I went to see the Justice League movie last night. I did not go expecting much, the film currently has a 40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It has been roundly savaged in the press. And DC has a somewhat checkered track record when it comes to franchise movies. While Chris Nolan’s Batman films were exceptional, for the most part, DC’s various re-boots of their Superman franchise have been dodgy at best. Superman Returns was simply creepy the way they thought they could just have Brandon Routh play a Chris Reeves clone, though it wasn’t such a bad movie overall; nonetheless, the thought processes that went into that decision were just freaky weird. Man of Steel was a generally weak film, not awful, but not really good. Not to mention Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice’s overall terribleness and the tragic crap storm that was Suicide Squad. Aside from the luminous Wonder Woman, DC has not had a good run this last decade or so.
I have to say, while I enjoy super hero movies, I am not a fan boy, by any means. I seldom read comics and don’t collect them. My deep knowledge of comics basically ended in 1975 when I sold my entire collection of hundreds of comics for $26 (and got royally ripped off). But I remain casually aware of the industry and the ongoing history of comics.
On the other hand, I am a movie nerd. I went to film school and I spent several years trying to make it in Hollywood. You can find my name on IMDB if you look heard enough — along with the seven other guys who share my name (one of whom is claiming credit for one of my roles, but you have to become a “premium” member at IMDB to contest that sort of thing, so I never have. But I’m not bitter and that what matters).
So I approached Justice League as I do every movie, as a knowledgeable student of film-making and story-telling, not as a comics fan (not that comics fan reviews can’t be good, and not that “disinterested” reviewers are always good; Manohla Dargis, at the New York Times, has an execrable history of pretentiously tut-tutting comics-based films for no better reason than she thinks she’s teddibly above them).
And guess what?
Justice League is a really good movie!
I would give it a solid 85 out of 100. It’s that good. (After the film, my wife and I literally looked at each other and said, “That was good!, I’d give it an 85,” at the exact same time. We’ve been married a long time.)
It’s arguably nearly as good as Thor: Ragnarock, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which is getting justifiably excellent reviews.
======================================================================
OK, spoilers coming, so decide for yourself whether you want to go any farther.
======================================================================
The film does begin somewhat slowly, which is kind of a given since they are launching a franchise that contains several characters we have never met, before. Some people have suggested that this was a mistake on DC’s part, and they ought to have done the Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg movies, first. I disagree. Certainly we did not get a standalone Hawkeye movie or Black Widow movie before the first Avengers (though Black Widow did premiere in Iron Man 2). The previous Hulk films were problematic at best and no one could have predicted Mark Ruffalo’s astonishingly good performance as Bruce Banner. So it’s more than possible to make a good franchise ensemble movie without prequelleing all the main characters.
There was a problem, though, simply because we saw the Flash and Aquaman introductions almost in their entirety in the film promos. Seriously, in their entirety. This was a problem for me. They really needed to give us more in the film. With the Aquaman intro, they did give us a bit after the part we already saw, but it was largely redundant: Aquaman refuses to help Bruce Wayne inside the town hall meeting, then they walk to the water’s edge, where Aquaman strips off his shirt (and poses dramatically shirtless in the frigid waves) and refuses to help again before diving into the sea. OK, we get it: He’s not going to help. (But, of course, he does.)
This was a mostly failure on the part of the marketing people, not the film makers. They gave us far too much in the promos. This made me worry early on they were showing us all the good parts because the rest of the film was dreck (how many film promos like that have you seen, right?). I was wrong to worry (but right to note they were clods for doing it that way).
On the other hand, Wonder Woman’s intro in Justice League was lots of fun. She gets to foil the plot of a gang of terrorists trying to blow up a chunk of London and it has all the fun and fury of the stand-alone fight scenes in the Wonder Woman film. It reminded us nicely of who Wonder Woman is and what she can do. It’s short, sweet and to the point and fits nicely into the flow of the movie.
Two points here, first, the film has no bottlenecks, there was never a moment when I felt like I was just waiting for something to happen and looking at my watch. It flows nicely. It’s a very tight two hours.
Second, the film treated Wonder Woman perfectly. Though surrounded by men, they never allowed her to be rescued by them, to be talked down to by them, or to be anything less than one of the clear leaders of the group. And, after Superman, she is clearly the toughest member of the team. They don’t play that down. This was very nice to see.
OK, one issue: Wonder Woman’s butt. In the entire course of Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman film, even though Gal Gadot was wearing the same very short skirt in much of it, I never once thought, “Whoa! There’s her butt!” I did think that several times in this film. There were several shots of Gal Gadot in tight leather pants walking away from the camera, shown head to mid thigh, and more than a few low angle shots of Wonder Woman in her skirts. In Jenkin’s film, I could not have told you the color of Wonder Woman’s underwear, in this film, yeah, we know. Now, the film also includes several long, (long!, no I mean really long) sequences with shirtless Henry Cavill and shirtless Jason Momoa. Point is, you can have a certain amount of cheesecake or beefcake in movies -- everyone likes to look at pretty people, male or female. I’m not complaining about that. But this film skirted the edge of Suicide Squad levels of having Harley Quinn walk away from the camera in super tight short shorts.
Moving on.
Cyborg’s (Ray Fisher) intro and character were handled exceptionally well. I have to admit that I have no previous opinions of the character, he was introduced to the DC line-up well after I stopped regularly reading comics and he’s not really the kind of hero I tend to like. I knew he existed, but that’s it. But Fisher did a fine job bringing him to life, and the film makers didn’t include him just to have a token black guy or someone to stand around in the background while the bigger name characters do all the work. Cyborg is integral to the outcome of the movie and the success of the Justice League’s mission. In fact, there is an excellent little movie inside this movie that precludes the need for a Cyborg origin film. Without stalling or slowing the main movie at all we get fully introduced to the character, his motivations and his abilities. And we get Joe Morton as his dad (Joe Morton playing a brilliant scientist! How unusual! I love Joe Morton). I actually look forward to the Cyborg stand-alone film.
OK, let’s talk about Aquaman and the Flash. I hate Aquaman. Allow me to elaborate, of all the super heroes in the world, Aquaman is among my bottom ten least favorites. The whole stupid riding around on a giant sea horse thing, the he talks to fish thing. I hate his stupid costume. Really. I hate him. Hate. On the other hand, Jason Momoa was great. The art director and costume designer for this film, Lorin Fleming and Michael Wilkinson, did a marvelous job re-imagining the character. Gone is the awful costume, replaced by biker jeans and a full torso Maori-style tattoo (when he’s not wearing glittery gold fish-scale armor, which is also pretty cool). Gone is the giant sea horse (thank gawd). They even make a joke about the talking to fish thing. I wonder at the accent they chose to give him — how does an “Atlantean” end up talking like a midwestern biker? — but OK, that’s a quibble. They, however, gave Aquaman no backstory. There is a single scene set in Atlantis, where we meet some woman in armor who has an argument with Aquaman and, I suppose if I followed the comics, I’d know who she was. But I don’t and the film doesn’t give us a clue. And why, as water-breathing Atlanteans, who can talk to fish, do they need to conjure an air chamber to have a conversation? Nevertheless, like the intro for Cyborg, this film took me from “meh,” to, OK, now I want to see the stand-alone film.
Flash, not so much. For the most part, I understand why the character exists as he does. There is value in having an audience stand-in in the film, someone to be overawed and stand back and go, “Whoa! That’s cool!” But they really take it too far. While comparisons to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man are valid, I just felt Ezra Miller’s performance and the choice to make him physically clumsy and socially awkward — he’s presented as high-functioning autistic — were a bit over the top. Which is not to say he hurts the film. They even give him a nice little story arc of his own that plays out well. He’s not as lovingly treated as Cyborg, but he’s not ignored, either.
Flash also presents an issue in the whole DC universe milieu simply because he has a current TV show running that has a different actor (Grant Gustin) in the lead role. I understand that bringing the TV character (and actor) into the film presents all sorts of issues since TV DC is a very different world than movie DC. The whole “is he in the Arrowverse or not?” thing is confusion enough.
And there is also value in having a younger character in the film rather than having a bunch of 30-40-somethings be the only people we see in the Justice League (creaky “old” Batman is played for light laughs in the film). But Cyborg is in his early twenties, too, and he’s not nearly as geeky, even though he is the film’s scientist and hacker. Part of what I object to is that Barry Allen is a serious scientist and they give him the scenic ambience of a super hacker; he has his own “bat cave” with the usual walls of glowy screens and zillions of keyboards, and empty soda bottles, but that never gets any pay-off in the film. In fact I felt the film makers missed a significant opportunity when Batman brings the gang home to the Bat Cave for some strategizing. Flash is given the REALLY crappy line of, ”I’t s like a.. a Bat Cave!” (arg!). Then he runs around at super speed playing with all the toys and sitting in all the cool vehicles. Instead, I wish they had given him a line something like, “Wow, this is so much better than my set-up!” and had him zip to the computers to begin exploring the systems. Rather than the child in a candy shop, I needed him to be a young-adult in a grown-up’s candy shop. OK, he just bugs me. He’s given a nice bit with his father at the end to close-out his limited story arc and set up his stand-alone film, and that’s nice. Plus, he gets a post-credit scene with Superman. It’s fine, really. It just could have been better.
And speaking of Superman, let’s talk about the zombie in the room. Seriously, he’s a zombie, right? One of the huge mistakes (IMHO) of Batman vs. Superman is the death of Superman. Yes, Doomsday killed Superman in the comics, back in 1992, and he came back. Fine. But is the second film of a re-booted franchise the proper time to kill off a headline character?
Now, it’s not like it doesn’t work in the context of the Justice League film. Bringing Superman back to life plays off of themes introduced in Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman, and is valuable in terms of overall story arc, since Superman can and does, kick the big bad’s ass and could have ended Justice League almost before it began. Leaving him out of the start of the film allows the other characters to have a chance to fight the villain without him (and fail), and bringing him back to life allows the League to achieve a goal in the second act and gives them a significant team-building moment. All of that is good story telling. I really want to know if the writers planned this even before as part of Batman vs. Superman, or was it a happy accident?
There is also a wonderful three part story arc that brings Ma Kent (Marthaaaaa!), Lois Lane, and Superman together in a really heart-warming way. Yes, I said it, heart-warming. It fucking is. Deal with it. It’s really good and is integral to bringing Superman back to life as not a zombie. And it has a serious pay-off at the end of the film in terms of character development for the Batman/Superman friendship. It all works. It works really well.
But it still irritates me. And it leaves hanging the whole, is Clark Kent still dead? question. They even include a scene in the denouement where a bespectacled “Clark Kent” ducks off a crowded street into an alley and opens his shirt in the classic Superman costume reveal riff that complete with him flying off with a sonic boom to end the film.
So is Clark dead or not? Are they really going to ignore this zombie elephant in the room? How are they going to explain that Clark Kent is alive again? How can he possibly let him go back to work as Clark when everyone in the city knows he’s dead? Or is it just that Superman no longer has a secret identity? And if not, why does he still wear the glasses? I’m digressing. But it bugs me.
And has nothing to do with my enjoyment of Justice League.
OK, let’s wrap this up. Steppenwolf is a shitty name for a super villain. I mean, really, just stupid. Steppenwolf was created by Jack Kirby in 1972 as a member of the New Gods. He is uncle to Darkseid, the big bad of the DC universe. Steppenwolf was also a Canadian rock band that worked from 1968-1972 and recorded the classic song, Born to be Wild, among other hits like Magic Carpet RIde. I guess Kirby was a fan. But still. Arg.
So, Steppenwolf (were there really no other New Gods with better names who could have done this?) comes to Earth to reclaim a set of “mother boxes” (sentient super computers) which will allow him to transform the Earth into a copy of his demonically hellish home world. Steppenwolf tried this once before, in ancient times, but was defeated by the Atlanteans, Amazons, and the “Tribes of Men” working together. (So, I have never gotten why so many intergalactic super beings come to Earth to claim it for their own. Are we the universe’s version of the south of France? If so, wow, the universe must be a pretty shitty place). And how did the ancients, with their swords and spears defeat an intergalactic super being who can catch hellfire missiles in his hands? OK, too deep. It’s comic books, Jake.
Anyway, after defeating Steppenwolf the first time, the ancients divided the mother boxes among them to guard for all eternity. The Amazons and Atlanteans put their boxes in secret temples surrounded by warriors, ready to fight the return of Steppenwolf at any moment. For thousands of years. The humans buried theirs in a hole about three feet deep and forgot about it. Augh! Humans! Ammirite?
So, when Superman dies, and the Earth no longer has a super defender equal to the task, Steppenwolf returns to try again. How did he know? Does the universe really pay that much attention to Earth? Seriously, when does this become super creepy stalking?
Anyway, he fights the Amazons and kicks their butts and steals their mother box (Wonder Woman is a no-show). He fights the Atlanteans and kicks their butts (Aquaman arrives to late to help) and steals their mother box. He steals the third mother box while the Justice League is occupied fighting the resurrected Superman who is kind of justifiably pissed at having been dead and hasn’t quite started firing on all eight cylinders, yet — until they bring in the big guns (I’ll leave that little teaser without a pay off. You gotta have some reason to go see the movie, after all).
The Justice League (sans Superman) follows Steppenwolf to his lair, fights him for a while, and basically gets their asses whupped. Superman returns, clocks the big bad a few times with super punches, and Steppenwolf gets “defeated” in a way that allows him to return for a re-match in some later film. Happy, smiling denouement moments. The end.
In the end, Justice League is a fun film that brings together the headline characters of the DC universe with some lesser-known lights, gives them several reaonably-believable team-building tasks to accomplish, allows them to defeat the big bad and save the Earth, and gives them some snappy banter and heart-warming moments. It works. it’s enjoyable. It’s not clunky. It has a solid, professional three-act structure that doesn’t meander through a glacial second act or get fail to tie up its loose ends (I’m looking at YOU Suicide Squad!) . It’s two hours that feels much shorter. It’s even a much brighter, more color-saturated, and more hopeful-feeling film than so many of the dark and gritty DC movies of late. Seriously, years ago, someone at DC decided that Marvel owned all the comic book colors, so all their films of late have been distinctly tinted blue and steeped in exaggerated chiaroscuro. They seem to be fixing that with this film.
It helps that Gal Gadot is a brilliant Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill was born to play Superman, and Jason Momoa makes a pretty darn good Aquaman. I’m still undecided on Ben Affleck’s Batman, but he’s fine. Ray Fisher is excellent as Cyborg, and Ezra Miller is adequate as Flash. Jeremy Irons is basically a cipher as Alfred the Butler, and J.K. Simmons makes an appearance as Commissioner Gordon (he has hair! and a bushy mustache, I hardly knew him).
For all the tsuris involved in the production of this film, from Zack Snyder’s withdrawl due to family reasons, to Josh Whedon’s finishing the directorial duties on the film, including serious re-shoots and re-writing much of Chris Terrio’s script, to the Henry Cavil Mission Impossible mustache mishmash (a dive into the uncanny valley only really noticeable in the film’s brief camera-phone aspect ratio intro), Justice League pulls it out pretty well.
I recommend it highly and unreservedly. It’s every bit as fun as any of the Avengers movies. It’s a good, solid comic book film. It makes me look forward to the next films in the series.