he opening title card of makes the bold promise that the film to follow is presented in 4:3 in order to “preserve the integrity of Zack Snyder’s creative vision.” That’s the first of many chest-puffing boasts (some of them earned) underlying the $75 million redo of 2017’s franchise-killing answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which saw the then-architect of DC’s rival superhero franchise cede control to former MCU darling Joss Whedon after Warner Bros. balked at the grimness of the DC Snyderverse to date. Faced with Whedon’s joke-heavy and radically foreshortened polish, the Snyder faithful began clamouring to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut in order to reclaim their glorious leader’s trademark muscular filmmaking and vulgar polytheism. And upon this rock was built (with the aid of a worldwide, production-halting pandemic) HBO Max’s four-hour-plus opus, which comports itself with all the gravitas
