Justice League

photo courtesy of fanpop.com

BEWARE: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

     Justice League is decent fun, but just make sure you don’t think too hard about it. It’s no secret that Warner Brothers has struggled to get its DC Extended Universe off the ground, with a string of misfires and one crowning jewel, this year’s Wonder Woman, under their belt. Justice League wears that struggle on its sleeve. The movie is faced with an unenviable task: implementing the negative feedback from Batman V Superman while maintaining continuity with the elements—characters, casting, storylines—that Batman V Superman set into motion. And while Justice League makes an admirable attempt at navigating that sticky situation, it leaves audiences with only a few memorable moments to show for it.

     After the death of Superman in Batman V Superman (Henry Cavill), the earth is left vulnerable to attacks from hostile alien forces. Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) take it upon themselves to organize a defense force before Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) invades with his army of fear-seeking parademons. With help from the Flash (Ezra Miller), the Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher), earth’s heroes must rise to the occasion or let the planet be destroyed.

photo courtesy of cinemablend.com

     Justice League has its moments, but those moments are almost exclusively emotional, visceral, primal. There’s a genuine joy, for instance, in seeing Superman return—with a cheesy one-liner no less—and turn the tide of the battle. The same is true of the sequence which pits Superman against the League, though that scene’s success shouldn’t come as a surprise since it’s borrowed from the Avengers. In other words, the movie’s at its best when it lets these powerful, iconic characters take center stage.

     The uptick in humor, too, is a high point. Most of the jokes come from Ezra Miller’s the Flash, and before he arrives the humor feels a little half-hearted, weighed down by Batman’s gravitas and self-punishment. Even so, Justice League packs in several solid laughs, including Aquaman’s one good scene, where the lasso of truth compels him to dish out his feelings to his fellow superheroes.

photo courtesy of slashfilm.com

     But expose Justice League to any level of scrutiny, and its flaws readily make themselves known. There are obvious ones, like bad CGI, which plagues the movie from start to finish, and a throwaway plot (both of which, interestingly enough, converge in the villain Steppenwolf, who lends himself to comparison with Marvel’s worst villain to date, Thor: The Dark World’s Malekith). Then there are ones that only become apparent as the movie goes on, such as the fact that half of the superhero roster is more or less disposable.

     This last point is especially ruinous to the movie; Justice League gives us little reason to care about most of the members of the League, because, quite simply, we know next to nothing about them (a la Suicide Squad). Perhaps this is an unfortunate by-product of not going the Marvel route and introducing each character in a solo film prior to the ensemble movie. But it’s as much a fault of Justice League as it is a symptom of the larger DCEU’s issues; it’s not impossible to introduce an ensemble in one movie’s runtime. League simply isn’t willing to sacrifice the necessary screen time to really do right by its characters. Let’s take them one by one.

photo courtesy of nerdist.com

     Superman, the leader and most powerful of the League. I typically think that Superman is one of the lamer and less interesting superheroes that DC or Marvel has to offer. But here, CGI-un-mustaching (yes, they removed Henry Cavill’s mustache with CGI and boy is it ever obvious) and Danny Zuko resemblance aside, he’s a towering and impressive presence. He doesn’t have a large role in the film, but he steals the scenes he’s in.

     Batman. Ben Affleck’s Batman remains one of the low points of the franchise. Remember Christian Bale? Remember when Batman was cool? Remember those days? Those days are gone. In their place we have Sadfleck, who in Justice League spends most of his screen-time alternatively plotting, brooding, and cracking the occasional joke. In his Wayne scenes, he’s outshined by Jeremy Iron’s Alfred. In his Batman scenes, he’s given far too little to do—and, it should be noted, far less of the impressive fight choreography that constitutes one of the highlights of Batman V Superman. True, he’s the only human in a battle of metahumans, but Justice League stories typically find a way to elevate him to the appropriate level of badassery. Unfortunately, there’s nothing of the sort in the Justice League movie.

photo courtesy of cinemablend.com

     Wonder Woman. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is (by far) the best thing to have come out of DC’s movie universe, and that’s never more apparent than when she’s set side by side with a series of lackluster heroes. She’s the unchallenged star of the show. Seriously, it feels like she (or Superman, for that matter) could have handled this entire threat on her own if she just had some top-notch SWAT teams as backup. League appropriately gives her a sizeable chunk of the run-time, but she can’t put the whole team—or the whole movie—on her back.

     The Flash. Ezra Miller’s Flash, as I have already mentioned, accounts for the lion’s share of Justice League’s humor, and that fact quickly endears him to viewers. In Miller’s hands, he’s likeable, goofy, and insecure. The only real problem is that, once again, the movie doesn’t put much effort into fleshing out his character apart from two cursory backstory/exposition scenes. In terms of his super-heroics, it would have been nice to see Flash play a more integral role (he mostly just saves bystanders) and to see DC branch out from the X-men-verse “Quicksilver approach” to speedy superheroes.

photo courtesy of trailers.apple.com

     Aquaman. Yikes. For what it’s worth, DC does succeed in its Khal Drogo-ization of an otherwise laughable superhero with the casting of Jason Momoa. But that’s about where the good stops. Aquaman has one memorable scene, a skim backstory, and no standout action moments.

     Cyborg. This is a character with definite potential and a fair amount of screen presence, but Justice League doesn’t devote much time to getting to know him or explaining his powers. He got them from the Mother Boxes? Somehow? What?

photo courtesy of comicbookmovie.com

     If nothing else, it should be exciting to just see these characters together on screen for the first time. Even if they aren’t particularly strong as individuals, it’s cool to see them unite, right? That’s one of The Avengers’ pure joys, after all. And while Justice League does muster that sense of excitement to an extent, League doesn’t relish it or capitalize on it the way The Avengers does. There’s only limited satisfaction in seeing these disparate personalities—and their worlds/spheres of influence—collide on screen, because we just aren’t familiar with them. Apart from a few scenes (the Steppenwolf flashback, the mid-credits Superman v Flash race scene, the Aquaman-lasso bit), there’s little to come by in the way of creative and exciting character interaction. It’s an unfortunate missed opportunity in what should be a triumphant debut for DC’s A-list superhero team.

     Is it better than Batman V Superman? In a word, yes. League may not exactly be a resounding success, but it includes nothing so absurd and embarrassing as Batman V Superman’s “Martha” exchange. Yet at the same time, it should be noted that League fails in some ways that BVS succeeds. Flawed though BVS is, it’s at least gutsy; it has a vision, it evokes (admittedly misguided) confidence, and it knows what it wants to be. The same can’t be said for Justice League.

one interation of the injustice league. photo courtesy of creators.co

     What’s in store for the future? The post-credits scene is one of the most genuinely exciting things in the entire film. The scene sees freshly-escaped Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) summoning mercenary Deathstroke played by Joe Manganiello (whose resemblance to Deadpool appears to have got some of the people in my theater’s hopes up) to form “a league of their own.” Fans of the comic books will spot an easy reference to the Injustice League, the villainous answer to the Justice League. Do I have great confidence that the DC universe can pull that off? No. Does the idea excite me? Absolutely. 

Watch the trailer here. 

photo courtesy of gstylemag.com