And it’s maybe more personal than ever. As is well-known by now, Snyder’s departure from Justice League was tragic: He had lost his daughter and didn’t feel up to fighting the studio on all the changes they wanted while also dealing with his grief. The film’s plot was already suffused with loss and traumatized families; so many superhero tales are, but this one, with its overlapping tales of children and parents lost, was something else altogether. It’s not hard to look at this latest cut, the product of $70 million worth of VFX, reedits, and reshoots, and sense a newfound power in its vision of sacrifice and tragedy, in which parents toil to save their children, children toil to save their parents, where the dead rise, and where shattered pasts are rewritten and redeemed. The Snyder Cut has its share of problems — when you get the best of Snyder, you also get the worst — but it’s an undeniably passionate and moving work. It earns its self-importance.

Bottom line: I don't see how it's possible to put this version of the project next to the 2017 version and not recognize that it's superior in every way.

This four-hour cut is the kind of brazen auteurist vision that Martin Scorsese was calling for when he complained (rightly) that most modern superhero movies don't resemble cinema as he's always understood and valued it.

It owes as much to rock concerts, video games, and multimedia installations as it does to commercial narrative filmmaking. It's maddening. It's monumental. It's art.