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When Marvel mapped out the trajectory for their Cinematic Universe, they were
sometimes criticized for over thinking and over-planning. Nearly every major
hero – Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor – had his own movie. Many of the
secondary characters (including the villain) boasted significant screen time in
one or more of the first five films. Only once all these things had been
accomplished were the characters brought together for
The Avengers. The formula
worked. The Avengers was popcorn bliss.
DC, however, came late to the party. Riding the critical and popular success of
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and smarting from the disappointing
performance of Bryan Singer’s
Superman Returns, they dithered and dallied and
didn’t begin planning out the post-Dark Knight campaign until the MCU movie
count was past the half-dozen mark and rising. The late start resulted in a
rushed and un-unified approach. Justice League arrives with three major
characters who haven’t previously been introduced. As a result, this film has a
lot of heavy background lifting to do - too much, in fact, for it to be able to
tell a worthwhile story. 70% of the movie is set-up for future tales. The rest
is an overlong smack-down between our heroes and possibly the dullest villain
ever to appear in a comic book picture.
Marvel movies, for all their flaws, are almost always fun. Yes, the action and
plotting follow familiar trajectories but there's usually wit in the screenplay
and energy in the execution. Why is it that so many recent DC films (Wonder
Woman excepted) feel like work? Why are the visuals so dark and muddy? I’ve said
it before: Christopher Nolan understood how to make the darkness organic and
necessary to the films, a part of their essential DNA. Not so with the DCEU
films. The only one that really succeeds,
Wonder
Woman, does so in large part
because director Patty Jenkins subscribed to a different aesthetic. Even though
Zack Snyder was replaced late in the proceedings by
The Avengers’ Joss Whedon
(as a result of a personal tragedy), Justice League adheres too closely to the
tone that hamstrung
Man of Steel and
Batman v Superman. Yes, there are more
one-liners and some openly comedic scenes but there’s a vast gulf between the
oh-so-serious events of Justice League and the antics of
Thor: Ragnarok.
Narrative-wise, Justice League is forced to do too many things. It has to
re-unite Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), fresh off her own film, with the Ben Affleck
iteration of Batman. (Because Affleck hasn’t yet gotten his own stand-alone
film, we still don’t really know this rendition of The Dark Knight, except that
his costume is bluer than his immediate predecessor’s and his Bat Cave is more
high-tech. It would have helped immeasurably if the DCEU had taken the time for
a proper re-introduction of a signature character.) To help in that department,
it brings back supporting players Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), Alfred
(Jeremy Irons), and Commissioner Gordon (J.K. Simmons). The movie also has to
introduce Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray
Fisher), and provide them with mini-origin stories. Then there’s the necessity
of resurrecting Superman (Henry Cavill), because that character remains a key
foundation of any DCEU movie even though he “died” at the end of
Batman v Superman. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) are on hand to
represent the Superman support section. Cavill in a surprisingly reduced role, to
his credit finally brings some of the charismatic humanity needed for the Man of
Steel.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Justice League also feels compelled to give us a
Big Bad Guy whose muddled purpose has something to do with becoming a new god
and possibly preparing the way for Darkseid, who might end up becoming the
DCEU’s version of Thanos. This McGuffin-villain, Steppenwolf (a motion-captured
Ciaran Hinds), has a poorly-defined back-story and no personality beyond
crush-destroy-burn. He provides the catalyst that brings the Justice League
together. In the grand scheme of things, he is inconsequential.
Although screen time is carefully parceled out, Snyder ensures that each Justice
League member gets a moment to shine. In the wake of Wonder Woman’s success, one
might expect to see more of Diana Prince in the final cut but the massive box
office windfall from that film hit too late for her role to be substantially
beefed up for Justice League (although she still has more screen time than
anyone other than Batman). Fortunately, there’s good chemistry among the various
actors and the yin/yang friendship/rivalry aspects of The Justice League members
work well. Snyder/Whedon get the team dynamic. Of the supporting cast members,
Amy Adams and Jeremy Irons are well-utilized. Everyone else is extraneous.
There’s a lot of battling during Justice League but much of it falls into the
been-there-done-that category: explosions, waves of power, bad CGI, superheroes
getting knocked down only to get up again, etc. It’s all familiar by now and not
all that interesting. Steppenwolf is a lackluster bad guy whose powers were
taken from the villain cliché shelf and whose eventual fate provokes little more
than a yawn. While Justice League mostly succeeds in assembling the title team
and getting the internal dynamic right, it fails in crafting a memorable or
imposing villain.
Kudos to Danny Elfman, who went back to basics for his score, drawing heavily on
his own theme from Batman (1989) but not ignoring the previous work of other
composers (both recent and not-so-recent). I also loved the use of Leonard
Cohen's "Everybody Knows" as the opening theme. However, it's not a good sign
when I have to fall back on the music as arguably the most praiseworthy aspect
of Justice League.
Now that Warner Brothers has gotten this movie out of their system, maybe they
can take a step back and spend a few movies developing the characters and the
DCEU in general. At the moment, Justice League 2 has neither a crew nor a
release date, which is probably a good thing. The next time these characters
band together, perhaps they will do so with stronger backgrounds, a real sense
of purpose, and a story that’s more than a cobbled-together mess. In concept,
The Justice League has more potential than
The Avengers. Now it’s up to the DCEU
scribes to tap into that potential and make it real – something they have thus
far failed at in four out of five tries, including this one. |
