For years, fans of director Zack Snyder have wondered, often to the point of questionable fervor, what could’ve happened in an alternate world where he got to finish 2017's Justice League. Four years and tens of millions of dollars later, Warner Bros. has opened a Pandora’s box to place us in that reality—and it turns out what Snyder has made is still at its core Justice League, for better and worse. Advertisement It feels almost impossible to talk about Zack Snyder’s Justice League—a four-hour-long undertaking releasing on HBO Max this week—outside the context of its road to release. Born from the tragic circumstance of his daughter’s death that pulled Snyder and his producer-wife Deborah from the project mid-filming (a circumstance you are reminded of throughout the film, not just for its fascination with death and rebirth, but in its dedication to Snyder’s daughter), this is a version of the film that did not exist when Warner Bros. hastily recruited