Justice League (DC 2017 film)

also, four hours later, i thought this was phenomenal. i was curious about watching the whedon version to see how much worse it is but... yeah, no thanks, i don't really want to know

xpost Sunset sure hung around a long time in that part, all I’m saying.

are we sure we are not being trolled
i mean, i am sitting here watching a four hour tone poem of a movie i dont care about AND its presented in square-o-vision because one day imax might be available again
surely snyder is somewhere laughing heartily

are we sure we are not being trolled

https://i.imgur.com/aYYrfPF.jpeg

lol fair

the flash sequences are all incredibly lovely, especially the big one toward the end, which is maybe the most colorful thing snyder's ever filmed

the 30-minute epilogue was the first time i felt the film was overextended but the batman dream sequence is totally worth it, it reminded me of dream sequences in like... the direct-to-video phantasm sequels. also rob zombie movies. hazy handheld digital sunset melting over the silhouetted figures in the foreground

also lmao that man of steel and bvs contained almost no speedramping whatsoever and this film has it in spades, snyder was just building up to it i guess lol

i also feel like a huge mark for these movies, for some reason, but watching them all in a row made superman being resurrected without any moral center feel DEVASTATING bc of his arc in the previous two films

Wait, Brad, you watched this monster but skipped the theatrical version?

yep!!!!

Same here.

the flash sequences are all incredibly lovely, especially the big one toward the end, which is maybe the most colorful thing snyder's ever filmed

True!

That's like the ultimate "this tastes terrible, and such small portions, too!"

i mean the color stands out for obvious reasons but it is truly psychedelically colorful

We decided to watch this in installments & so far I’m kinda...liking it?

I think getting to spend more time w the characters esp cyborg actually helps (well, as much as it can) so it isnt just all slam-bang action, aliums & superhero quips. I mean, normally this shit drives me crazy (with the exception of like, LOTR and Kubrick maybe) - tell your story in less than 2 hours or gtfo - but this might be a rare exception for me.

Oh and I stand corrected, Henry Cavill might be the hottest he’s ever been in this of all the Snyder movies. but also the extended shirtlessness where Supes goes ham on the J League maybe clouding my judgement bc omg O_O

Batman looks like an old beanbag compared to everyone else, like even his costume looks weirdly dusty lol

Non-buff Wonder Woman weirds me out. She looks like she’s going to ComicCon. I like buff movie WW.

Love Cyborg.

And I love Flash but only bc its Ezra Klein

Anyway. So far not terrible or even boring.

I truly still do not give af about Aquaman though. I thought the cartoon was dumb even as a kid.

vg i predict you will have no use for the epilogue but otherwise this movie seemed like your kind of thing to me

i don't know anything about aquaman other than jason momoa is hot, it's enough for me lol

I made it to the halfway mark. This was clearly never designed to be a single movie. It has more lore and prophecy bullshit that I'm glad Wheadon tore out, but also a more consistent tone.

i got to see a clip of a "joke" whedon inserted into the superman freakout and he should be given no credit whatsoever for what he did to this film

superman: "do you bleed?"

batman, in an obvious reshoot that has no connection to the feeling of the rest of the scene: "oh yeah something's definitely bleeding"

barf

I made it to the halfway mark. This was clearly never designed to be a single movie.

yeah, there was a long period when this was announced as a miniseries for HBO Max, but someone realised it would have required renegotiating contracts for the actors, so it suddenly became a four-hour movie with chapter headings

i think it’s better as a singular thing

the chapters are nice as natural break points but i found myself just rolling through it. the pacing.... is good

The pace stops dead to introduce a new character at least twice, with the Flash and Cyborg.

Doing this in sections is far more tolerable. Plenty of stuff early on is gloriously overdone

You all are masochists!

:D

Man, debating the relative merits of Whedon and Snyder is like debating the relative merits of shit and pus.

pretty much

but having never liked any of Snyders superhero movies its def a new thing for me to a) want to keep watching and b) not fall asleep

one for the box copy there

b) not fall asleep

Gah. I have to stay up until 2am tonight and I am at least vaguely considering filling some time with this. Or is this just not sleep inducing compared to his others?

Santa's making a list of all you 'hey, turns out Snyder's got the sauce!' folks for the next time y'all start pulling knives out for Marvel's flicks. I'm just sayin'.

i could have lived without the epilogue (or hearing leto’s strangled joker laugh ever again) but otherwise this was an ok way to kill time and i was not mad at it at all

but i want to go on record saying *snyder does not have the sauce* so that i am not lumped into some snyder-stan pogrom later on

if you went to the dentist for a long procedure & they have movies to watch on tv this would be a good choice for that.
see also: bored in a hotel / on a six hour flight / sick in bed with the flu / etc

Outlaw Vern's review:

https://outlawvern.com/2021/03/24/zack-snyders-justice-league/

And since who gives a fuck anymore they let him pretty much do what he wanted this time, and what he wanted was to make it 4 hours long (about 14 minutes longer than LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) and in a 4:3 aspect ratio as an homage to MID90S and MEEK’S CUTOFF.

Santa's making a list of all you 'hey, turns out Snyder's got the sauce!' folks for the next time y'all start pulling knives out for Marvel's flicks. I'm just sayin'.

― You Can't Have the Woogie Without a Little Boogie (Old Lunch), Wednesday, March 24, 2021 8:11 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

feel like this is literally just me

I didn't end up watching (any) of this, but I did come across this bit of clarification on the aspect ratio:

However, prior to the Snyder Cut, the intent was always to present the film in a square frame in IMAX while cropping the upper and lower portions of the image for regular movie theaters (and presumably home media), creating a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

I *did* watch the Red Letter Media review (which is mostly positive), and in fact they noticed, when comparing shots in both versions, that the 4:3 framing often leaves a lot of extra headroom in the shot, so that were it to be cropped (which it was, for the theatrical version) it wouldn't be chopping anyone's head off or anything. Which is kind of odd, shooting square while simultaneously framing for something closer to 1.78. The RLM guys were a little perplexed, because the framing looked fine wide, and didn't seem to gain anything particularly special by being square aside from a bit of pretension, especially for a film that, while made with IMAX in mind, was ultimately designed for home viewing, where most people will be watching it on a widescreen TV. They figured it was just (apparently like this movie's messy multiple tacked on epilogues) Snyder pushing his indulgences just a little too far, because he could.

What exactly do any of these movies gain in IMAX that they lack in 'Scope or any other wide format? I've never seen one of these IMAX blockbusters, but I know at home Nolan's bounce between aspect ratios, depending on what was shot for IMAX. When you see them in IMAX, do their aspect ratios bounce around there, too? What shape is an IMAX screen for blockbusters and not, like, nature films?

the aspect ratio looks good

the movie has one epilogue

I haven't seen an IMAX flick since Avatar (I know, I know, seemed like a good idea at the time) but I can't remember the screen dimensions. I feel like it was more square than I expected, but who knows.

xpost

From what I understand, isn't there an apocalyptic dream sequence set in the future? But also that awkward Martian Manhunter/Bruce meeting bit? (Looks at HBO) Oh, I see, there's only one epilogue, but it's 30 minutes long and contains all sorts of stuff, I guess. If I've encountered one common complaint it's that all the clutter at the end comes of unnecessary, but I suppose ymmv.

I'm sure it looks good, but does it actually gain anything from being 4:3? I don't mind the format myself, but does it seem intentionally shot with the format in mind? RLM guys seemed to think it (literally and figuratively) left room to be cropped.

("off, unnecessary" not "of")

the epilogue does feel a little tacked on, like a preview for a movie that's not gonna happen! but the dream sequence is rad still imo

Santa's making a list of all you 'hey, turns out Snyder's got the sauce!' folks for the next time y'all start pulling knives out for Marvel's flicks. I'm just sayin'.

― You Can't Have the Woogie Without a Little Boogie (Old Lunch), Wednesday, March 24, 2021 8:11 PM (yesterday)

I wasn't planning on watching a single minute of this thing, but the opportunity to needle needlessly defensive MCU fans is tempting. Anyway, the MCU only has itself to blame for normalizing the cinema of endurance—I can't imagine JL could be any worse than the combined yawnsome bloat of the last two Avengers.

Obvs there are a few contextual reasons some people are grading JL on a curve—though I'm not talking about Brad who has an obviously genuine and coherent aesthetic appreciation for this movie—but one of them has to be that the extremely successful MCU formula is tired after two dozen installments. So if this movie has a whiff of wtf-auteurism to it, I'm not surprised it's catching on.

also shout out to Ned for putting the year in the thread title, which now makes me laugh whenever I see it

IMAX film negative (65/70mm) has an aspect ratio of 1.43, but most IMAX digital presentation is at 1.90.

More confusingly (for me, professionally) is that some scope-AR (2.39) releases get an IMAX screening with letterboxing (2.39-for-1.90), and some...don't. I'm not entirely sure what's happening in the latter case, I just know that we're told to provide SMPTE 428.7 subtitle streams which exactly match the Interop for DCP release, no compensation for matte.

Burnout after their being so many MCU movies is an entirely understandable thing, but of all the complaints you can lodge against the MCU flicks, formulaic isn't one of them, imho.

uh

they literally have a dedicated in-house shop to make sure all their action sequences look identical

What exactly do any of these movies gain in IMAX that they lack in 'Scope or any other wide format?

xpost - Similar looking action sequences does not mean the films themselves are formulaic. But, fuck it, I should have known better than to mount any defense of the MCU on this board.

rob otm, I said elsewhere that I am far more likely to watch this thing someday than I am the avengers film that is also 7hr long & looks like dogshit but isn’t even the centre of a funny internet meme. The angle of toxic fandom bros bullying the studio into giving this guy a retroactive blank cheque just makes it inherently more interesting than the other toxic fandom of permanently aggrieved Disney stans fantasising that anyone saying anything critical ever about their favoured culture-swallowing megafranchise somehow makes the latter a scrappy, bullied underdog