Justice League RE-Review

It's been a while since I've written anything here. I still love blogging but for those who haven't kept up, I started a podcast and it's pretty much all consuming of my free time and I get my movie thoughts out of my head over there. It's called Shelved and is available almost everywhere Podcasts are available. We discuss screenplays from Hollywood that were never produced or drastically changed before they hit the big screen. We've also performed movie commentary tracks, as well as some reviews and top 10 lists. I highly recommend checking it out as it's one of my favorite things that I do now! Well now that the shameless plug is out of the way, onto the reason I am here. Like many others I dragged myself kicking and screaming to see Justice League, only because I just had to know. Warner Bros has been building to this since 2013 (yeah right) and only four years later we saw the fruits of their labors (?) and we finally saw the Justice League united on screen for the first time. Now I already did a review of this movie on my podcast (available where ever you get your podcasts) but I just can't stop thinking about this movie, so I wanted to sit down and really get my thoughts out there. So, how do I REALLY feel about the Justice League? Well . . .

This is a really bad movie. HOWEVER, it is not as bad as some of the other DCEU movies, and that is maybe the most praise this film has received. I would rank it third in line of the DC films. That ranking, in order from best to worst, being Wonder Woman, Man of Steel, Justice League, Batman V Superman (BVS), and Suicide Squad. Justice League feels like a tacked together mess that perfectly matches up with it's PR up until release. It feels exactly like a Zack Snyder film, re-purposed as a Joss Whedon film. The movie was given a strict two hour runtime to avoid the length complaints from BVS but this honestly feels like it hurts the movie. I don't think the movie would be a good movie for it, but I would like to see the original Zack Snyder cut, because I do think it would make the film a little more cohesive. I could easily see how this movie could be expanded and help give a little more depth. Instead it was edited to be as shallow as possible. Now in some ways this probably helps the film by keeping it as simple and easy to follow for the average film goer, but it left me just wanting a little more (torture?). Now as bad as the movie is I have to admit that there are parts that are fun. I completely understand why people might say "I loved Justice League. It was a fun movie." Because it is. I won't lie to just shit on the movie, even though it can be fun shitting on these movies. However There are a couple moments that I liked. The movie just has some major problems. Namely a bad script and an identity crisis. Now I feel I've made my general feelings on this movie known, I thought it would be fun to take a deep dive and really dissect the film from my own perspective and get to the bottom of my true feelings and find out why I can't get this movie out of my head.

Let's start with the story. It's as basic as it can get. If we boil down the plot outline it reads "Steppenwolf wants to collect three mother boxes to terraform Earth into Apokolips and the Justice League has to assemble and stop him." Great! I know what the plot of this movie is. Can you boil down BVS or Suicide Squad's plot down to such a simple sentence that accurately describes the whole movies runtime? I would like to see anyone try. So to me, this is one of the biggest positives of the movie. We jump in, we know where we're going, and the movie never loses you. It's the elements of the plot that we start to get into trouble. Right from the beginning we have a clear Joss Whedon added scene with Superman talking to a couple kids and we are seeing their cell phone footage. This is supposed to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, featuring a team up of superheros of epic proportions, and the first shot we see is off a child's cell phone. The sad part is that I get the purpose of this scene. It's all about re-writing the past, because if we look at the narrative of Superman in the DCEU, it's not one of hope. Man of Steel ends with some of the most insane display of city wide destruction we've ever seen. I will add on a re-watch, it bothered me less, but it does still bother me. He's a young hero, this is the first time He's actually been Superman, so he's untrained and is facing off against a threat on a global scale. It's to be expected there will be an insane amount of collateral damage given the circumstances. He did the best he could but it wasn't enough to save everyone. Fair enough. The fans however issued a shit storm of backlash, and again, fair enough.

The criticism of Man of Steel directly influenced the plot of Batman V Superman, and I don't think anyone can argue that. First of all BVS came out three years after MOS which was never intended to be the start of a movie universe. They were making that movie in a rush to hold onto the rights of Superman. It was only later that they decided to build off of it. By then there were already millions of internet pages, tweets, memes, or what have you complaining about the mass destruction, and general unhappiness with the direction they took with Superman. Superman has always been a character about hope, and the success of the Dark Knight trilogy just prompted Warner Bros to say "Hey, how about we do it like that for Superman?" and what we got was a movie that loses the tone and brevity of what Superman should be going for. So clearly Zack Snyder said "How about we address that in the next movie?" and thus we got Batman V Superman. Now the opening moments of BVS are maybe some of my favorite in the movie. The idea of Bruce Wayne hating and fearing the strength and unknown quantities of Superman's abilities is a justifiable reason for the grizzled vigilante to want to take up arms against The Man of Steel. Instead we get a three hour film film of bogged down dialogue scenes, trying to pretend that this movie is deeper than it actually is, when instead it feels like it was written by someone who has never read these comics in his life. However, the biggest problem that BVS creates for it's universe as a whole, is making Superman into an unlikable character. A good chunk of the plot is dedicated to the world questioning whether Superman belongs here. We constantly see the world question whether he is a good person and should he be held accountable for all of the destruction caused in MOS.

Now there is a lot of criticism about the DCEU's portrayal of Superman, and there's one point that I take issue with. If you look anywhere on the internet you can see a lot of people saying that in the DC films, Superman doesn't save anyone. That is just simply not true. Superman actually saves quite a few people in all of the films. Saying that he doesn't save anyone misses the point. It's not that he doesn't save anyone, its the WAY he saves them. Always with a scowl on his face and constantly brooding. The only time Superman shows enthusiasm for rescuing someone is when it's Lois Lane. So while he may be doing heroic things, he's never painted as a hero. Even in BVS we see Supes perform some of his most daring and heroic moments, including saving a shuttle crew from a exploding rocket take off and rescuing people stranded on houses during a flood. These are all diminished because while they are happening, it's filled with voice over from the news about how dangerous Superman is and if the world should even trust him. I get the points they are trying to make, but its a detriment to the character you are trying to build. This leads up to maybe the most egregious of problems, the Death of Superman. This is the moment that the plots of future DC films would be based off. Suicide Squad and Justice League both hinder heavily on the fact that Superman is dead and the hope of the planet is lost. The problem is why should anyone care? At no point was Superman painted as this beacon of hope in any of the DCEU films. At most he's had the personality of a gothic teenager. At times he was even just an asshole. Why does the world suddenly mourn the fallen not-so-much hero? The reason I even cover all of this is because Justice League, more than the other films, really hinders on the idea that the world needs Superman, but they've never shown us a good reason why. Can you believe we haven't even moved past the first scene yet?

So jumping back to Justice League proper, why do we start the film with a couple of kids talking to Superman on a cell phone outside of a burning building? Because they looked at the film and thought "Wow! We really need to make sure people understand that citizens love Superman!" because otherwise the movie makes no sense. Unfortunately, right out of the gate with the opening scene, they failed. This will set the tone for the rest of the movie to come. The theme here is racing to mediocrity and it's something that this movie manages to pull off well. They obviously wanted the movie to be amazing, but that was just never going to be the case. When you're building off of movies that are all garbage, the best thing you can hope for is being the shining spot in the garbage pile. Now Wonder Woman was an exceptional film and is the outlier of the franchise, as every rule will always come with exceptions. Justice League didn't have to be amazing, it just had to be okay, and the movie, despite itself, manages to crawl it's way to the bottom of that standard. Now since I was just talking about Wonder Woman, why don't we look at our cast of characters.

We had previously met three members of the League in the last few films. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman were all well established. We saw glimpses of the rest of the League in BVS, but that's all they were, glimpses. There was no characterization. It was just a forced in scene for crummy world building. This movie however had the difficult task of introducing us to three of the main characters of the team. Now a lot of people will compare this to the Marvel path and say things like "Each of their characters got their own movie and were well established before going into Avengers." and that is true. We already knew the heavy hitters so the character development is already there and they just built on it. That doesn't mean that DC needed to do the same thing. It's very possible to introduce multiple characters into a movie. Look at any other original movie. We don't know anyone going in, and we learn about a hand full of characters through it's runtime. The fact that we already have the three big ones down is a huge step forward. The problem here is the characters themselves. Now I actually like the make up of the team, and for the most part I like the casting of each of the characters and this movie gives some of them more moments to shine that perhaps their own movies didn't. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was a stand out in BVS, despite her very little amount of screen time, and she was phenomenal in her titular movie. Now we will get Wonder Woman out of the way first because there is less to talk about with her. She is clearly the stand out character of this franchise. Her film was the best one so far, and she has great moments in this movie as well. The opening scene with her stopping the terrorist attack is easily in the top three moments of the movie. However there is a lot of moments where Bruce is saying that Wonder Woman should be the leader of the League and no moment really struck me with her being the obvious choice, other than she is the more popular character. Now Batman is another point of contention because I feel like most of us all agree that Ben Affleck could be a really great Batman. I look back at that warehouse scene in BVS as THIS is the Batman I want to see. However these team up films have just shown that they don't know what to do with Batman in the grand scheme of things. Throughout Justice League it's just Batman being down on himself and blaming himself for the death of Superman and how the team can't pull it together. His one moment of redemption for himself is when he tries to sacrifice himself in the final battle. The most interesting casted actor in the movie gets turned into the most un-interesting character in the movie. Now the word seems to be that Affleck wants to leave the franchise gracefully and he might leave after the Flashpoint movie (which is still looking for it's 16th director) and that is just disappointing. All I can hope is that we get a proper Ben Affleck solo Batman film because I think he can be great, and I want to see what he can do with the right material. Justice League however gives him no chance to shine.

Now let's look at all of the new characters and we might as well start with Aquaman. This is clearly a character that evolved out of the Joss Whedon reshoots. The characterization of him in the film is basically of a surfer bro who happens to be an underwater not-yet king. If you go back and watch some of the early trailers and released footage, if you look at the promotional shots put out before the movie, and if you consider his brief appearance in BVS then it's clear that Aquaman was going to be just as moody and brooding as all of the rest of Snyder's characters. In this film however he is the source of multiple comic relief moments and seems to have schizophrenia as he changes from brooding to jokey bro-man between camera cuts. The opening introduction of his character being the most obvious as it comes with some blatant green screen. The worst part about Aquaman though is he has nothing to do. His power set gets used once in the entire movie when he stops a sewer pipe from flooding, but after that the fact that his powers are water based never play into the film. He just becomes a brute with a trident who talks like a surfer riding a wave with multiple exclamations of "Yeah!" You would think when you are putting together your final confrontation with your villain and his army that you would maybe include some scenes in the water for your water based character to actually show off his abilities. There is one underwater scene in this whole movie and it comes with it's own set of problems which we will talk about later. This leaves Aquaman as one of the most underused characters in the film and is only there to just throw his stick into bug monsters. I like Jason Mamoa, and I like their interpretation of Aquaman, but they just didn't know what to do with him in this movie and the Wedon additions just hurt him even more, with the exception of one scene involving the lasso of truth that actually worked for me.

Next let's talk about Ezra Miller as the Flash. I like Ezra Miller. I think he was good casting. The suit doesn't look great, but it didn't bother me. The thing to point out here is the way Barry Allen is portrayed. He is the comic relief character which is totally fine. The character of the Flash compared to the others fits that angle. The one thing I wonder if they did on purpose is that he seems to be autistic. Honestly, I hope it was on purpose because I like that. It was something the Power Rangers movie did that actually worked well, and more inclusion like that is drastically needed in super hero movies because I believe everyone needs a hero to look up to. So if it was on purpose then I applaud it, the problem is I can't tell because the writing here is not very good. It could have been a total accident which speaks a lot to the writing and direction of the movie. I know I'm not the only one who noticed this so hopefully they meant to do it. Now I feel like I am in the minority in saying that I liked the Flash in this film. I will agree that he is annoying, and that he might not be true to the comics or whatever people are complaining about, but I don't know, he just worked for me. Some of his jokes landed, most didn't, but I liked the idea of this kid who just wanted to fit in and be a part of the team. I even really like the moment where they get into their first battle and he's too scared to move and Batman tells him, just save one person. It was a great moment and felt like an inspirational moment for both Batman and The Flash. I would easily say The Flash is better in the film than Cyborg because HE doesn't get anything to do until the end. Cyborg is arguably one of the most important characters to the plot (or should have been) but is easily completely disposable. Ray Fisher makes a great Cyborg, and especially with this being his first movie, he does a great job with what he's given, he just isn't given much. From my understanding there's a lot of Cyborg footage that was cut from the Snyder version of the movie, and honestly I want to see that version just to see if it makes Cyborg more important. I don't have a lot to say about Cyborg, simply because he doesn't add much to the movie, yet somehow Henry Cavil has even less screen time but is far more compelling. This is the first time that Henry Cavil was truly allowed to be the Superman he deserves to be and he's great. I've always liked him as a choice but the first two movies didn't let him be the Superman that he needed to be. The thing is it's not only because of Whedon because there is the tell of what is the new footage and it's the horrible CGI job they did on Cavil's mustache, which we will touch on later. His suit is brightly colored and so is his personality this time around and we finally got the Superman we deserved. Okay, the characters are out of the way, what should we talk about next?

Let's start with the plot and see where that takes us. So after the opening cell phone video we move into what was probably the real opening scene of the movie although there is some debate here. The next scene is Batman chasing a criminal across Gotham rooftops, followed by an attack from a Parademon. This is what triggers Batman to fast track putting the team together. He knows something is coming because of the events of BVS and he's been trying to track down the other heroes ever since. That's fine, but WHY does he start opening talking to Alfred and using his name in front of this criminal on the roof. At first I thought this was a friend of his he was using for bait for the Parademon but there's nothing to prove that theory. Basically it just looks like Batman really sucks at his job and keeping secrets! It's hard to believe the worlds greatest detective (and superhero depending on who you ask) would behave this way. The presence of the Parademon is questionable to begin with because Batman seemingly knows it's there and if he is trying to lure it out, what is he basing that on? We first saw them in a dream sequence in BVS and for some unexplained reason they seemed to be allied with Superman. With this movie now nothing in that dream sequence makes any sense, which it already didn't make any sense in that film so now it's just a completely convoluted mess of a franchise. Well from this scene we move into what was most likely the true beginning of the film on the Snyder cut which is the montage opening cut to the Leonard Cohen cover. Honestly, I kind of like this song. I know I'm part of the problem. It's the one reason I listen to the score of this movie, which again we will talk about later, but it's the footage here that doesn't work. The idea is the world has fallen into chaos because their savior(?) Superman is dead. The only thing is none of what we see really makes it look that bad. Most of this footage looks like it takes place in one square block of a city and the worst we see is a couple of hoodlums knock over an old man and a newspaper stand. The story telling just isn't there. This is a big reason why I think we have the cell phone video opening. We really need to enforce to the audience that people really liked Superman, despite what the previous movies have shown us.

Next we see Bruce Wayne try to persuade Aquaman to join his League. Its a fine enough scene. Just one thing though. There is a lot of re-writing going on. Since the original scenes were clearly shot on a location of some kind, the re-writes are obvious due to some blatant green screen. In one scene we have Arthur Curry talking to Bruce in pretty much the same brooding fashion of Batman, but then he turns around in a close up shot with an obvious fake background and lighting that doesn't match, with a completely different personality, but when we cut to him getting in the water, he's back to brooding. This will be a running theme of the movie. The Frankenstein stitching is clearly visible between the Snyder version and the Joss version and it can be unsettling and it's often attached to a scene of humor. The funny thing is though I never got a sense of this with any of the Flash scenes. I honestly believe about 90% of the Flash humor was Zack Snyder and that would make a lot more sense as to why most of the jokes don't land, but hey even a broken clock can be right twice a day. Our next character introduction comes in the form of Wonder Woman trying to recruit Cyborg. It's a short scene where he refuses the offer but agrees to share the location of any threats if he finds any. Honestly Cyborg's early moments are his only real good scenes in the movie. We see that he is evolving and changing and his struggles with it. The interesting choice here is his father being the one saying that he doesn't have to hide away in secret with Cyborg being the more reclusive one. We never actually see Cyborg's origin which is a double edged sword. On one hand it's refreshing not to see yet another character origin, on the other hand he's such an important character that we learn so little about. We know there were plenty of scenes of Victor Stone pre-Cyborg because they were all over the early trailers. This is some of the stuff I'd actually like to see put back in the movie if not just because Cyborg gets such short shrift, but also because he is an interesting character who is well acted by his performer and deserves better. Now actually, before we see Cyborg we actually get introduced to the movie's villain first. So let's look at that shall we.

Now it's impossible to talk about the DC movies and their extended universe without bringing up Marvel so let's get that out of the way. Marvel is no stranger to having lackluster villains. While I think even some of their less memorable villains still lean more to the good side than bad, Marvel has at least had some memorable villains. Their more recent movies have really made an effort to have good villains and I think they've succeed admirably. The DC movies have not had one memorable villain outside of Michael Shannon in Man of Steel, and he might not be memorable for the right reasons. For the record I liked him just fine. Justice League however manages to have the worst villain of them all because he's a Play Station 2 level CGI character. I know this is a joke that has been made many times but a winner is a winner. Steppenwolf is just a bland villain. He's a disappointment on many levels, but the biggest one is easily his appearance, because honestly I like some of his lines and I'm big on his voice acting. Ciarán Hinds actually does a great job in bringing Steppenwolf to life through the voice acting. He sounds imposing and threatening so it works if you close your eyes. The problem is when you open them you just see this CGI mess of a tall guy wearing armor with a messed up face. I will say that I actually like his introductory scene and it ranks as one of the best three scenes in the movie. So for the record that's Wonder Woman's intro scene and Steppenwolf's intro. The scene opens on Themyscira and has Steppenwolf retrieving the first Mother Box and attacking the Amazonians. It's a fun action scene made better by the attempts by the Amazons to keep the box away from him with them being picked off one by one, but making sure the box keeps moving ahead of them as Steppenwolf is in pursuit. It's a great scene with a payoff. Finally we feel like we're in a fun movie! How long will this feeling last?

I'm not going to cover the Flash introduction scene because we pretty much saw the whole scene in the trailer and it plays out exactly that way. The difference being first we see Barry meet his dad in prison and we learn that he's not really doing anything with his life currently. He's not the CSI worker that we know from the TV show or comics. All I'll say about his recruitment scene is that, I like it. It's fine. So in the first half hour of the movie, we've met all of our heroes, we've met the villain, and there's conflict. Great! This is moving along the way a movie should. So now we need something to push our heroes forward and to bring them together. Well Wonder Woman is notified of Steppenwolf's arrival which gets us our exposition scene and maybe our one surprise of the movie. We see a Green Lantern for about two second as he gets killed and his ring flies off his finger to go find a new host. Now this is something that always annoys me in fiction. We learn that Steppenwolf had once tried to take over Earth before but was stopped by an army of united Amazons, Atlantians, men, and even gods. To me it always feels like lazy writing to be like Earth has always been this cherished prize. There is a dialogue moment where Steppenwolf is saying "There's no Kryptonians, no Lanterns." which is a cool line, but the problem is it was only in the trailer and didn't make it into the movie. The idea of it just sucks. I wish this was the first attempt for Steppenwolf and the time had only just now presented itself. So now we know the story of the villain and his army of Parademons, but oh yeah, Cyborg's dad was also kidnapped because he knows where a Mother Box is. Okay so now we have Cyborg's motivation. What about Aquaman?

Well we get our first look at Atlantis and what the Aquaman movie might look like, and it's REALLY underwhelming. So Steppenwolf boom tubes into Atlantis and has a short skirmish with Aquaman and Mera which shows us one good moment with Mera's aquakinesis powers. However the "set" design is just not at all what I expected for Atlantis. For some reason I always assumed it would be a bubble city that is just under water, and in all fairness it still could be that and maybe this is just some outpost somewhere in the deep ocean to protect the box, but we just have to base our thoughts off what we see. They are literally just swimming underwater around some stone pillars. We also see how they communicate which is Mera creates an air bubble where they just stand and talk. This is all troublesome design for a movie that is going to take place entirely underwater. I will point out that James Wan (the director for Aquaman) has said there are no air bubbles in his movie which just raises even more continuity problems. This is what happens when you don't have someone overseeing your entire universe. Sigh* Flashpoint can't come soon enough so we can fix all of this. Moving on, Steppenwolf now has two of the three Mother Boxes he needs, all of our characters are motivated, and it's time for our first encounter between the team and the villain.

The first action scene with the League is actually a decently fun time. First they all meet on top of the Gotham City Police Department and we meet our new Commissioner Gordon. We don't get much time with him but my initial feelings on J.K. Simmons as Gordon is that he is a good choice. He's always been an actor that fits into a world that feels like a comic book. It's what the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films did so well. Those movies don't feel like the real world, it feels right out of a comic book and Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson perfectly fit that world. While the Marvel MCU feels more grounded in the real world (for the most part) the DCEU does at least feel like a specific type of comic book world that fits with DC comics as a whole. The feel of these movies has never been my problem. It's always been the writing and this rooftop scene is an example of that. At this point Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash are already teamed. They go to meet Gordon and Cyborg and Aquaman just show up to join in. It makes enough sense in the context of the film, everyone just followed the giant signal in the sky. It's just feels a little lazy. There's also the forcing in of the joke that when Gordon turns his back the whole team disappears in classic Batman fashion. Batman trained to be a ninja, so it makes sense that he could slink away, but is everyone a ninja suddenly? It doesn't really fit and is only joke is the fact that The Flash, the one who can truly disappear in an instant, is the only one left standing there. It's meant to be funny, but it isn't. This brings us to Gotham harbor where Steppenwolf is keeping his hostages and to,what I feel, is one of the more underrated scenes of the movie. This fight is actually really great and is the ONLY time in the movie that we see each character use their abilities in unison to actually help each other. It's also one of the only scenes in the movie where characterization doesn't feel cheap and crammed in. We enter this moment with them sneaking into the tunnels below the harbor and we see that Flash is freaking out. He's never been in a real life and death situation before, he doesn't know how to handle it and Batman has to calm him down and help him focus. It's a moment that shows Batman's leadership capabilities and we actually care about what's going on. It's in this moment where Batman tells him to just save one person. If you save one person then you've done something good. It's the kick start that Flash needs to be a hero and is maybe one of the best humanizing moments of the movie.

While this action scene is good, and I feel like isn't talked about nearly enough when people discuss this film, it does present our first problem with the villain of this movie. Somehow they manage to make Steppenwolf less threatening than his minions. If you think back to Avengers, the Chitauri that they fight in New York aren't incredibly powerful. It's just the sheer number of them they have to fight is excruciating for them. In Justice League it almost seems like one lucky Parademon could take out the whole League. I can appreciate making your foot soldiers seem formidable, but how is it going to be believable when they struggle against a handful, yet later they have to fight an army of them? This is a complaint of mine that will come up again at the climax of the film so for now I will end that point here. So we see the League fighting against the Parademons and struggle to keep it together. While this is happening Wonder Woman takes on Steppenwolf in a fun one on one encounter. Now this is the moments where we see the League work together in a good way. Wonder Woman using her strength, Batman his brawn and tech, Flash is using his speed to assist the others (The highlight being tipping Wonder Woman's sword back into her hand), and Cyborg finds a use for himself. At one point Batman calls in a vehicle that seems like it has just one specific purpose (besides selling toys) which is to climb tunnels. This is a dumb moment written for convenience and almost brings the scene down but it's one of the more forgivable sins of the film. Well the vehicle gets disabled and Cyborg is able to integrate with it and get it up and running again, thus he contributes. The battle comes to a head when Steppenwolf decides to flood the tunnel and this gives us our one Aquaman moment of the movie where he actually blocks the flood water to allow them to escape. When all is said and done this is a fun action scene and accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. We see our team fight together, we see the villain overcome them, we see their weakness but also their strive to get better and regroup. The scene has some hiccups but overall, we are coming into the half way point of the movie and while it's a little rocky, it's been fun. 

This point of the movie is where things go downhill. Our next scene is the regrouping of our heroes in the Batcave. We see them defeated, and questioning their next move. One of the main scenes here being where Bruce and Diana have their private conversation about how he's not sure how long he can keep doing this and Diana is more suited for leadership. Huh? Where did this come from? We just saw them make it through an action scene where Bruce was leading the team and he did just fine. What did Diana do that showed her as an exemplary leader type? All she did was fight. She fought very well, but she wasn't calling any shots. We even saw Bruce coerce a terrified Flash into being heroic. This moment just seems like plot for plot's sake. It doesn't make any sense, it's just cramming in force character moments and just another example of how these movies don't know how to use Batman. Batman is a man among gods, being the smart forward thinking leader has always been his strong suit in the Justice League and this movie has him cast off that role after just one encounter with a villain that they had no experience with. Overall their first encounter with Steppenwolf didn't go so bad. Sure they were pushed back but they saved civilians and weren't defeated. How is that not a successful operation? Just because they didn't defeat the villain on their first try? What a quitter.

This leads us to one of the most absurd moments in the movie. The general consensus seems to be that the world needs Superman. There's just one problem, he's kind of dead. Remember at the end of BVS where they not only tried to adapt the Dark Knight Returns but they also had to cram in the Death of Superman. Remember that early 90's seminal comic book event where they killed off one of the world greatest superheros for a publicity stunt? A lot of newer comic book fans look back at The Death of Superman as this amazing event, forgetting the people who grew up reading it and how pissed off they were that they just brought him back to life right afterwards and how plain as day attempt it was to boost sales. No matter how you feel about it now it's hard to deny the recognition power of that story line. Do you also remember how Superman came back? Turns out he was never dead. His body went into hibernation until he recovered. BVS even hinted at this when they threw the dirt on his coffin and the dirt was shown levitating. So how does Superman come back in Justice League? Well that's a tricky answer because I believe there are multiple explanations. If you watch the trailers for the movie, which followed a recent trend of Hollywood trying to lie about obvious surprises in their movies (for example see Justice League, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Spectre), there's a shot of Alfred in the Batcave speaking off screen to a supposed resurrected Superman saying that he'd better hurry if he wants to save them. There were also set photos showing Henry Cavil in the black Superman costume that he wore while recovering in the comics. This leads me to believe that in the original Snyder version he might have stayed closer to the comic book story. What happens in the movie? Well Cyborg just has the third mother box (Deus Ex Machina) hidden away and they propose that the box gives off enough power to resurrect Superman. This is a dumb explanation that is built off an equally dumb aspect of BVS which is the life water inside the Kryptonian ship that gave birth to Doomsday. At least there is precedent but two wrongs don't make a right.

From that conclusion we then jump to a scene of Cyborg and The Flash literally hanging out in a cemetery slowly digging up Superman's corpse. This is a thing that happens in this movie!! If this is how they got his body did we really need to see that? What kind of picture is this supposed to paint? It's just awkward and creepy. Not to mention his body has a gnarly scar but no signs of decomposition. Does this also mean that no one properly prepared the body for burial? Wouldn't it have decomposed faster then? And don't give me any of this "He's an alien crap." He's an alien who only gets his power from the rays of sunlight. I'm not sure how much sunlight you think can reach six feet into the ground and through a wooden box but I'm going to say it's very little. So they bring the body to the Kryptonian ship and Aquaman places him into the life reviving water because he has nothing left to do for the rest of the film, and hey there's water. Their plan is to have Flash run through the ship at high speed and build up enough electricity to touch the Mother Box and power it up right when it hits the water. Now before I complain about how specific that is and how it makes no sense, let me complain about something else first. This is it?! This is your big bringing Superman back from the dead moment? Why go out of your way to recreate one of the most iconic story lines in DC Comics history just to waste it on this terrible plan? The return of Superman should have been this lingering feeling or purpose hanging over the whole movie but instead, they come up with an idea, they execute the idea, and they get it on the first try even. It just seems like a complete waste of an opportunity and to me I honestly believe this was the studio forcing a re-write from Whedon. Is there also a point in mentioning that even if the Flash didn't get it right the first time that they could just try it again? They build it up so much but there's nothing saying they couldn't just set the cube in the water and do it as many times as they want. It's needless tension that completely fails to even draw an emotion out of the viewer.

You could argue that all of this is in service of giving us the best scene of the movie, but that scene last about twenty five seconds. Superman is resurrected, but how would you feel if you just came back from the dead after what seems like a year of being dead? Probably pretty mad and confused. So Superman is back, but he starts to attack the heroes. They try to hold him off but he's just too strong. This gives us the best moment of the movie in all twenty five seconds of glory. So Supes is holding off Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg all at once. The Flash starts racing around him, trying to get the drop on him and we transition into classic Snyder slow motion. As The Flash is running Superman's eye turns and locks with Barry's. We see Barry's shocked look that Superman can keep up with him, and then Supes ditches the three to start attacking Barry, who uses his super speed to dodge him until he gets blown back into the monument. It's a great unexpected moment, it's funny, and it's effective. This whole moment where they are fighting Superman is awesome and honestly the whole movie should have been about this. We didn't need a terrible CGI villain, the return and redemption of Superman would have been a great story, but I don't think it would have done much to push the idea that he is this great beacon of hope if we see him attacking and destroying everything. The scene also features some out of place Batman humor where Superman references the "Do you bleed?" moment from BVS. He throws Bats to the ground who has a line something along the likes of "Yeah, something is definitely bleeding." It's just another inconsistent moment of this franchise. Speaking of inconsistent, remember that floating dirt on the coffin at the end of BVS? Yup even the same director couldn't keep up with his own movie. Granted this could have all been studio or Whedon interference but his name is on the director's chair so I have to aim the criticism towards him. So Superman keeps decimating the other Leaguers until a taxi pulls up with Batman's trump card, Lois Lane. Now Lois has been featured in multiple scenes in the movie up until this point but there was never a reason to mention it because none of these scenes amount to anything. She's really here for this one moment, which is fine, but for a movie that has a strict two hour runtime maybe those other scenes should have just been removed to make room for more Cyborg story. It would have been more satisfying to have her here as a surprise introduction. At this point we probably would have forgotten she was in the movie so we may have not seen it coming. However instead we get one of the dumbest moments of the movie. We see Steppenwolf boom tube into the ship and steal the Mother Box. Correction, we don't see this happen, what we see is the flash of light in the distance and Cyborg say "Well I guess he's got the last box now." If this box is so important why on Earth did they just leave it there unprotected!! How did Steppenwolf know where it was?! This entire idea is completely ridiculous and just wreaks of plot for the sake of plot.

The plan to resurrect Superman doesn't go exactly as planned. Superman leaves to recover his memories and doesn't seem to want to get involved, leaving the League to go after Steppenwolf and his Parademons on their own. This leads us into the finale of the film. Before we move onto what is basically CGI garbage puked onto a screen, we get one last scene which is one that seems decisive among fans. We get the League on Batman's cargo plane to bring them over to Russia where Steppenwolf is using an old nuclear reactor to teraform the Earth with the Mother Boxes. We get one last little character moment where Aquaman is sitting on Wonder Woman's lasso of truth and talking about how they are all going to die and how beautiful he thinks Wonder Woman is. He then realizes he's sitting on the lasso and gets embarrassed. Clearly seems like a Joss Whedon scene but it's one I approve of. For a lot of fans you either seem to love it or hate it and I fall more on the love side. It's maybe the best humor moment of the movie for me. It's also one of the last good scenes of the movie because from here on out we get some of the most overblown CGI Zack Snyder action scenes. So the jist is Batman is rolling around in the Batmobile blasting monsters, Wonder Woman is just attacking anything she can reach with her sword, Flash is running around, Cyborg is flying and shooting bugs, and Aquaman is just jumping around everywhere throwing his Trident. There's moments of them working together but it's not as cohesive as it was during their fight at the docks. Aquaman has no chance to show off his power set here and is reduced to a fighting brute, and the action here is completely unmemorable. I'm trying very hard to remember a stand out moment during this fight and I'm just drawing a complete blank. Now there's nothing wrong with having big blow out CGI battles. Other movies have done this just fine. Take Avengers for example. You're able to follow everything that's going on, you know all of their goals, and we get amazing sweeping and memorable camera shots. Justice League has none of this. The environment they are in is a unrecognizable garbled mess. Everything is in a red tone and it doesn't even resemble a town or city that it once was before. Our heroes are also offering nothing memorable in terms of the action. Wonder Woman stabs, Batman shoots, and it all just blends together.

The idea here is that Batman is willing to sacrifice himself to take down some tower that we aren't even sure what it is, but he's saved and convinced that he doesn't need to die. Why did he think he had to anyway? This seems like a Zack Snyder moment of "This movie has to be dark because Batman is a dark character" and not actually putting any thought into why he's doing any of this. With Batman's car destroyed and joining the fight on foot, Cyborg is finally given a role at the end of the film as he is trying to separate the Mother Boxes to stop the transformation of the Earth. Steppenwolf obviously doesn't like that and steps into the fight and pretty much destroys all of the Justice League. We know things are grim because Batman's gun runs out of ammo as the danger music swells. This is all pretty standard movie stuff. The heroes always meet their lowest point before rising up, but it's just we don't care about these characters at all at this point. Aside from them being the characters we know and love from our comics as a kid, the movie never made me feel like I should care about what's going on at all. Why should I care about the villain? Just because he's doing bad guy things? I need more than just, the good guys need to beat the bad guys. There's no investment emotionally. It's hard to care about CGI that looks so messy and isn't very appealing to the eyes. So with all of the heroes being beaten, who could possibly save them? If you didn't say Superman then what are you thinking? Yes so Superman finally enters the film in costume with a mere fifteen minutes left. He delivers a pretty devastating blow to Steppenwolf to get him off screen for a few moments, but then quickly becomes distracted by civilians who are still in the area. Finally Superman is going to show urgency and heroics in saving some people. This brings me to a few points, one that I've been talking around for this whole analysis. First is the civilians. Throughout the movie as we cut back to Russia to see Steppenwolf doing his bad business we keep seeing this family hiding out in their tiny one room house. It's played for comedy to the point where they are safe from these inter-dimensional Parademons because they are in their wood cabin, and luckily the evil bugs aren't big bad wolves. These characters are just a distraction and feel like a late addition simply for this scene where they are rescued. They see all this terrible stuff happening but they never try to leave until the heroes show up. Why are they staying and risking their lives? It's simply so they can try to escape in a truck later on and have to be saved by The Flash. It does give us a comical moment where Flash is pushing the truck only to look over and see Superman carrying a whole building which is legitimate funny, and honestly an impressive feat of strength even for Superman. It does seem out of context even for this movie, but at this point you are pretty much saying "whatever" to almost everything. This brings me to my next talking point which is Superman.

Superman has at most twenty minutes of screen time, but I feel like I'm being generous with that guesstimate. Now I knew he was going to be in the movie for just the end so that wasn't surprising to me, what is worth noting is that FINALLY Henry Cavil feels like Superman. They brightened his costume, they let him smile, they let him be the Superman that I always felt like he could be. In Man of Steel and BVS Supes was played as such a emotional and depressed character. He at least cracks a smile and joke in Man of Steel (just one), but I'm pretty sure he has a permanent scowl in BVS. He is so serious all the time. Remember when I was talking about the scenes of him saving people and it was back dropped by philosophical debates of Superman's existence and totally robbed these moments of their heroics? Well there's none of that here. He's back to truth, justice, and the American way, a line he even says part of in his intro, and he is here to save the day damn it! Henry Cavil's Superman is one of the best parts of the movie and it's so refreshing to see the character treated the way he should have been from the start. He's such a good character in this movie that the League just let's him do everything. Superman swoops in and literally does all of the work. He beats Steppenwolf into one of the lamest finishes for a villain in movie history. This is the Justice League! This should be a huge spectacle of a fight. Instead Superman takes him out with ease and alone. Correction, Superman makes him bleed and causes Steppenwolf to experience fear. Guess what the Parademons are attracted to? In the beginning of the movie when Batman is encountering the Parademon on the rooftop he mentions that they seem to hunt by fear. So once this is pointed out, the Parademons all leap on Steppenwolf and get to feasting. This is just such an underwhelming defeat and feels like something we've seen in a hundred other movies. If you are copying something done in the Lost in Space movie then you're probably doing something wrong. So that's it. The movie ends with your typical wrap up. We have our heroes, they have a team, the villain is defeated and they are here in case we ever need them again.

So does the movie sound so bad? Probably not. The plot structure is simple yet solid. They played it safe, which they had to. With Wonder Woman being the outlier the DC Comics movies have been trending down at the box office. The studio needed to make moves to ensure the movie was better received, and for the most part it was. It had a higher Rotten Tomatoes score, it did better with critics, but the box office was the lowest returns in the franchise with it falling just under Man of Steel. The movie ended up being a financial disaster making only 656 Million worldwide. Justice League was one of the most expensive movies ever made with a budget of 300 million. Warner Bros spent a lot of money marketing this movie, not to mention extensive reshoots. The industry talk was the movie needed to make at least 700 million to break even. This movie failed to make a profit and its disappointing. As I said the story is fine enough, so this really goes to show that having a competent plot structure and bankable recognizable characters isn't enough. The movie was already fighting an uphill battle and that hill just became steeper and steeper as the movie plays out. If we look at the previous DCEU films, you can point to at least one thing coming out of those movies that the audience liked. Justice League ruins almost all of them. Let's say you love the story here, that you got exactly what you wanted from the plot, well the movie falls apart in many different aspects of it's production. I think we should take a look at some of those.

Let's start with the script. It's terrible. They nailed the structure, but what happens within that frame is a jumbled mess of story. Things just sort of happen in this movie with little rhyme or reason. We move from beat to beat and nothing is really given enough time to breathe. There's nothing to get excited about. It almost feels like the story is just an obligation to previous commitments. If you remember when a Justice League movie was announced, it was announced as two parts. This movie really feels incomplete and I think that's a big reason why. Not to mention having to adhere to movies like Man of Steel and BVS which faced so much backlash that the studio was forced to address it. Add on top of that the fact that Joss Whedon came in to do re-writes and re-shoots and the movie gets cut down to a two hour runtime. This movie feels like a Frankenstein monster that was built by committee. I don't think it would have been a great movie if they did this, but I firmly believe they should have just let Zack Snyder put out his original cut. The movie would have been long but so what? At this point they didn't really have a lot of good faith left anyway and they might as well have not compromised the movie for a hope of box office return. Even at this point there are news reports saying that Warner Bros KNEW the movie was going to bomb, so why not at least give us more in hopes that we might like the extra content? What was there to lose?

The story however is just part of the problem. In a world of fantastic looking movies, Justice League manages to be one of the ugliest films I've ever seen. Now say what you will about Zack Snyder movies, but even the most hating of haters would probably (begrudgingly) agree that Snyder can make a movie look incredible. He's even made good movies before that were well received. Now this may be controversial but my personal favorite movie of his is Watchmen. I didn't grow up reading Watchmen, I read it right before the movie came out so I didn't have this sacred love for the material so I thought he did a pretty great job with the movie. He took an incredible dense book and did the best job he could. I even prefer the altered ending because to me it makes more sense. Even when I read the book I thought the fake alien ending was pretty lame. The movie corrected that. Most importantly that film looked amazing! Watchmen is a feast for the eyes and was the perfect material suited for Snyder's stylish visual presentation. He took what he did in 300 and amplified it and perfected it. Is it at masterpiece? No, but it's a damn good movie and one of the best looking pieces of cinema in decades. Not to mention it was also a DC Comics movie! One of my complaints coming out of Batman V Superman was the movie just didn't have as much visual flair from Snyder. The movie was overly dark and there weren't that many interesting camera shots like he's had in the past. Justice League keeps on this trend but has the added CGI issues tacked on. The CGI in Justice League is garbage. There are moments that look fine but some of it just feels barfed onto the screen. I feel a lot of this probably has to do with the rushed nature of the film, but it is just unpleasant to look at for large portions. There's also just bad design work. Not only does Steppenwolf look like a character ripped right out of a video game in terms of CGI, his look is also just uninspired. Some could argue that they were trying to emulate the look from the comics, but Aquaman looks nothing like he does in the comics and is better for it. You could easily redesign Steppenwolf into a great looking villain, but he is just completely flat and boring. It wasn't only Steppenwolf though. Cyborg also just looks off. The character of Cyborg is almost 90% CGI and it just never looks great. every time he's on screen something just looks off and it felt like it was messing with my eyes. Of course how can we talk about the CGI and not bring up Henry Cavil's mustache? Now I'm sure everyone knows the story about how he couldn't shave because of Mission Impossible. Whats amazing is how bad the CGI removal of his mustache looks. It was clearly a time issue but this is a 300 million dollar movie and it is unbelievable how obvious the fake upper lip is. What makes it worse is that it's the first thing we see in the movie. It makes any re-shoots incredibly obvious as well. Think of it as your Joss Whedon addition marker.

Now as bad as the CGI is, it's very clear there was constant tampering with the look of this movie. If you compare the final version to the trailers, there are many shots that look completely different. For example, the scene where the League is confronting a resurrected Superman. In the original trailers there's a shot from this scene of the Flash running. In the trailer the sky is black, the city is dark, and it's clearly a night shot, similar to the finale of BVS. However in the theatrical release the scene is bathed in blue and almost looks like an old school day for night shot. The coloring of this scene was heavily altered. The same can be said for the finale. Again the original trailer has a scene of Batman swooping on his grappling hook and Aquaman spearing Parademons. The sky is black. In the movie the sky is blood red and everything is red tinted. It looks ugly, and it's very obvious. Now this could have easily been a case of the trailer featuring early shots that weren't finalized and the movie was how it was always intended to look but I highly doubt that. Batman V Superman and Man of Steel received a lot of criticism not for just their dark tone, but literally how physically dark the movies were. The color was sucked out of these movies and it just felt like a nihilistic world. Superman has always been contrasted with Batman by having a brightly colored costume and city with sunlight. Man of Steel was overcast at best the entire time. The tampering with the colors in Justice League feels like a clear studio manipulation and these are the scenes that end up being the weakest in the film. One of the best looking moments of the movie is the opening scene with Batman chasing the crook. It looks like a Snyder movie and this look really works for Batman. It's also why the warehouse scene in BVS stands out. With a good script Snyder could have made a great Batman movie, but Warner Bros literally panicked to the point where the color of the movie had to be changed. 

This poses another problem. Zack Snyder movies are meticulously designed. He has a specific way he wants his movies to look and everything is designed and lit accordingly. If you start tinkering with one thing you're affecting all of the others including the costumes, sets, backgrounds, and even the CGI. This is the same effect of seeing a set photo of someone in a costume and thinking it looks bad, vs how it may end up looking awesome in the movie. It's all about the filter in which the film maker is making you look through and if you change one aspect, you're changing all of it. Because of the changes made in Justice League, you are left with scenes that just look awkward. Instead of the heroes standing in a line and looking epic, they look like bad cosplayers. It's hard to take this man in his bat costume talking to a fish man seriously when you're not seeing it in the director's original vision. Whether you agree with that vision or not, tampering with it will only lead to a negative result. Well the last thing I really have to talk about with the production of the movie is the music. The score of this movie is just completely generic. Danny Elfman did the music and I know this may be an unpopular opinion, but Danny Elfman's scores have never been among my favorites. He's done some music that I like but to me there are just so many more composers that do better work. However even for Elfman this music just feels like a run of the mill score and the only times it ever stands out is when he re-purposes the old Superman theme and his old Batman theme. Other than that, it's just shrugged shoulders from me. 

Well here we are. The movie released and fell flat. Studio executives were shifted into other positions, movies are most likely getting canceled, a new head of DC films has been appointed and with one film already finished and set to release this year the DCEU now sits in limbo. They wanted to have what Marvel has but weren't willing to put in the work. I think people often forget how Iron Man was never planned to lead to the Avengers originally. They made the movie as a gamble and it was only after positive test screenings that they decided to film the end credit stinger. The connection points were added into The Incredible Hulk later. Here we are ten years later and Marvel is a seemingly unstoppable machine that only seems to get better and better. Even the most mediocre Marvel film is better received than most of the DCEU films. Warner Bros can point to Wonder Woman as their big success and honestly they should. It was a great film that had everything that every other DC film lacked. Heart. We cared about everything going on in that movie and the main characters. Even a lame villain and lackluster third act wasn't enough to damage that film. Moving forward Warner Bros needs to look back at Wonder Woman as their example for the future. The word is they don't plan on cancelling this universe and rebooting and honestly I don't think they have to. The announcement for the Flash movie was that it would be the Flashpoint story line which was used to re-write the DC comics universe in the New 52. This needs to be the next movie they fast track into production. With rumors that Ben Affleck is eager to leave the Batman role the smart move is to do the Flashpoint movie and reconfigure the universe. Recast Affleck, as it fits with the comic story, and use this movie to set a new tone. The road behind them is a rocky one, but fans are cued into the news behind the scenes and people will turn up if you just make a good movie. The word of mouth is a powerful tool and it's in their best interest to just make the best movies that they can. Justice League is the blueprint of how not to make your superhero team up movie, but it's not the worst movie either. It's aggressively average (more realistically slightly below) but it's possible to recover. I can only hope Warner Bros is making the right decisions for the future, but we will have to wait for the first movie to come out after Aquaman to know for sure. As of this writing Shazam has just started shooting and it sounds like a more traditional movie and gives me some hope for DC movies. Let's hope they don't let us down.