There is no controversy. Multiple versions are good. Seeing a director's vision is good. If you only want to see a studio's version you are into censorship, and you are a horrible person. End of debate.
Well, no. It isn't censorship to be uninterested in seeing a director's cut. That's blatantly ridiculous.
Indeed. Censorship is imposed by the state. If a studio chooses not to release something because it doesn't think there's enough audience interest, that's not censorship, just the market operating normally. And of course, any creative work goes through multiple drafts that the audience never sees and are unworthy of being seen, just as an uncooked meat loaf is unworthy of being eaten. This notion that the public is entitled to see every alternate draft a work goes through before completion is absurd. It's up to the creators of a work to decide when it's ready for the public.
People rallying against a new cut of a movie being released is censorship by mob rule. Like cancel culture in general.
No, it isn't. First of all, there is no mob. In order to be a mob you have to be at least a bit more proactive than just randomly gathering on message boards or social media and discussing a topic neatly within specific areas designated specifically for that topic. Secondly, there is no power to rule. Warner Brothers is a billion dollar conglomerate that can make its own decisions. If they spend their time bending over backwards trying to please every random internet warrior instead of coming up with a vision and sticking to it, that's their own stupid fault. The internet's been gunning for Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye for a decade, too, but Marvel Studios simply doesn't care. They're even going out of their way to give him his own show, after they could have already easily written him out of the story entirely organically. And thirdly, fighting censorship is not about protecting your right to see every possible version of a bunch of dudes punching each other. It's about protecting the right of creators, journalists and scientists to voice dissenting opinions on important matters. Justice League is not in any way related to any important matter in politics, religion, science, history or society in general. It's purely a product. It enjoys equal protection under the law because society understands that giving any one person the power to determine what art legally does and doesn't qualify for protection would fundamentally endanger all protection, but that doesn't mean those of us who aren't determining legal status have any responsibility to treat it equally to actually significant works. If WB were to decide to vault the movie for all time because 'Snyder Suks!1!' that would be a ridiculous business decision that would still not consitute censorship in any way. No more so than Kellogg's choosing to discontinue their latest cereal or Ford deciding to retire the F-150.
Agreed. Think of it--as much as some attempt to paint the pro-Snyder cut as some sort of loud cult yelling to get their way,, the only damning behavior is from those who--for reasons buried in bitterness over the DCEU--spit and scream at the fact WB and Snyder are spending time and money on releasing something that has strong interest. Gee...good business usually worked that way, as opposed to anyone barking "NO! That's not my_____! Bow to MY perception of DC!" at the idea (and now reality) of a film having another version produced / released, which is nothing new to film.
For me, where they lost me isn't where Jonathan Kent felt unsure, or conflicted. He's still human after all. It was where he chose to impart a lesson to his son which could charitably be described as "selfish exceptionalism." That's not in-character for the man who raised Superman; it sounds more like the guy who raised Lex Luthor. Indeed they even double down with this attitude in BvS with the whole "you don't owe this world anything" speech. See Also: "Bruce Wayne is a murdering psychopath." This for me sums up Bruce's character; where the mere fact that he threatened someone with a gun out of sheer desperation was enough for him to decide to retire for good. No matter how dire things got, he'd rather do nothing that betray his mission and take the easy path. He doesn't murder people because "fuck it, it's just easier this way! Also: something, something, Joker murdered someone I care about for a change, something, something, freaks dressed as clowns!". It's this kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that Snyder doesn't seem to understand these characters beyond the superficial outer layers. And yes, the tornado scene in MoS was staged *very* strangely and came off as so contrived as to take one out of the scene. Not unlike the infamous "Martha" scene in BvS. Plus of course the whole thing is rendered moot and forgotten as soon as Zod shows up. That movie had no discernible emotional through-line, much less anything that could be described as a character arc, and what little characterisation there is just doesn't ring true, despite the actors' best efforts. Sorry for the mini-rant but it's the kind of thing where the more I think about it, the more the failing of those movies get laid bare, however entertaining I may or may not find them.
David Ayer has said that it would be a lot easier to release his cut of Suicide Squad than it will be to release The Snyder Cut of Justice League. He's also talked about how unhappy he is with what was done to the movie. I knew a lot of stuff was cut, like a some more Joker scenes, but I didn't realize the cuts were so drastic.
Its bad enough to get a shitty version of JL, do we really need a terrible version of Suicide Squad as well? I actually kind of like Suicide Squad. Its a terrible adaptation of the source material, and Joker/"Harley" suck, but its fun enough as a "so bad its good" action movie, and that is all down to the style that was added after Ayer was off the edit. Suicide Squad without the color and music might actually rival Batman v Superman (and probably JL Snyder cut) as the worst DC film ever, based on the little I've read about Ayer's version. I'm not against alternate cuts as a rule. I own both versions of Superman 2, and I really want to get the Blu Ray of the supergirl film for the "directors cut" bonus DVD and the blu ray of the 3 hour Superman Extended/TV cut because I like to see other versions of some films. But the last thing I want to see is more of Ayer's (or Snyder's) DC worl. Their DCEU stuff ultimately failed (regardless of some monetary success) for a reason, the grimdark shit didn't sell well enough, and people got sick of it. Batman v Superman's director's cut is easily worse then the theatrical, and I doubt the JL Snyder cut or potential Suicide Squad director's cut will be any different.
"I sure hope this happens, the studio should give the director a chance to make his version, it could be better than what was released" isn't arrogant.
It's kind of funny that fans are entitled if they want the theatrical cuts of Star Wars and now they're entitled if they want to see the director's cut of this.
The Smallville Clark was pretty modernized and approachable-to-new-viewers and also pretty liked by fans of older versions.
It's safe to say then that you wouldn't be interested in Paul Feig's 3 and a half hour version of Ghostbusters 2016.
Well that was a PG (Y7) television series on Kids WB, fine to have that but it doesn't have to be determinative for all other versions.
At the risk of repeating an argument that's been brought up repeatedly over the years: Nobody is forcing anybody to watch a movie they don't want to see. People who want to see the Snyder Cut (including myself) can do so, people who don't want to see it can just ignore it. What's so hard about this to understand? A thought I had earlier, this might actually give the chance of new merchandising. Black suit Superman, as well as characters who weren't in the theatrical version, would surely be popular action figures, statues, t-shirt motives, etc..
Well, I didn't like his 2 hour and 14 minute version of Ghostbusters 2016, so I definitely wouldn't want another hour and 15 minutes added onto it. The only thing worse then a bad comedy is a bad comedy that goes on forever.
That has never been the issue. It's just concerning to see a studio apparently caving to popular pressure like this, because if that happened often, it would badly undermine the quality of the work. It's a precedent that shouldn't be followed regularly. And there are so many obnoxiously entitled fans already that this is just going to make them even more obnoxious. On the other hand, it should be remembered that the reason the Snyder Cut wasn't released the first time is that the studio was quite unhappy with it, so unhappy that they were willing to spend a lot of money on reworking it massively. Just because the reworked version was flawed doesn't mean the original version was any better. I think it's more likely that most of the flaws (VFX aside) come from the original version and the revisions could only do so much to paper them over. So I won't be surprised if the Snyder Cut proves to be awful and short-circuits any trend to demand further such releases. (Although I am open to the possibility that the "Ayer Cut" of Suicide Squad may be more coherent, at least, than the hodgepodge we ended up with.)
Plus, as mentioned upthread, it creates ongoing narrative problems, ie which one "happened?" Which one did the lead character of Aquaman participate in? If any future Wonder Woman movie is set in the present, did she fight Darkseid or just Steppenwolf? Did The Flash in his movie already experience travelling back in time?