Too soon after its release of the endearing Wonder Woman, DC Films tarnishes its fragile record yet again with Justice League, a simple failure of a superhero movie — or a film of any genre, for that matter. It desperately clambers for the charm that the noir-ish Batman v. Superman so fatally forwent, yet it lacks the conviction to make its stabs at humor feel rhythmic and assured. In other words, it misses its mark, and it falls very short of it. If it would help to imagine Batman v. Superman as a drab, muddy, and lifeless sewer, Justice League can be thought of as the wilted flower floating by. To some audiences, one might somehow seem preferable over the other. Pick your poison, I guess.
Of course, Justice League — directed by Zack Snyder, as with Batman v. Superman — is DC Films’ rushed, store-brand duplicate of The Avengers, an unsurpassable economic feat in its own right. DC has decided to skip numerous steps toward what Marvel worked years for, which explains why the former company was too impatient to develop its heroes’ individual spotlights in separate, incremental films.
They can be listed off more or less as bullet points: they are Batman (an austere, disheartening Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (a reliable yet contained Gal Gadot), and rookies Aquaman (Jason Momoa of Game of Thrones), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). I was mistaken to expect the film to have the least bit fun introducing its newcomers, as all three suffer from moderate to severe cases of biographical exposition. Nevertheless, having not read the original comic books, I am no closer to comprehending what bizarre fate has produced these superhuman capabilities. Victor Stone has been revived and rendered half-machine after a catastrophic car accident, but in what circumstance does he need a firearm surgically implanted into his arm in order to regain his health? He grapples with his societal alienation about mid-way through the film, though his character isn’t meant to criticize paranoid weaponization. Once he rallies himself as Cyborg against the opaque cause of “anti-crime,” he’s there for teens in the theater to point and holler, “cool!”
The adversary is Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds), a sad sigh of a movie foe whose dialect, as per tradition of stock villainy, sounds like a cross between a medieval wizard and a crook from Scooby-Doo. Steppenwolf’s scheme may be abbreviated to satisfy the Apocalyptic Yet Shrug-worthy Standard: he has returned [an arbitrary number large enough to denote “several”] thousand years after he last tried to exert his dominion over the [world / galaxy / universe] with his army of [your choice brand of brainless, indistinguishable henchman]. Sandwiched between his monologues about [revenge / power / humanity’s puniness], the audience stares as the clock ticks on, feeling [bored / underwhelmed / cheated out of ten bucks].
With the world reeling from the death of Superman, Bruce Wayne (Affleck) gets cracking on mobilizing Earth’s five-piece security squad, composed of the aforementioned crusaders. For Wayne, researching candidates for the team doesn’t seem much more difficult than sliding over to the nearest search engine and typing in “closeted superhumans around me.” How expansive can his spyware get before we start to question his respect for civilian privacy? I believe that’s something that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight deemed unethical, but hey, Batman is Batman. Don’t let me go spoiling this new gem on our hands.
Who am I kidding? The superheroes take care of spoiling it themselves! Affleck has a stiff jaw and an even stiffer inflection in his voice. He doesn’t seem to enjoy his role very much, and he often looks as if he’s wondering why anybody else would. At one moment, Barry Allen (Miller) sets a joke up by asking Wayne what his superpower is. Wayne’s punchline: “I’m rich.” The exchange is meant to surprise, but Affleck delivers the stinger like it’s failed to surprise even him. What’s meant as a parody comes across as a glib statement; it lingers just long enough to become a defense of Batman’s overly generous screen time, which leaves the remainder of the Justice League climbing over each other for what’s left.
Just about the most impressive thing about Justice League is how efficiently it stifles the most imaginative stuff of its source material. Aquaman, king of the aquatic civilization of Atlantis, gets the worst end of the film’s criminally muted color pallette. The Aquaman I used to know from Saturday morning cartoons wears a costume with a sharp, eye-popping splash of bright orange and ocean blue. In Justice League, there is an unrecognizable Aquaman who sulks around in a bodysuit matching the approximate tone of mud. A bit ironic, no? This Aquaman utters egregiously trite exclamations like “boo-ya!” and “my man!” I have an exclamation: yikes!
Among the few beacons of light are Gadot, the only really solid job of casting here. She’ll work with a single smile better than what Affleck can muster up in two hours of pouting. I also tried to like Miller as The Flash, the card that the film repeatedly plays for laughs. His improvisational accents are tuned into such a different channel than his cohorts that the script feels tugged into two directions. The divide is a little too much to juggle for Joss Whedon, who perhaps hesitantly accepts a co-writing credit with Chris Terrio. He’s got a relentless aim for the comic jugular, even after it’s been strangled in the film’s first twenty minutes.
There’s no way around the dreary shadow hanging over the project; Snyder had to bow out midway through production to tend to a tragic loss in his family, leaving Whedon with the reshoots. I hope I’ve made clear that Snyder isn’t to blame for all the faults in Justice League (because he certainly isn’t). The issue on the whole is a relative one: The Avengers have continued to succeed — at least financially — not because of the mere coexistence of its numerous storylines but because of their harmony and balance. Thor’s been pacified into a less prolific, more wily personality, and Captain America’s ditched his big band records for Marvin Gaye. Both predictable arcs, but there for viewers to follow.
The initiative for Justice League stops at the stimulating effect of the movie poster. Looking at the ad costs zero dollars and is about as gratifying as the two-hour version, which costs more. It’s never been easier to be a consumer.
