Longer is rarely always better!

“Zach Snyder’s Justice League” (US Rated R)

Cast: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Ezra Miller

Genre: Action/ Fantasy

Where to watch: HBO Max

Dwight’s Rating:

Thanks to the pandemic, many of us haven’t been near an airplane in at least a year. Nonetheless, here’s some useful air travel trivia:

It takes just over three hours to get from Nassau to Toronto on a direct flight: three minutes and 12 seconds, to be exact. In four hours and 29 minutes, you could be in Denver from Nassau non-stop. And in exactly four hours, you could get from Los Angeles, California, to Cleveland, Ohio. (Why would you want to go Cleveland? Hey, after the year we’ve had, does it really matter?)

The point is: you can travel thousands of miles in four hours. And you can do a whole “heckuva” lot. So, it is certainly asking a lot for people to watch a movie that’s over four hours long.

Some of the most notoriously lengthy movies in history didn’t dare cross the four-hour mark. Not “Lawrence of Arabia” at three hours and 36 minutes. Not even “Gone With The Wind” at three hours and 58 minutes – and including Overture, Intermission and “Entr’acte”!

Thus, it’s pretty gutsy of Warner Bros., DC Films and HBO Max to offer up the four hours and two-minute long “Zach Snyder’s Justice League”.

Yes, “Justice League” – that same “Justice League”. The one you watched in 2017. The one with Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, trying to resurrect poor old Superman.

It’s the same, but different.

In addition to being two whole hours longer, it’s restored to what Zach Snyder believed the picture should have been all along.

The backstory is itself worthy of a feature film. Snyder, who previously directed the awful “Man of Steel” and the slightly less awful “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”, was set to direct “Justice League”. But the production faced a number of challenges and roadblocks, including from the studio, which was determined to ensure the movie didn’t cross the two-hour mark.

After Snyder’s 20-year old daughter tragically committed suicide in the middle of the film’s post-production, he walked away from the project. The studio brought in Joss Whedon, who directed rival Marvel Studios’ “The Avengers”. Whedon made many revisions and did quite a few re-shoots. And by all accounts, he turned “Justice League” into something unrecognizable from what Snyder had intended.

That 2017 film got mixed reviews. Diehard comic-book loving fanboys were incensed.

But I actually didn’t have a big problem with it. In my November 2017 review, I wrote: “Justice League” is “likable”. But not in the way that something or someone can inspire affection or admiration. There’s nothing about it that’s particularly endearing. Rather, its likability is more closely tied to the fact that there’s not much to “dislike” about it. It is inoffensive. But it is generic. Very, very generic! It feels like we’ve seen this before – perhaps not these characters or their unique stories, but this same scenario.”

And in an extremely ironic statement, seeing as four hours of my life have been taken from me, I also wrote:

“As a whole, it may not be better than this summer’s origin flick, “Wonder Woman”, but it feels tighter and more focused – as in, someone actually edited it.”

Edited? Ha!

Well, goodbye editing! Who needs that? After years of rabid fans demanding to see his original, undefiled vision, we now get Snyder’s cut. And you can bet all that you have in life, if you are not a comic-book, superhero, blood-thirsty action film lover, you will agree that like with almost every single thing in this world, longer is absolutely not always better!

The basic storyline foundation is still here. Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists newfound ally Diana Prince to face an even greater threat. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to recruit a team to stand against this newly awakened enemy. Despite the formation of an unprecedented league of heroes – Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash – it may be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.

But four hours?! And what are the extra two minutes for? Those must be part of some sick joke!

Every scene seems a half-hour longer. Additional scenes add more noise and destruction, but don’t necessarily advance the story.

Just before I completed the second hour, an internet outage – about two-and-a-half hours long (the length this movie should have been) – forced me to watch this over two days. That was probably for the best. For most viewers, I’d strongly recommend breaking it up in to digestible TV mini-series-style chunks.

In fact, the second two hours are a vast improvement over the first two. The pace seems to quicken, and the repetitiveness and the need to so very carefully set up the storylines greatly diminishes. If you’ve watched “Justice League”, sticking to the final two hours here might improve your experience entirely.

Except for the multiple endings!

I think there are at least five. Lovers at the airport about to be separated as one departs for Antarctica or the moon for three years would be able to say farewell faster than this flick does. However, a couple of the multiple endings are quite intriguing.

It’s clear that “Zach Snyder’s Justice League” is far more creative and imaginative than what we got back in 2017. It can’t exactly be labeled “generic”. But “excessive” is not a descriptor anyone should aspire to either.

It’s like when you allow a child (and some adults) to serve himself at a buffet restaurant. He takes everything he sees – plate piled high and overflowing. In the end, little Johnny is very sick and stuffed to the point he feels he never wants to see food again. All while the plate still sits full on the table, as if he didn’t eat a thing.

And here we are, after all of that, with the exact same two-and-a-half-star rating for “Zach Snyder’s Justice League” that the 2017 version received.

Perhaps if I’m ever on a flight from L.A. to Cleveland and they’re showing this, I may gain a new appreciation for it.

• Dwight Strachan is the host/producer of “Morning Blend” on Guardian Radio and station manager. He is a television producer and writer, and an avid TV history and film buff. Email dwight@nasguard.com and follow him on twitter @morningblend969.

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