Justice League (2017)

Justice League fulfills the promise made, albeit in perhaps too short an order, of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice at putting together the titular super-team of Earth’s mightiest heroes of the DC Extended Universe in one movie, and on one side.  Is it worth all the hubbub?  Not really in this case, as the two characters most fans care about to come to the theater to see, Superman and Batman, are mostly not on the screen together.  A ray of hope came earlier in 2017 with the release and major success of Wonder Woman, but this film stuffs her back into the eye-popping but often mechanically joyless direction of Zack Snyder (Sucker Punch, Watchmen), whose trademark is to slow down action to underline significance, which is not exactly what made her solo film at all appealing.  Snyder, due to dealing with grief stemming from a family tragedy, would leave the project, as the studio brought in Joss Whedon (Avengers: Age of Ultron) to oversee substantial re-shoots off of his own script changes (injecting more of his trademark snarky banter), and to package it all up together into a film that, Warner Bros. insisted, could run no longer than two hours.

Not that dark and brooding is a bad thing, as Christopher Nolan made some of the best superhero films with the Dark Knight trilogy doing exactly that.  But those films were fitting to the character of Batman, and of its times, and the makers of this new slate of DC films have made two fatal mistakes: trying to emulate Nolan without the talent, pertinent political underpinnings, or conceptual finesse on board to do so, and in trying to emulate Marvel by trying to play catch-up to their team-based action without giving their characters the time, space, and nuance needed for us to adopt these incarnations of them as heroes worth rooting on.

The plot is murky and boring, perhaps the worst part of Justice League — so dull, I don’t feel the need to try to understand or relate it, as I mostly ignored it for the bulk of the run time (something about ‘motherboxes’, as derived from Jack Kirby from his cult comic of the early 1970s, “Fourth World”, which might just as well have been called ‘MacGuffin-boxes’).  Just another evil guy who plans to destroy the world, and the heroes must unite to save the day.  The villain, known as Steppenwolf, is hardly important as the make-up of the team, which contains Batman as the unifier, Wonder Woman as the brawn (in Superman’s fatal absence), water-god Aquaman, speedster the Flash, and the tech-wizard Cyborg.  It’s a team that only offers fun on the occasions when they banter, which is enough to keep the film afloat in the entertainment department, emulating Marvel with its jokey nature among the characters, even when the world-threatening situations are most dire.

Among the highlights of the film are Gal Gadot (Criminal), yet again, as Wonder Woman, though not quite the scene-stealer she had been in her debut, partially because the writing for her more thinly envisioned character seems to be limited to delivering platitudes and setups to one-liners that were mostly kept to a minimum in Wonder Woman.  The scene-stealing honor now goes to Ezra Miller (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) as the Barry Allen incarnation of the Flash, who shows good comic timing as the quirky and awkward young man who is trying to find evidence that will help free his father from a murder charge.

Alas, while I thought Ben Affleck (Live by Night) could be a welcome addition as Batman based on his debut in Batman v. Superman, he comes across as goofy and an ill fit here, exhibiting some of the actor’s worst tendencies to ham when trying to be funny or spirited.  Unknown newcomer Ray Fisher as Victor Stone, aka Cyborg, is, unfortunately, mostly forgettable, in some part due to being the one character that few outside of comic-book readers have heard of, and in part due to the fact that his character, by his nature as a human who is being enveloped by cybernetic technology, is stoic and unfeeling, to the point where there is little charisma on display whenever the character appears on the screen.

Jason Momoa (The Bad Batch) has one decent scene in the film, and cuts a formidable presence as Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, yet it is such a one-note role, and the back story to the Atlantean character is thoroughly uninteresting, that he becomes just another superhero there just to comprise the team-count minimum, rather than someone we think we might enjoy seeing in a solo adventure sometime down the road. As for the villain, Steppenwolf, voiced in Liam Neeson-like fashion by Ciaran Hinds (who consulted his friend on doing vocal work in A Monster Calls), there’s little good to say.

As we have minimal investment into these new characters in which we receive about one scene each to explain who they are and how they became what they became, plus we have a version of Batman we just assume an origin to, this leaves only two characters, Wonder Woman and Superman, to which we have had a solo film in order to get to know them somewhat.  And only one of them is in this entire film (Superman does appear in the film’s opening scene, but is absent for the bulk of the rest of the film).

The climax of the film is about as fun as watching a video game, plugging in these characters into overcoming variety of CG obstacles and digitized demon-like insectoid creatures (called Parademons) that pop up mostly for them to smash to bits.  Despite a sky’s-the-limit budget, this isn’t one of those films in which you would watch and enjoy merely for the visual effects, as there are too many moments that look and feel artificial for us to be swept away into the aesthetic beauty of the film’s craftsmanship.  To make matters worse, we intercut these scenes by going back to how this all affects a Russian family we don’t know and scarcely care about, trying to put a human face on world-shattering events, but ends up feeling like trying to play catch-up for Snyder’s prior films in which most of the non-superheroes on Earth are an afterthought to the big, bad battle sequences.

Despite its substantial flaws, Justice League is rarely unwatchable, even if its plot is uninteresting and its formula storytelling barely held together to even be considered a story.  It has some choice humor, appealing actors, and enough momentum during certain scenes to avoid prolonged lulls that might take you out of the film altogether Trying to cram in three significantly new characters, a major super-villain, and a ramshackle back story as to how all of the motley bunch must come together, and get it all in at a studio-mandated two hours in length, forces forward momentum through every scene.  But that also necessitated that narrative shortcuts abound, which means that we’re whisked from character and character, scene to scene, without much of what we’re seeing registering resonantly or emotionally much beyond whatever fan fervor we already have for these characters coming into it.

Given that we’re getting major franchise films every few weeks, and many of those already feature crossover characters and lots of special effects, Justice League has to have something more compelling than lavish effects and an occasional chuckle to merit discussing as something more than a watchable diversion.  It just doesn’t feel as much of an event these days in an era of cinema in which we’re already saturated by event films vying for our attention and our movie-going dollars.  As such, without very much build-up from the super-team in two prior films, and without much investment into the new characters or the main plot as it stands, all we can cling to are pretty actors playing dress up and punching things on occasion while bantering in between.  It’s entertaining in spots despite its inherent shabbiness, but somehow still feels like slim pickings, and a disappointment from a franchise full of much beloved characters who deserve far better than being brought together just because it’s what other franchises are doing these days.  Perhaps ‘Just, eh’ League is a more appropriate title.

Qwipster’s rating: C

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action
Running Time: 120 min.

Cast: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jason Momoa, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons, Ciaran Hinds (voice), Amber Heard, Joe Morton, Billy Crudup
Director: Zack Snyder (and Joss Whedon)
Screenplay: Chris Terrio, Joss Whedon