Zach Snyder’s Justice League is better than Avengers: Endgame
Vol 99: The worst version of LOTR, no NC-17 Doubtfire and no Zoom for Oscars +more
Yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday - you know how this works by now. It’s time for The Watchlist where @yojrb recaps the week in Internet film news and culture from the corners out using only the written word and some choice URLs. You’ve got places to be and I’ve got people to see (not really, I’m so lonely) so let’s get to it…
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So Zach Snyder’s Justice League cut was released last weekend much to the joy of DCEU fanboys across the globe. The tallies are in; they love it. They love it to the tune of a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. They love it more than Avengers: Endgame (90%). That makes sense, the fans literally demanded it into existence, as long as the pretty pictures and pleasing sounds played in relative sequential order they were bound to give it a thumbs up.
But what did critics think? Surprisingly, they dig it as well (73%), kind of - with some commenting that when compared to the 2017 original “it's a better bad film, full of CGI shenanigans” and “a testament to the new gods of pop culture in the best and worst ways”. They definitely like it better than the first cut (40%) which some called “a two-hour trailer with some okay visuals and some decent sound design” and “clunky and messy, jumbled and misshapen” - and those were the fresh reviews!
I myself haven’t seen it yet (I’m waiting for the hype to die down) but I have listened to far too many people talk about it this week and can recommend both Half in the Bag and Filmjunk’s respective takes as the best I’ve heard, so far.
WATCH THIS?
Remember at about 40 minutes into The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring when Samwise Ganji (played by The B.R.A.T. Patrol star Sean Astin) speaks the words “If I take one more step it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been…”? No?
Well whomever created this video that revisits that moment literally every time the beloved sidekick takes a single step towards Mordor certainly does. For the record: in this time-looped version of the film it takes about 37 minutes for Sam to take his first step towards Mordor, and little over 9hrs and 18min to reach the end of the credits (which is still shorter than the theatrical runtime of the entire trilogy by about 1hr 38min).
Don’t get me wrong, watching this (much less creating it) is stupid. But is the fact that it exists even slightly funny? Maybe. These types of obsessive fan edits always fascinate me because it’s hard to tell if it’s a loving tribute - or just someone taking the piss.
CLARIFY THIS
Director Christopher Columbus told Entertainment Weekly (which is now a monthly publication - doh!) that there is not and never has been an NC-17 version of Mrs. Doubtfire after rumors of a naughty-bits cut resurfaced on twitter this week…
Speaking with EW on Friday, Columbus says there is no NC-17-rated version of the film, but there are three different versions of it, including an R-rated cut. "The reality is that there was a deal between Robin and myself, which was, he'll do one or two, three scripted takes. And then he would say, 'Then let me play.' And we would basically go on anywhere between 15 to 22 takes, I think 22 being the most I remember," the helmer recalls.
As a result, he says, Williams came up with new versions and new lines in every take. "He would sometimes go into territory that wouldn't be appropriate for a PG-13 movie, but certainly appropriate and hilariously funny for an R-rated film. I only [previously] used the phrase NC-17 as a joke. There could be no NC-17 version of the movie," he admits.
News flash: Robin Williams improv’ed on the set of a movie. This is what we are getting all worked up over these days? Of course there was never an NC-17 cut of Mrs. Doubtfire - because getting an NC-17 rating is a death sentence for just about any movie. At best it’s possible to suggest that an “Unrated” cut exists. I know this is just semantics, but it kinda isn’t. For a film to get an NC-17 rating it has to have been submitted to the MPAA in a form in which it would earn that rating and let’s be clear - 20th Century Fox never submitted that version. That version of any film is so rare only 79 films in the history of the MPAA have ever earned it.
Unrelated but Related: Movie Crypt’s 2hr+ podcast interview with Christopher Columbus, who almost never does long-form audio interviews.
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In other “Christopher” news - someone put the entirety of Tenet, 2020’s most confusing and hard-to-hear blockbuster, on a GameBoy Advance cartridge just to spite Christopher Nolan - and I’m totally there for it.
RANDOMS
For you design nerds out there, someone over at Creative Bloq noticed an “error” in the new Paramount+ logo.
Variety has a great interview with the sound designers of Sound of Metal, work for which they are now Academy Award nominated for.
A Craigslist ad for the sale of the futuristic truck from the 1995 Sylvester Stallone sci-fi vehicle Judge Dredd surfaced this week - only $25k as long you don’t mind the non-existent odometer and missing title.
Steve Spielberg and Seth Rogen are teaming up to bring you a film loosely based on the director’s childhood where apparently he enjoyed laughing like a knucklehead and smoking lots of weed.
An r/movies user asked for suggestions on awful movies that actually have an amazingly good premises and got some pretty robust feedback.
The Academy is taking some heat for instituting a “No Zoom” policy for the upcoming Oscar telecast.
RIP Jessica Walter, you hilarious woman.
We received a nice little surge in readership this week thanks to a small handful of benevolent readers who took it upon themselves to appreciate this work publicly and it’s made me realize that I should probably ask you all to help out around here more often - so here goes the pitch - if you found anything in this newsletter valuable (or fun at minimum) I would really appreciate you drop a little recommended URL of your own on your socials. Feel free to tell people how informative / funny / lonely I am.
That’s it, cringey self-promotion over, gotta go.
—James