zips over from the far side of the universe in order to reunite the three cubes, and terraform the planet into the kind of charred wasteland which he likes to call home. Batman takes a break from punching muggers in Gotham City to gather his fellow “meta-humans”, including a resurrected Superman. After that, it is a matter of time until the momentous, CGI-heavy punch-up with which all superhero blockbusters are required to conclude.

Plotting aside, Mr Snyder has made countless changes. The characters now have long sequences filling in every detail of their back stories. Steppenwolf’s armour has had an upgrade, so that he now resembles a shiny cheese grater with horns. His extra-terrestrial boss, Darkseid (Ray Porter), makes an appearance, looking like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ grumpy uncle.

More importantly, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” has a consistent tone. Out goes the “Scooby Doo”-style patter which Mr Whedon honed on his television series, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. In comes the slow-motion violence, ear-bleeding soundtrack, apocalyptic dream sequences and all-round mythic bombast that Mr Snyder developed in two other comics adaptations, “300” and “Watchmen”. His insistence on depicting superheroes as awe-inspiring demi-gods will always be divisive, but this is a more cohesive, ambitious and spectacular film than the one that was cobbled together in 2017. Despite demanding 242 minutes of its viewers’ time, the critical consensus is that it is a better movie. At the time of writing, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” had a score of 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, a review-aggregator site; Mr Whedon’s “Justice League” scored 40%.

Should this be regarded as a victory for artistic freedom, consumer pester-power or corporate cynicism? In any case, it is remarkable to see a film returning from the dead in such a dramatic way, just as Superman does halfway through it. The question now is whether Mr Snyder and his fans can finally move on, or whether a #GreenlightTheSnyderSequel campaign is about to begin.

“Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is streaming on HBO Max from March 18th

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