Justice League is…sigh

The latest fiasco of DC is testament to WB’s greed

Justin Kim, A&E Editor
November 24, 2017

Newsflash: Barry Allen hates brunch.

With the recent DC movies falling like a flock of pigeons flying above Steven Seagal, it is no secret that DC’s bastardized attempt at elevating their status above Marvel has been as successful as the Vietnam War. Sure, Wonder Woman was a definite step up, but only one movie could have truly turned things around for the DCEU; Justice League.

This team-up of six of the greatest DC heroes has been teased as far back as 2016, right after Batman v Superman. It was the big event. It would bring the universe out of its dark fate. It was supposed to be the uniting of legends, people settling their differences and working together against the ultimate evil – wait, wasn’t that a slogan for BvS? And Suicide Squad?

My thoughts on the DCEU has been a chaotic mix of optimism, cynicism, and an urge to dress myself in bat-tights and go beat the everliving $%!# out of Warner Bros executives. Man of Steel was fantastic, Batman v Superman was exhausting, Suicide Squad waszzzzz……

Hula-dancing Cara Delevigne! …sorry, had a very bad dream for a second.

And Wonder Woman was good, but not great. With all of these mixed receptions, I initially didn’t know how I was going to feel about Justice League. Would I love it? Would I be bored by it? Or would I get an urge to carve up a piece of Kryptonian metal into a spear and launch it at Hollywood?

However, I’d say I was leaning more towards skeptical for this one. This film was trying to tackle the story of six heroes, with only two of them having gotten full movies and one of them a slightly shorter introduction. Three of them we hadn’t even seen yet, and the movie was going to have to establish them, and their team-up, and the villain.

…you know, when you consider all that, I wonder why we couldn’t expect this outcome.

…The Avengers this ain’t.

Still, after the initial reviews came out and confirmed my suspicions about the film, I still had some room for hope. After all, my policy for films is that every bad film deserves a second chance, and must have some good in them. In fact, there has been a lot of critically failed films that I ended up liking. So I went into the theater, not happy, but at least tentatively hopeful enough to set my mind on neutral.

Here’s my reaction to it after 120 minutes:

……optimism is dead.

One thing you should know about me; I never get angry about films. I can be disappointed in them; bored by them; be cynical about them; even mock them; but I never rage. That is something I decided I would never do when dealing with movies because in the end, they’re just that – movies. We go to see them, but once we see them, we can choose to remember it or ignore it. It’s nothing worth flipping my lid over.

However, there are exceptions.

When those exceptions happen, it’s never about the film itself. I get angry when a film shows a continuing lack of effort behind productions. I get angry when I see the same mistakes and tropes being used again and again despite past failures. I get angry when a film represents the ever-growing Hollywood mindset that quality and creativity doesn’t matter as long as it makes the bucks. It is why I’m furious about Transformers films, or the Resident Evil franchise.

And right now, Justice League has joined that fray.

I don’t know what braindead executive at WB had the idea that they could handle an already bloated story under just two hours of runtime, but I fully expect that guy to turn up on the streets with a bat brand on his neck anytime soon.

It is here that the full difference between a team-up movie with well-laid, patient foundations and a team-up movie with sloppily-put support beams fully shows. This film’s best characters are easily Superman and Wonder Woman. Guess what the two have in common? Well, other than the fact that they make Batman’s job look easy, they also had entire movies devoted to them to set up their character and motivations.

I’m not comparing this to the MCU. Even with the pathetic excuse of “they were trying to be different from Marvel,” it should still be a known fact that if a film has many characters, you need that much time to properly introduce them, or else they all end up being shallower than my soup bowl. (It’s two inches, last time I measured)

Flash has a locked up dad that looks like Billy Crudup? Cyborg has a problem with his identity between man and machine that definitely hasn’t been tackled better in films like Ghost in the Shell or Robocop? Aquaman has…what does Aquaman have that has any resemblance to a character arc? Whatever it is, don’t worry, because one alien invasion will solve it all! Man, I wish aliens invaded Earth right now. It could solve so many of our current problems, from celebrities coming-outs as sexual offenders to college applications.

And with such a short runtime, there’s not enough time to not only set up each character, but show their differences and conflicts as well. Aquaman’s apathy towards saving the world, Flash’s lack of friends, Cyborg’s feeling of being out of place – any dispute these guys might have had with each other is thrown aside instantly in the face of the Skyrim boss with a severe box-o-philia.

Yeah, who was the villain of this movie again? Stepping-work or something? I hadn’t counted how long he was in the movie, mostly because those scenes were over before I could pull out my stopwatch. He’s evil for the sake of being evil and wants some artifacts that he can use to destroy the world and remake it in his ima-

…nah, never seen that before. Revolutionary!

With such weak heroes and villains, there is no conflict. There’s no drama. There’s no sense of escalation. Sure, Stepping-stone’s got a fetish for either boxes or his mother, but we never know how he got that infatuation with such power. There’s a family living where he’s executing his evil plan, but who cares about civilians? Show us more of Batman taking poses on top of statues! Themyscira turns up again, as well as Atlantis, a bunch of warriors died. I think their impact was as heavy as the script for this movie.

They need to resurrect Superman, because one fight in a sewer convinces Batman that this group of the Amzonian who battled Doomsday and might have ended WWI, the guy with a fork and the ability to talk to fish, the cyborg who can hack into his SUPER SECRET batcave, and the speedster who is expert at being too soon, is incapable of tacking Stepped-on. And once Superman does come back, of course he has to be evil for a second, because we haven’t gotten enough of heroes fighting last year, have we? Does Batman bleed? Well, something’s definitely bleeding. I think that was my heart.

Then, what brings him out of his frenzied state? Lois Lane. Because the power of love for the thirstiest woman he’s even met is stronger than his sudden madness!

Anyone know someone Stephen-Wad has had a one-night stand with? We could bring her in to convince him that destroying Earth is not worth it, because others MIGHT have tried it before, and it didn’t work out so hot for them!

Even the visuals suck now! Some actions scenes are okay enough, but WB’s twelve year-old editor who has injected black coffee into his veins is in control of the speed dial once more, wasting the already precious runtime. Cyborg’s looks like a Macbook air that’s been crumpled up and lined with red Christmas lights. The Flash looks ridiculous while running, and there’s no speed to it, despite his name.

TV series Flash:

Justice League Flash:

…300 million dollars, and this is what we get.

Steven-woof…when I said he was a Skyrim boss, I meant that literally, as every scene of him is animated to the point where I was convinced this was just a demo for the latest Justice League video game. I think he and Doomsday can have a nice long chat about having CG makeup plastered all over their faces like a drunk man face-planting into a bowl of cream.

So let’s take some time to summarize the facts, something that WB clearly didn’t do before shooting this film in the face. We have a superhero team up movie where the heroes are initially divided, each with their own reasons for not wanting to do heroics; a powerful evil turns up who wants to destroy the world with some artifact; the heroes try to unite, but their differences cause them to quarrel; they eventually get together again after a pep talk; they suit up and have a CGI-filled battle over a wasteland while fighting a villain that goes on and on about remaking the world.

……

…let Mr. Ramsay silently symbolize my censored cursing.

Did WB have no resemblance of creativity left in their brain cells? Did they have to go for the most generic plot you could think of when it comes to a superhero crossover? If they were going to use this shallow of a plot, the least they could have done was give us characters that we get to know and relate to, a villain who had enough charisma to be labeled as a legitimate threat, and character interactions that are fun to watch. Am I stuck in a perpetual time loop? Because I seem to have heard these criticisms before. Back in BvS, then in Suicide Squad, and now this.

You never learn, do you WB? Does coming up with well-established, fresh plots and characters mean nothing to you in the face of all the box office money you’re inevitably going to rake off of mindless DC fans? Do you ever want to start something mindblowing that’s called change?

I’m going to say something that’s equivalent to thirteen mother boxes exploding in Metropolis; Zack Snyder should be in full control of the DCEU again.

Say what you will about the fiasco that was Batman v Superman, but if you compare the initial cut and the ultimate cut, you can see what the main problem was; the executives who forced Snyder to cut out scenes that were actually good, that actually provided some sense to the movie. Justice League was initially directed by Snyder, but then he left after the tragic death of his daughter, and then Joss Whedon came in with reshoots and more orders from the higher-ups, and look at what we got here.

At least in Man of Steel, where Snyder had the most control over what he made, there was some identity, some boldness, choices that were different from the superhero movies we got before. Some may not have liked it so much, hence its controversy, but at least it has an identity.

But no, WB would rather not have audiences dealing with such shocking material! They’re rather have us sit through over-cut and over-reshot products that end up having no identity, impact, or creativity because ultimately, what matters is profit! Bring in the bucks, and they’d let hacks like Paul W.S. Anderson or Michael Bay continue making films for a living!

Look. Zack Snyder isn’t a great filmmaker. He has consistently brought us weak storylines, especially in his original films. But at the same time, he has his own vision, and he makes decisions that aren’t tried as much. Whether they turn out well is another story, but at least he makes films, not bland clone copies.

When they put out such a pedestrian and shallow film like this and expect us to be wowed over it, despite having put out similar mistakes in the past and having been criticized for it, it isn’t the matter of “oops” anymore. It’s a studio constantly failing to improve upon its mistakes and only focusing on moving onto the stuff that’s going to make the most money.

That is why I hate this film. Barebones and uninteresting characters and story is bad enough, but normally they would only bore me and disappoint me. I hate this film for what it represents; that films are only a means to make money, and not a chance to express new ideas and beloved characters onscreen.

If anything, Justice League showcases WB’s superpower; they’re rich.

Also, to nitpick…you cast JK Simmons as commissioner Gordon and give him five minutes of screentime? Were you rushing or were you dragging?

It’s not like this film has no good things to it. Danny Elfman’s ost, despite the death threats he’s gotten, isn’t too bad to listen to. At least it didn’t try to mutilate my eardrums like the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack. Some of the designs look good, and a bit of the comedy plays off well enough. I daresay even the action scenes looked cool at times. Superman and Wonder Woman are the best parts of this film. At least their appearances and scenes made me actually feel an emotion in this Siberia of a movie.

And a nit-praise; there is a certain Aquaman scene towards the climax involving the lasso of truth that’s legitimately funny.

But what good are those things when the executives are failing to learn from their mistakes? Does looking cool matter when everything else that you do is generic, boring, and sleep-inducing? Does having great powers salvage the fact that the audience cannot connect to you? Does making box-office money trump the fact that they’ve thrown the DCEU’s quality to a pack of parademons?