Zack Snyder's Justice League Part One Plays Like a Miniseries, and Sam Is Locked In

We have finally reached Zack Snyder's Justice League, and after the first two hours of this four hour cut, we both really like it. Because of the length, we split the film into two parts, and part one left both of us wanting to see how these separate stories come together.

Sam came in having already seen Wonder Woman, Man of Steel and the extended cut of Batman v Superman, and she dug all of them. Before we started, I gave her the background. Zack Snyder was running the DC films, the studio got involved behind the scenes, and something really tragic happened in his life, so he was taken off Justice League. Joss Whedon, who directed the first Avengers movie, came in and released a very different version with reshoots and new material, including Henry Cavill's CGI mustache. It was a mess and people hated it, so fans started calling to release the Snyder cut. Years later, during the pandemic, Snyder was given money to finish his full four hour version, and it debuted on HBO Max.

The Storytelling Feels Like Television Episodes

Early on, it came up that it almost plays like a TV show, a Game of Thrones type of thing. The point was the storytelling, not the quality. "Quality looks like a movie." As part one went on, the comparison held up: it feels like a bunch of episodes tying into one big story, because you know the ending is all of them coming together.

It is very hard to put a four hour movie in a theater, but on streaming you can essentially treat it like a miniseries. In a two hour film you cannot spend as much time on one story. With four hours, you can spend enough time to get invested, and that is what they are doing here.

Sam's Verdict on Part One

"I love the story lines," Sam said. "I love everyone separately and and each story is a great story." She is locked in and wants to see how the team comes together. The mother boxes also came up as a reminder of Thanos and the Infinity Stones, and she really liked the way the history was told, because it helped piece everything together.

Asked for her favorite, she could not fully call it. She loves Wonder Woman and likes the way the Flash is, but for now it is Wonder Woman, with Aquaman also in the mix.

Part two is next. After that we might come back to the DC films, and Sam will probably want to see Aquaman, but we are going to jump into the X-Men movies.

Does the four hour runtime work better treated as a miniseries than as a single film?