The notion of superheroes teaming up is almost as old as superheroes, as the Justice Society of America, which initially put Doctor Fate, Hour-Man, the Spectre, Hawkman, and the Golden Age versions of Green Lantern, the Flash, the Atom, and the Sandman together in the third issue of All-Star Comics, was created by Gardner Fox in 1940.
The JSA feature ended with the last issue of All-Star Comics in 1951, but when Fox and Julius Schwartz revived the National Periodical Publications (what DC was called then) superhero lineup in the late 1950s, they eventually brought most of them together in the Justice League of America, which debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28 in 1960, and featured Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Martian Manhunter, and the new versions of the Flash and Green Lantern. They’ve been the flagship DC team ever since.
Much like Marvel’s Avengers (who have a movie of their own out today), created three years after the JLA (which was shortened to the Justice League after the book was rebooted following 1986’s Legends miniseries), the League has always been the book that features most of DC’s heavy hitters. While they haven’t been consistent members of the team, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman have always been the heart of the team to some extent.
DC’s animated adaptations have had versions of the Justice League going back to 1973 with the debut of Super Friends (which went through several variant titles over the course of thirteen years, finally ending in 1986 with the title, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians). Currently, Justice League Action is running on Cartoon Network, and in the early 2000s, Bruce Timm produced two animated series (Justice League and Justice League Unlimited) that spun off from the seminal Batman and Superman animated series of the 1990s, and was one of the best versions of the JL ever created in any medium.
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Magic for Liars
Two prior attempts to do a live-action version crashed and burned. The TV one in 1997 only got as far as a dreadful pilot, which we suffered through previously in this rewatch. George Miller was putting together a feature film in the mid-2000s, having gone so far as to cast D.J. Cotrona (Superman), Armie Hammer (Batman), Megan Gale (Wonder Woman), Common (Green Lantern), Adam Brody (the Flash), Teresa Palmer (Talia al-Ghul), and Jay Baruchel (Maxwell Lord). But the 2007 writers strike messed things up, and the whole thing fell apart.
With the launching of DC’s own version of a cinematic universe with 2013’s Man of Steel, the groundwork for a JL movie was laid in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, starting with that movie’s subtitle, continuing with Wonder Woman’s supporting role in the movie, and cameos by Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, and Cyborg’s Dad.
Chris Terrio, who did the final draft of Dawn of Justice, was hired to write the script, working at least in part off drafts by David S. Goyer and Will Beall, neither of whom were credited. Zack Snyder was brought back to direct, and Snyder also hired Joss Whedon to bring some of his Avengers magic to some rewrites of the script.
Tragedy struck in the spring of 2017 when Snyder’s daughter Autumn took her own life. Snyder stepped down from directing the film, and Warner Bros. brought Whedon in to finish the film and do two months’ worth of reshoots.
Back from Dawn of Justice are Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, and Joe Morton as Silas Stone. Back from Suicide Squad are Ben Affleck as Batman and Ezra Miller as the Flash. Back from Wonder Woman are Gal Gadot as WW, Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta, a computer-generated David Thewlis as Ares in a flashback, and an uncredited Robin Wright as Antiope in that same flashback. Introduced in this film are J.K. Simmons as Commissioner James Gordon, Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf, Amber Heard as Mera, Billy Crudup as Henry Allen, Holt McCallany as a burglar, Marc McClure (who played Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies) as a police officer, and Joe Manganiello as Deathstroke.
Momoa and Heard will next appear in Aquaman. Gadot, Nielsen, and Wright are said to be returning in Wonder Woman 1984, and allegedly a Flash movie with Miller is still in development. While the still-scheduled The Batman was originally to have Affleck, Irons, and Simmons, it’s unknown what’s actually happening with that movie at this point, except that Affleck will not be returning as Batman. While a sequel to this film is always a possibility (it was originally conceived as a two-part tale, and both the mention of Darkseid and the post-credits tag with Luthor and Deathstroke are specifically designed to set up future JL films), it isn’t on any schedule right now. The film had a massive budget, so it needed to do Avengers numbers to make any actual money for the studio. Instead, its entire worldwide box office barely matched that of just Avengers’s domestic total, and it had the worst box office of any of the DCEU films extant.
“What are your superpowers again?” “I’m rich…”
Justice League
Written by Chris Terrio & Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon
Directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon (uncredited)
Produced by Charles Roven and Deborah Snyder and Jon Berg and Geoff Johns
Original release date: November 17, 2017
We open with cell phone video of two kids interviewing Superman for their podcast. Then we cut to Superman being mourned following his death in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
In Metropolis, crime is on the rise, and Lois Lane has been writing puff pieces for the Daily Planet at her own request.
In Smallville, the bank has foreclosed on the Kent house.
In Gotham City, Batman stops a burglar and dangles him off a roof, in the hopes of attracting a parademon, which feeds on fear. Sure enough, one shows, but once Batman captures it in a net, it disintegrates.
In Paris, Wonder Woman stops terrorists from blowing up a bank.
In Themyscira, an alien artifact called a Mother Box that the Amazons are guarding has activated. A creature called Steppenwolf shows up, accompanied by more parademons, and takes the Mother Box, killing many Amazons along the way.
Hippolyta sends a warning to Wonder Woman, who goes to Gotham City to tell Batman that it’s time for them to gather heroes. She tells him the story of Steppenwolf, who used the Mother Boxes to try to terraform Earth centuries ago. An alliance of Atlanteans, Amazons, Greek gods, and “the tribes of man,” as she calls them (led, seemingly, by King Arthur) joined forces to defeat Steppenwolf, driving him off-planet. The three Mother Boxes were separated, one entrusted to Atlantis, one to humanity, and one to the Amazons.
The images of those three boxes is all over Luthor’s files that Batman stole in Dawn of Justice, and he also saw it left as an impression on the wall against which the parademon was leaning when it self-immolated. Batman and Wonder Woman agree to recruit the other three metahumans they found in Luthor’s files, with Batman travelling north to Iceland to find Arthur Curry, known as the Aquaman, who helps a small Icelandic town during the winter (the image of the three boxes is also in a mural in that town), and then to Central City to recruit Barry Allen, a speedster. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, tracks down Victor Stone, who was in a horrible accident that killed his mother and almost killed him, but his father Silas, the head of S.T.A.R. Labs, uses alien technology to make him a cyborg.
That alien tech is the Mother Box that was kept with humanity. While Stone doesn’t agree to join, he does agree to try to use the new tech that’s part of him to track down Steppenwolf.
Batman is half successful: Aquaman tells him to screw off (making fun of his costume choice, referring to Gotham City as a shithole, and swimming away), but the Flash joins unhesitatingly. He doesn’t have friends, and his father is in jail for killing his wife, but Flash thinks his dad is innocent.
Steppenwolf attacks an Atlantean outpost. Aquaman tries to stop him, aided by an Atlantean princess named Mera. Mera claims to know Aquaman’s mother, about whom Aquaman knows only that she abandoned him and his father when Aquaman was a baby. Mera insists that she had no choice, and that she would be the one defending Atlantis now. Mera urges Aquaman to go after Steppenwolf now, which he reluctantly agrees to. (On the one hand, you wonder why she didn’t ask the rightful king of Atlantis to do this. On the other hand, when we meet him in Aquaman, he’s a total dick, so yeah. We’ll deal with that next week.)
Steppenwolf kidnaps people from S.T.A.R. Labs, including Silas, to learn where the Mother Box is.
The Bat-signal shines in the sky, and Batman, Wonder Woman, and Flash show up on the roof of GCPD headquarters—as does Stone, who wants to find his Dad. They have a pattern to the appearances of the parademons, and they track it to a tunnel under Gotham Harbor. The four of them fight the parademons and Steppenwolf, and mostly get their asses kicked. However, thanks to Flash’s super-speed, the S.T.A.R. Labs hostages are rescued.
Steppenwolf knocks a hole in the wall that will flood the tunnel, but Aquaman shows up just in time to save them from that, now armed with a trident. (It’s actually got five prongs—a quindent?)
They return to the Batcave. Stone has the third Mother Box, revealing that Silas used it to save Stone’s life. He thinks he can trace Steppenwolf using his own implants. Batman also thinks they can use Mother Box and the Kryptonian ship that’s still in Metropolis to resurrect Superman. Wonder Woman thinks he’s crazy—the last time that ship was used to resurrect Zod, we got Doomsday—but Stone runs the numbers, and thinks they can do it. They dig up Clark Kent’s grave, and then bring the body to the Kryptonian ship where Flash provides a spark and the Mother Box provides the energy, and Superman is brought back to life.
At first, he’s disoriented and starts beating up the various heroes (at one point throwing Batman’s “do you bleed?” line from Dawn of Justice back at him), but then Alfred arrives with Lane. He flies her to Smallville, and she helps bring him back to himself.
Back in Metropolis, though, Steppenwolf attacks, taking the Mother Box, which the heroes just left lying around like idiots while fighting Superman. He now has all three.
Stone traces Steppenwolf to a town way off the grid in Russia. There’s no sign of Superman, so they go without him. Aquaman is not sanguine about their chances, but goes anyhow.
Steppenwolf is starting his massive terraforming with the Mother Boxes. The heroes arrive, with Batman drawing the parademons away so the others can attack. This is suicide, and Wonder Woman leads Stone and Aquaman and Flash to save his ass, and then they attack Steppenwolf, except for Stone, who tries to stop the Mother Boxes.
Superman shows up in the nick of time and punches Steppenwolf very very hard. He helps Stone separate the Mother Boxes, which renders them dormant. Flash saves a family from being killed, while Superman saves an entire building full of people. Superman then uses his super-breath to freeze Steppenwolf’s axe, which then shatters on impact from Wonder Woman’s sword. Steppenwolf suddenly feels fear, which draws the parademons to attack him and they all go away in a boom tube because the movie’s over now.
Batman, Alfred, and Wonder Woman check out a huge mansion that they can convert into their headquarters. In addition, Bruce Wayne buys the bank that foreclosed on the Kent house and has them un-foreclose it, so Martha can move back in. Wonder Woman decides to be more public in her heroism, while Flash has gotten a job at a crime lab. Flash also challenges Superman to a race.
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor has escaped from prison, and is now on a yacht, where he has recruited the first member of his version of the Injustice Gang: Deathstroke the Terminator.
“Please, we have families!” “Why does everyone keep telling me that?”
Ye flipping gods, what a mess this film is…
You would be hard-pressed to find two filmmakers who are less alike than Joss Whedon and Zack Snyder, so asking the former to reshoot and rewrite the latter is a notion fraught with peril, rather akin to asking Terry Pratchett to partially rewrite George R.R. Martin.
And you can so totally see the seams. One minute, it’s a dark, dank, deconstructionist film from someone who finds no joy in superheroes, the next it’s a quip-filled superhero story that takes quite a bit of joy in being about superheroes. Having them both in the same movie makes for an unsettling and peculiar viewing experience, because we get two distinct, incompatible tones.
This movie has craptons of problems, but the biggest one is its very foundation, which is the notion that Superman’s death has caused strife and chaos and misery, seen in a montage at the top of the film (under a rather good cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” by Sigrid), and it is utterly unconvincing. Every single moment of Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice was given over to the notion that Superman was dangerous, that Superman was not to be trusted, and that Superman wasn’t even much of a hero. And even if he did lots of heroic things in the eighteen months between those two movies, it was only eighteen friggin months. A year and a half is not enough time for Superman to have become so incredibly symbolically important to humanity that his death would be so devastating that it would be enough to wake up the Mother Boxes and have them summon Steppenwolf to take another shot at conquering.
Just like in Dawn of Justice, the filmmakers are counting on Superman’s pop-culture footprint to do the storytelling work that they themselves have failed to do, and I, at least, did not buy it for a nanosecond. The Superman Henry Cavill played in the last two movies was no kind of symbol of hope, no matter how many times he told us what the S on his chest meant.
Now in this movie, he actually plays Superman. This is the first time I’ve recognized Cavill as the character we’ve been reading in comics and seeing in past films and various animated releases for eight decades. Even if they had to CGI out his mustache for Mission: Impossible: Fallout for the two months of reshoots…
Indeed, the acting in this film is top-notch, which is one of the reasons why it’s still fairly watchable. Ben Affleck doubles down on his older Batman, one who is slowing with age and taking longer to heal. At one point Wonder Woman tells him he can’t do this forever, and Batman’s response is, “I can barely do it now.” I’m really sorry that Affleck is no longer set to play the title role in The Batman, because I’m genuinely interested in this version of Batman who is fighting the one foe he can’t defeat: the aging process. (I freely admit that my being a martial artist who just turned fifty years old is a reason why this version of the character resonates with me particularly.) Jeremy Irons is still perfection itself as an Alfred who takes no shit and gives no fucks.
Gal Gadot remains radiant and charismatic—but also reluctant to go back into the spotlight. Steve Trevor’s death in Wonder Woman has her gun-shy, willing only to work in the shadows and alone, not wishing to be responsible for others’ lives. But she comes around eventually, as she’s by far the most qualified to lead this motley group. Batman brought them together, and Superman’s the inspiration, but Wonder Woman’s the field leader and tactician they need.
Ray Fisher is okay as Cyborg—he’s a little too flat, though his deadpan works nicely. (He has one of the best lines in the movie when he announces to Batman, “I had Mother Box run some calculations while you were being an asshole.”) I also do like his “boo-yah” at the end, a nice call back to the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon. And nobody ever went wrong casting Joe Morton in anything, and having him play someone who is responsible for screwy things with advanced technology is particularly amusing, given that he played the creator of SkyNet back in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
I have been a fan of Jason Momoa’s since he was on Stargate Atlantis as Ronon Dex, and he’s a delightful Aquaman. This is someone who is having fun playing a superhero who as a character is also having fun being a superhero. And I simply adore Ezra Miller’s interpretation of the Flash as someone with severe anxiety and probably on the autism spectrum, and who just generally has extreme difficulty interacting with people.
Ciarán Hinds does the best he can as Steppenwolf, but that character is a terrible choice for the League’s first bad guy. I mean, fine, you want to set up Darkseid and Apokalips, do that, but why would you start with this garbanzo? Hinds at least gives him a menacing voice—the moment where he tells Wonder Woman that his ax is still wet with the blood of her sisters is beautifully delivered.
Having said that, those sisters are mostly wasted, as are pretty much all the supporting roles. Amy Adams, Connie Nielsen, Diane Lane, Amber Heard, Joe Manganiello, Jesse Eisenberg, Billy Crudup, J.K. Simmons—most of them only feel like they’re here because they’re supposed to be in other related movies, not because they’re important to this one. Heard, Adams, and Nielsen at least serve some plot purpose (technically so does Simmons, but it’s a dumb one, with Gordon providing information the dark knight detective should’ve been able to work out on his own).
Also the Amazons have gone from wearing practical armor in Wonder Woman to wearing midriff-baring nonsense in Justice League. Gawrsh.
Plus, all the sunlight seems to have disappeared from Themyscira, but that’s not surprising, because it’s disappeared from everywhere else, too. Whedon may have directed chunks of this film, but it still looks like a Snyder-directed miasma-fest. I remember when the first trailer for this movie was released, a friend commented that she liked it, and was very much looking forward to the color version. As usual, Snyder’s world only has blacks, grays, and browns in it, and even though most of the players are wearing uniforms with color, those colors are muted. (I’m amazed Wonder Woman was wearing the red-white-and-blue outfit from her titular film rather than the sepia-toned monstrosity she wore in Dawn of Justice.)
The plot is a meandering mess, people do things because it’s what the plot calls for, and the tonal path the movie takes is being driven by a drunk driver. There are some good lines, some good characterizations, and good interactions among the characters, but the actual plot is a mess, and the movie can’t make up its mind as to whether or not it wants to be fun. And if something isn’t sure if it’s fun or not, it’s almost always not fun. Although I did like seeing Superman and Flash have one of their trademark races around the world in the mid-credits scene…
Next week, we see what Arthur Curry does next in Aquaman.
Keith R.A. DeCandido did not actually plan for this rewatch to happen the same day as the release of Avengers: Endgame, but is amused by the serendipity. He will be at Awesome Con this weekend in Washington, D.C. Look for him at Bard’s Tower, Booth 1311, alongside fellow authors Kevin J. Anderson, Charles E. Gannon, Quincy Allen, D.J. Butler, and Ronnie Virdi, among others, where he’ll be selling and signing his books.
“Every single moment of Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice was given over to the notion that Superman was dangerous that Superman was not to be trusted, and that Superman wasn’t even much of a hero. “
It’s statements like this that make me question if we watched the same movies.
This is a mess, and it’s all WB’s fault. They changed a finished movie deep in post-production to satisfy people who hated the franchise . . . and failed at that. There are many bad scenes in the Whedon reshoots, but one really stands out.
It’s the scene where Lois and Martha are talking. For one, it looks like it was filmed in a corner of the WB lunch room. The color saturation has been turned up so high Amy Adams looks like she has sunburn. Snyder shot a Lois-Martha talk, set in Lois’s apartment and I suspect he handled the conversation with the tone and dignity due the subject matter. Here, a conversation about the loss of a fiancée and son is an opportunity . . . for sex jokes. Worst is the comic relief news story in the background. This is a fictional universe where real aliens actually attacked Metropolis and killed real people. Nobody would be laughing at aliens.
Y’know what would be a perfect comic-book movie for Zack Snyder? A Crime Syndicate or Justice Lords project. Super-powered a*holes who use their power to dominate and hurt Muggles–exactly what Snyder thinks supers are. Of course, Snyder would almost certainly portray them as heroic figures for being a*holes…
I just want to salute you for running the Justice League review on the day Avengers: Endgame comes out. Well played, sir.
Zack Synder is not coming back for more DC movies, is he?
This movie is a mess as is, and I expected it would be, but the thing that crossed it over into “I want to punch the screen” for me was how they completely jobbed out the League.
Half the movie is spent insisting everything is hopeless without Superman, then he actually shows up and curb-stomps the entire League single-handed, and then they double-down on it by having him trash the villain they’ve been struggling against with two punches.
“You can’t save the world alone” the movie’s tagline declares.
Well, apparently you can…if you’re Superman. Everyone else is a superfluous piss-ant.
How do you make a Justice League movie where the JUSTICE LEAGUE is useless?
It’s especially galling in the wake of Wonder Woman’s movie only a few months earlier.
Putting aside that she goes from holding her own against Doomsday & going Super Saiyan against Ares to unable to last three seconds against Superman or keep up with the lumbering doofus with the unwieldy hammer…it comes across as a bit tone-deaf to follow her film with a movie that goes out of its way to make her look like dirt compared to Superman.
“Hey, did you love how empowering Wonder Woman was in her movie? Well enjoy watching her get rag-dolled and crushed by Superman because pecking order! Did you think the Amazons were cool? Enjoy watching them get slaughtered en masse!”
Thanks Zack. Thanks Joss.
Brian: I swear I did not plan that. It just worked out….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“asking Terry Pratchett to partially rewrite George R.R. Martin.”
That. Sounds. Awesome. Seriously, can you imagine? Either a really grimdark Good Omens, or a screamingly funny absurdist comedy of A Game of Thrones. Or possibly both, simultaneously.
I’d say less like Pratchett rewriting George R.R. Martin and more like Pratchett rewriting Terry Goodkind.
I knew going in that Superman would come back in the movie I just didn’t think it would be because the rest of the Justice League were otherwise useless.
Well the difference is that the latter two are/were both competent and talented writers and I would have read the hell out of that book. The former two are both hacks; especially Whedon whose creativity peaked in the mid 1990s and has been on a downward trend, recycling the same tired tropes, tricks, and quips ever since. His Whedonisms were never so glaringly out of place as in this movie though.
There is the seed of a great Justice League movie in here—halfway through the end credits. I still can’t understand why WB chose to ape the alien invasion story of the first Avengers movie instead of doing something different, arguably better: superhero team vs. supervillain team! It’s the basic component of any great super-team comic book, yet neither the MCU nor the DCEU has even attempted it. (The closest would be CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, where it was superhero vs. superhero.)
My only regret about the redirection of the DCEU is that we’ll never get to see the sequel where Luther and Deathstroke assemble their team of super-powered bad guys for a white-knuckled showdown.
Here’s my blog review:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/my-very-late-and-surprisingly-rather-positive-justice-league-review-spoilers/
Excerpt:
In other words, I agree the plot is dumb, but the characters and their interplay are enjoyable, so I enjoyed the film in spite of its massive flaws. I particularly liked Ezra Miller’s Flash and Ray Fisher’s Cyborg and would really like to see their solo movies. And it was nice to see Superman actually treated like Superman by the filmmakers. I agree with Keith about the huge retcon of Superman suddenly being beloved by everyone, but I’m okay with the retcon because it’s finally the way it should’ve been all along.
@5
This is the normal problem with Superman. If he’s smarter than Batman, a better fighter than Wonder Woman, and as fast as the Flash, what do you need those guys for?
@13 The way to solve that problem is not make him any of those things
This movie was so absurd that they did the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen; instead of having an actor shave a mustache (the whole “contract mustache” is beyond absurd), they used really bad CGI instead!
@13 “This is the normal problem with Superman. If he’s smarter than Batman, a better fighter than Wonder Woman, and as fast as the Flash, what do you need those guys for?”
I 100% agree which is why Superman has never been interesting to me. Super heroes are more interesting for what they can’t do than for what they can do, seeing them struggle and come up with inventive and creative ways to use their abilities to solve problems is interesting. But with Superman there is no real struggle. He is either unbeatable with his super: speed, strength, flight, laser eyes, x-ray vision, frost breath, indestructibility… or he is 100% vulnerable and weak if you bring in some kryptonite. He’s just boring.
“When this movie came out, understand that Chris Terrio and I had finished the script to Justice League before BvS came out. Some people didn’t like the movie. A vocal minority. So they said ‘there’s a lot of stuff we don’t want you to do’ so we did a rewrite from that script.”
WB should be blamed for listening to idiotic fans to have the script rewritten into the disjointed mess it is.
@14 alternatively, the solution is to not put him in team-up movies.
Anyone who knows me from elsewhere on the Internet has probably heard me rant, about five thousand times, that the very concept of the Justice League is one of the most bleakly mercenary and creatively bankrupt ideas in modern fiction. DC’s A-list heroes were all designed to stand on their own as protagonists, with hugely diverse skill-sets. Every single one of them can, by him or herself, stop a bank robbery, solve a murder, lead an army, repel an invasion, dethrone a tyrant, win over a God, defuse a nuke; the main variation is in how they do all these things.
You jam them all together and someone – perhaps everyone – is going to get the short end of the stick. The usual form it takes is for everyone else to lose half their IQ points so Batman can lecture them on tactics and whatnot, so… I guess it’s somewhat gratifying that Superman is the one getting shilled for a change?
(Note that I do not except the DCAU from this; what good it managed to do for Superman and Batman (and to a lesser extent, the Flash and Martian Manhunter) it really floundered on Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, mainly because those first four already covered pretty much every corner a superhero story can cover.)
@15/Austin: To be fair, it wasn’t the Justice League producers’ fault that they couldn’t have Cavill shave his moustache. The Mission: Impossible producers evidently forbade him to shave it, which some have interpreted as a petty move to make things harder for WB and Justice League.
And really, digital alteration of actors’ appearance is far more common in movies today than most people realize. It’s noticeable in cases like the de-aging of actors in Marvel movies like Ant-Man and Captain Marvel, and it’s been used to make pregnant actresses look non-pregnant (I think that was actually done with Gal Gadot in one of her Wonder Woman appearances), but it’s sometimes used far more subtly in ways that we don’t even notice. So it would’ve been possible to digitally remove Cavill’s moustache in a way that was convincing and undetectable to the naked eye. They just didn’t have the time or budget to do it right, and maybe they didn’t have the skill. Really, most of the CGI in this film is unconvincing. The weirdest part is that even the human part of Cyborg’s face looks digitally animated to me.
In the South, we call a five-pronged trident-like tool a manure fork or a frog gig. I doubt Aquaman would like either term.
“Terraform” to change the Earth into something else? Doesn’t sound right. De-terraform? Apokolipsform? Hellaform?
This movie is the perfect example of why trying to please everybody pleases nobody.
Meh, It’s a mess but it’s a watchable mess.
Steppenwolf is a rock band not a Supervillain.
@22/roxana: Steppenwolf is the German name for the steppe wolf, a gray wolf native to the Caspian steppes. The band was named after the 1927 Herman Hesse novel Steppenwolf which was named in turn for the animal, while the New Gods character (created by Jack Kirby in 1972, the same year the band broke up) was named directly for the animal.
Not to mention one of the main cast of SciFi’s Eureka which was also all about playing with screwy advanced technology! I can’t say much since I haven’t seen this movie, but having Mr. Morton in it is definitely a draw (though sounds like the rest was kind of sloppy.)
@22 – Lol right? Steppenwolf is right up there with Black Panther as things I can’t disassociate in my mind. The first is a band and the second is a black rights group. There’s nothing that can be done about that for me.
@25/Austin: Except that both of them were actual animals before they were any of those other things…
The best thing I can say about this movie, is that it confirmed my opinion that Henry Cavill was a good Superman who up to this point had never been allowed to actually play the character he was supposed to be. The moment when he arrives to save Cyborg and we get the John Williams motif was beautiful, and I enjoyed the hell out of seeing him beat the crap out of Steppenwolf like it was nothing, and handily deliver a beat-down to the whole JLA. Only Wonder Woman and Aquaman had any hope of going toe to toe with him, and they were screwed from the start because they obviously didn’t want to hurt him. This movie sucks for the most part, but not because of the characters, their characterizations, or the acting. I loved all of that. Too bad the non-existent plot and overdose of assorted Snydersisms were enough to prevent it from being anything but a mediocre superhero movie.
@26 – Except there’s no such thing as a panther.
You’ve pretty much given my opinion. I remember the plot being rather meh (although I love that you used the ‘why does everybody keep saying that to me??’ line as your header) and honestly, whenever I hear Steppenwolf, I think of that magic carpet ride said.
However, I enjoy Affleck’s Batman more than I thought I would, I love Gadot as Wonder Woman, and was also pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Flash/Aquaman in these incarnations (I don’t recall having much of an impression on Cyborg and I Superman doesn’t make that much of an impression me either). Too bad they didn’t have a movie where they could be used to their potential…
ETA: Ha – I had this comment box open for awhile before making my comment, and apparently we’ve already run though the disambiguation of Steppenwolf (I ended up looking it up on my own to figure out if the band picked the name due to the comic character, but in fact was due to the book, which was due to the animal…so there ya go :) )
Austin: um, yes there is……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@12. Well, I’m happy someone found this abomination watchable, because this was one of the worst things I’ve seen in theatres (and I saw Van Helsing). Whedon’s characterizations are all remarkably bland. I’m guessing that was an edict handed down from the suits, because his characters are almost never bland. The returning characters are pale shadows of what they were. Wonder Woman walked away from humanity . . . but not really. Batman is guilty about what happened . . . but not that much. Cyborg is angry about his transformation . . . for one whole scene. The trailers teased Lois and Clark’s engagement . . . and the movie completely left it out. There’s no character arc at all. Everybody has already arrived at being default bland Saturday Morning superheroes with no struggle or growth. Which is apparently what some people want.
And that’s not even mentioning the obvious mixing of Whedon’s flat, Marvelesque digital video with Snyder’s film. Or the fact that most of the actors in the reshoot footage look embarrassed. And last but not least, the multiple shots of superheroes lying awkwardly on the ground, which is the most fitting visual metaphor for this cinematic butchery I can imagine.
DCEU superfan Jon Aaron Garza summed it up best: “Mary Shelley’s Justice League“.
That’s an insult to Mary shelley, BTW
No comment on why Bruce Wayne bought an entire bank just to cancel a foreclosed mortgage? Wouldn’t it be easier – and smarter – to just pay off the mortgage and give Martha the deed?
@krad guess you’re dong the Aquaman Rewatch next week only to tie it in with the DCEU rewatches of the past few weeks…Its only been a little over months since your first watch review of AM!
Strangely enough, I actually enjoyed this movie more than Thor: Ragnarok(!?!), even though everything krad wrote is true and Thor is an obviously better movie. Part of that is probably growing up with the Saturday morning Justice League cartoons in the late 70s and early 80s, so these are “my” superheroes. (Although I’ve always loved Norse mythology, so Thor has always been my favorite Marvel character.) Another thing is that this whole series of articles has made me realize that as a movie watcher, overall cohesiveness is less important to me; what I look for is the singular moments that resonate. The main one in this movie that comes to mind is during the team fight when the Flash is speeding toward Superman and everything is frozen, then Superman turns his head to follow the Flash’s progress and Flash has an “Oh sh**” moment as he realizes Superman is on his level of speed. That moment was beautifully done. That being said, I love reading krad’s analyses and all of your comments to get insight into the analytical viewpoint that I can definitely appreciate even if it’s not the way I consume movies.
Honestly, if no one had told me about Moustachegate, I wouldn’t have noticed. It’s just not that visually obvious to me.
And with regard to Superman’s power level, I remember a quote from a writer who said (more or less) “the problem with writing a Justice League story is figuring out how to keep Superman away from the action so the others can actually contribute.” It’s an exaggeration, of course, but it does get the point across.
@27. I wish there were more Snyderisms in the film. Only 50 minutes of the theatrical version is his, and that’s been altered. The only scene I wholeheartedly liked was Steppenwolf’s attack on Themiscyra, which was 100% Snyder (green grass and blue skies and everything).
@32. That’s another thing that bugged me. The moment the Lois-Martha scene mentioned the bank foreclosure, I thought: “Bruce will buy the bank.” There’s absolutely no surprises or tension in the Whedonized film.
The reshoots also created a number of continuity issues with the previous movies.
1.) “Luthor’s notes”. Luthor supposedly wrote extensive notes on paper about the Mother Boxes . . . but his arrest scene in the UE of BvS shows he was literally up to his armpits in alien goo when he was brought in. How the holy hell was writing anything?
2.) The Mother Box that created Cyborg didn’t become active until Superman died . . . but earlier the same day, Bruce Wayne watched archived video of Cyborg being transformed by the Box.
3.) The Snyder Cut apparently opens with Bruce already searching for Aquaman, hence the beard. Here he heads to Iceland clean-shaven . . . and is heavily-bearded the next scene.
4.) When Superman is revived, he’s angry at Bruce as if he had killed him . . . even though Bruce had relented and saved his mother. And doesn’t this make Superman the dark angry character Snyder was always accused for depicting? This was another reshoot issue: in the Snyder Cut, using the Box to revive him put him partially under Steppenwolf’s control, which is why he was lashing out (more on this later). Here there’s no external force making him act like this, unless you count WB execs and storytelling by committee.
@28 Austin:
I hope that you are not going to try the “Technically they are just a black leopard/jaguar” line. Because (1) That is bullshit, and everybody knows that a black leopard/jaguar is called a black panther; and (2) whenever someone pulls the old “technically” card, they know it is bullshit and are just trying to look down their nose at everybody else and make themselves feel smart. I don’t think that is you though, you are just misled and forgot that the planet calls a melanistic/black leopard/jaguar a black panther. That was it, wasn’t it. You forgot, and we are all still friends.
I agree about Steppenwolf though, most people even today still associate the name with the band. Of course when I hear “black panther”, my mind goes to Bagheera from The Jungle Book rather than the American Civil Rights/Vigilante* group. Different cultural background, I guess.
*Select term as per political preference.
@35/Almuric: I think the intent is that when Superman was revived, he wasn’t quite in his right mind. Just being angry wouldn’t cause him to lose control like that. It must’ve been that he hadn’t yet regained full consciousness or memory and was acting out of fight-or-flight instinct.
One redeeming feature was seeing a Green Lantern. Was he a specific one from the comics?
People keep blaming Whedon for the failure of this movie, but the movie was always going to be a failure. There was never a chance in hell it was going to outperform BvS, and that movie didn’t even clear a billion dollars despite being the first live action team-up of the three most popular, recognizable characters in pop culture going back at least 80 years. People want to blame Whedon, but the real perpetrator is Snyder, whose movies were less and less well-received with each iteration. Whedon was called in to save the day and merely failed. Don’t blame the relief pitcher for blowing the game in the 9th inning, blame the pitcher that had your team down 0-4 going into the final stretch.
(Yes, 0-4. Wonder Woman would have done over a billion if Snyder’s fingerprints weren’t all over it. As much of an improvement as it was over the first three movies, if Jenkins hadn’t been saddled with his story and his role as EP, it would have been better. As it is, it’s merely passable. The atrocious third act completely overshadows the good stuff that came before it.)
@37. The thing is, there already was a reason for his behavior in the original film. Cutting it out necessitated the godawful Uncanny Lip, and further neutered Steppenwolf as a villain. Most of his character is on the cutting room floor, to the movie’s detriment. The theme of the Snyder Cut was freedom, which nicely ties in with the last step of the Hero’s Journey, Freedom To Live, in this case for Superman. Steppenwolf was enslaved by Darkseid for his defeat and was going to win his freedom back by enslaving Earth with the Mother Boxes. Aquaman wasn’t interested in going back to Atlantis with Vulko and Mera and chose to stay on the land with his father at the end. Cyborg struggled with the power of the Mother Box that created him so he could retain his humanity and be free. And Superman was enslaved when he was resurrected, only to get his freedom back with the help of not only Lois, but his mother. The shot of him doing the classic shirt-open revealing the S-shield was shot by Snyder, and is composed identically to the shot of Superman in cuffs from MoS, and Superman on Capitol Hill from BvS. But the Whedonized version doesn’t want to be a sequel to those movies and it abandons the themes for . . . really lousy jokes.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the DCEU needs a Kevin Feige, a producer who can work to keep these movies coherent. Geoff Johns clearly doesn’t have that authority over the filmmakers who make these decisions.
Justice League is a rushed kneejerk response to the previous films and it shows. It could have benefitted greatly from a delayed release date. Whedon did what he could given the constraints.
The movie is surprisingly watchable, but definitely the inferior superhero team on the big screen. Avengers benefitted from years of slow, careful development and planning.
The actors are very comfortable in their parts. I’m game for a Flash solo film with Miller in the role. I wish Affleck had stuck around for another round of Batman. And Cavill finally gets to do a proper take on Superman. And Gadot rocks as usual. Some of the jokes land with a thud, but overall the film somehow manages to be reasonably fun at times. If only the plot wasn’t a mess of poor editing decisions and lack of focus.
I tend to see the current performance of Shazam! as what JL could have been had they not rushed the film. Was it necessary for WB to hold on to that release date? They had it set even before Batman v Superman was properly out. To me, that’s simply bad decision making on the part of studio executives. I saw a video recently that throws a credible theory that these execs held on to that particular release date due to the upheaval at higher studio levels, and staying the course would guarantee fat bonuses for all involved, regardless of the film’s state of quality. As usual, greed prevails over common sense, as seen with the WGA/talent agency crisis that’s been brewing thanks to agents and their unethical packaging practices.
Having said that, somehow JL is still the best Cavill Superman film. A stepup from Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice. If only Whedon had been a part of it from day one….
@41. “I tend to see the current performance of Shazam! as what JL could have been had they not rushed the film.”
Shazam! is likely to make a little more than half of JL. And that’s ignoring the fact that the DCEU Aquaman is part of the Billion Dollar Club.
Two brief scenes cut from the movie, both by Snyder, and both vastly superior to anything Whedon does with the character, IMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jqi_0_LbU0
@38/Gareth Wilson: Apparently it was Yalan Gur.
@39/danielmclark: I largely agree. I think Whedon did the best job he could with what he was given and the limited ability he had to change it. He would’ve had to throw the whole thing out and start over from scratch to make something that really worked. But at least he made it entertaining, which makes it only the second DCEU film I can say that about. I’m surprised the film was so negatively received.
@41/Eduardo: “I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the DCEU needs a Kevin Feige, a producer who can work to keep these movies coherent. Geoff Johns clearly doesn’t have that authority over the filmmakers who make these decisions.”
He didn’t back when these films were put into production, but he does now. He was promoted into that position while Justice League was filming, which is probably why JL feels like an awkward transitional piece between the Snyder era and the current era of more upbeat films like Aquaman and Shazam! It’s sort of like the just-ended season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery (and season 1 to an extent) — uneven because it was finished in different hands than it was begun.
@42: I meant critical performance. Shazam! is easily the most surprising and unabashedly fun film of the bunch. And I’m positive others share that view.
@43/Christopher: Good point. Hopefully, we’ll see the fruits of this in future DC releases. Shazam! does feel like the product of a studio more confident in its direction.
@30 krad – No, there is really no such thing as a panther. Technically, as @36 put it. Look it up. I was really bummed the first time I found that out. Panthers are just black cats in the Panthera family, like jaguars and cougars.
@43 Thanks. Best live-action depiction of a Green Lantern I’ve seen.
To me, one of the worst parts of all is how Whedon’s Super Friends treats the female characters.
For one, almost every female part except for Wonder Woman and the other Amazons were either trimmed down or eliminated. And WW’s added scenes weren’t any great prize either, with two of them being badly-written “let’s-sit-down-and-talk-about-feelings” scenes that exist mostly to retcon BvS and give people a chance to use the washroom. Martha Kent and Lois had a more active role overall. Lois was investigating the Parademon abductions (which weren’t to get intel, as in the theatrical version, but to convert humans into more Parademons for the coming invasion). In Whedon’s version, she mopes around and waits for Batman to involve her in the plot. Also, she came to Heroes Park during the League-Superman fight on her own and her appearance Superman to stop. He takes her to Smallville — still disoriented — and there, it’s Martha who talks him down using a variation of the “imagine the world as an island” speech from MoS and helps him shake off Steppenwolf’s control. But I guess WB was terrified some smartass on Twitter would make a “Martha” joke. But they’re lucky, they got to stay in the movie. Mera’s scenes were cut down. Iris West’s scenes were completely eliminated (the scene of Barry breaking a window at super-speed in the trailers was from the scene where he saves her from getting hit by a car). Victor’s mother (played by Karen Bryson), who appeared in the flashbacks to Victor’s origin (as opposed to the info-dumping we got in the theatrical) was also completely eliminated.
@46/Austin: There’s a big difference between “There is no unique species bearing the exclusive name ‘panther'” and “There is no such thing as a panther.” As you say, the word “panther” refers to black cats of the Panthera family. That is a thing, therefore there is such a thing as a panther. Species identity is not the exclusive parameter for defining thing-ness. There are lots of other things that are things.
Look at it this way — there’s no species of cat called the calico, but it’s still valid to talk about calico cats. “Panther” is just a term for a large cat of a particular coloration, much like “calico” or “tabby” for domestic cats. Not a species name, but still a name with a specific meaning.
@23, CLB, I don’t doubt it but to somebody like me who isn’t really up on comics Steppenwolf is a band, and a book. It would definitely have been better to go with another Supervillain.
@50/roxana: Sure, another supervillain would’ve been better, but not because of the name — just because Steppenwolf is a pretty obscure, random choice. It should’ve been Darkseid. I think the original idea was to use Steppenwolf in Suicide Squad and Darkseid here.
I just want to say that I was worried this particular rewatch entry would get lost in the Endgame shuffle. I’m glad to see that it hasn’t been, as we’re now past 50 comments. Yay! Thank you all!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@51. You’re close. Steppenwolf was originally in Suicide Squad, Darkseid made a cameo in the Snyder Cut of Justice League, a fact that was only recently disclosed. He was in the uncut History Lesson as a young Prince Uxas, and appeared at the end to vaporize Steppenwolf for his failures.
And speaking of Whedon’s treatment of the female characters, I would be remiss without mentioning his idiotic attempts to ship Aquaman and Wonder Woman and the scene where the Flash falls on WW’s chest. I’m glad that Wan took a swipe at the Arthur-Diana shipping in a newspaper clipping glimpsed in Aquaman, and overall characterized Arthur as less of a fratboy around women.
Isn’t Whedon supposed to a feminist? You sure can’t tell from the JL reshoots.
@almuric
The problem with saying that Snyder’s movie would be about freedom, is that -as an Ayn Rand fanboy- he has a skewed idea on what freedom means.
Whedon does have huge problems with his depiction of women; he probably did fit a loose definition of male feminist back in the 1990s, but while the rest of the world has moved on Whedon has not really shifted in his own views. He’s stuck with a certain type of quippy 90s action girl as his inspiration, and it is becoming increasingly problematic.
Keith- Sorry for an unrelated question. But what’s the status of your Alien Isolation novel?
felix77: See this…..
https://bloody-disgusting.com/books/3558016/exclusive-titan-celebrates-alien-day-three-new-books-2019/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@13, 14;
The solution to “How can Superman be on the same team as Batman and Flash” is “writing.” It’s how we’re all still along for the ride in accepting that Hawkguy, Black Widow, and a freaking raccoon have something to offer Iron Man and Thor as teammates. If the story and character interactions are solid, we don’t pay attention to the power disparities.
@54. There’s something about the optics of a studio spending $50 million to erase the idea of freedom from a movie that should worry anyone, regardless of politics. That, and the fact that they spent all that to make a $250 million dollar movie look like . . . a $50 million dollar movie.
Oh, and here’s the Justice League trailer from the 2016 Comic-Con, long before Whedon was attached. The film was already going to have a lighter tone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gglkYMGRYlE
Common as Green Lantern could have been awesome.
Technically, Panther is a superset genus of great cats.
I think krad gets paid by the comment. Bonuses kick in at every 50. ;)
I can’t argue with anything Keith said here, but I don’t think Justice League is terrible. In fact, I prefer to The Avengers and Age of Ultron, and normally I don’t like either Snyder or Whedon.
On the Amazons skimpier outfits, I’ve heard at least one of the Amazon actresses from both films defended the skimpier outfits as being a lot more comfortable and easier to move in than the ones in Wonder Woman.
@60. SaraB: Well, comments drive the views and this is a marketing site.
I am just here to bask in the majesty of Krad calling Steppenwolf a ‘garbanzo.‘
My weekend is now complete.
@52, to be fair, a lot of that has been arguing about panthers
Nitpick – “Superfriends” was not the first animated Justice League. “The Superman/Aquaman Hour” of 1967-1968, interspersed its Superman and Aquaman segments with cartoons of The Flash, The Atom, Hawkman and Green Lantern, and all of them together as The Justice League. You can find all of them on You Tube.
“As usual, Snyder’s world only has blacks, grays, and browns in it”
I am greatly amused by the irony of KRAD saying this, in a review that includes the pic of the very colorful scene of Clark in the cornfield, which was shot by . . . Zack Snyder (Whedon, of course, shot a clumsy insert which was added to it in the finished film).
The Bronx Zoo labels a particular animal as a panther. I’m going to trust the word of the Wildlife Conservation Society on this particular subject……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Anti-hype did me a favour on this one. The reviews and word of mouth were SO terrible that when I finally got around to watching it my reaction was “well that was kind of alright, actually.” Not actually good but nowhere near as terrible as I was lead to believe.
It’s impossible to grade this movie anything but an incomplete, because from that first nightmarish shot of Cavill, it’s clearly an unfinished piece of work that was rushed into theaters in order to maintain the top execs’ end-of-year bonuses. People in the audience I was part of gasped audibly when his face appeared on the screen, and I don’t think all of them had heard of mustache-gate in advance. I have no idea why that sequence was left in, because it’s not in any way necessary to the plot of the film, yet it announces immediately that a certain amount of the movie will be literally unwatchable.
Batman v. Superman felt like the end result of a studio buffeting a director with innumerable notes; Justice League feels like the end result of a studio buffeting TWO directors with innumerable notes. It doesn’t hang together tonally, thematically, visually or narratively. Some critics faulted Affleck’s acting, but how is a guy supposed to pull off a consistent performance when he’s been told the project is changing direction over and over again? And when he gets hauled in for unexpected reshoots weeks after he thought he was done, and has clearly slacked off on his fitness regimen? I think Bruce’s weight appears to fluctuate by like 30 or 40 pounds from scene to scene.
As for the portrayals of the other characters, the depiction of Superman doesn’t satisfy me, because it seems like such a forced and insincere course correction. It’s as if the movie is Harvey Keitel’s pimp character from Taxi Driver, constantly prodding me, “You like unspoiled and innocent, huh, kid? Well, have I got unspoiled and innocent for you!” Meanwhile, Ezra Miller’s Flash is insufferably obnoxious. You just want to slap him every time he opens his mouth. Things start to look up in that sequence between him and Bats in which the latter assures the former that saving one person will make him want to save everybody; it’s simultaneously inspiring and tragic, and it seems to portend Barry’s coming of age. But nope, after that, he’s back to just being an unbearable smartass again.
Still, the picture could have been slightly better had more wisdom been applied in the editing room. The studio could have made a somewhat decent 90-minute movie that kept the backstories of the lesser Leaguers to a minimum, or they could have made a two-and-a-half hour movie that explores everybody’s background and motivation in detail. Instead, I learn just enough about Victor Stone to be confused. And if you can understand what’s going on in that scene between Arthur and Mera on first pass without help, hats off to you.
There are sequences I enjoy, including the aforementioned exchange between Batman and Flash and the scene in which Bruce explains to Diana how he now realizes that Clark was more human than he was. But they’re oases of enjoyment in a sea of clumsy calculations.
@68/scimarad: “Anti-hype did me a favour on this one. The reviews and word of mouth were SO terrible that when I finally got around to watching it my reaction was “well that was kind of alright, actually.” Not actually good but nowhere near as terrible as I was lead to believe.”
Yeah, that was part of it for me. Although part of it was that every previous DCEU movie except Wonder Woman was so horribly flawed or incoherent that it was refreshing just that this one was watchable and inoffensive.
@69/Stephen: Honestly, I’ve never really been able to see the problem with Cavill’s digital lip here. I can occasionally tell that there’s something a little bit odd about it, but only if I’m specifically trying to spot it. It’s not something I would’ve registered if I hadn’t known about it. Although I didn’t see the movie on the big screen.
Part of the problem I think is the delight of execs for Snyder in general. after the success of the Dark Knight trilogy everyone was convinced that “dark and gritty” was the way to go. Snyder seems to be good at the deconstruction of a genre but in a superhero setting it’s not always the best route. A big problem is that they tried to copy the MCU success without putting in the work first. The Avengers succeeded because the previous solo movies had already introduced the characters and we were familiar with who everyone was. The seeds had been sown before hand, so when the occasion arose that they needed to team up they didn’t have to try to spend half the movie giving everyone an origin story, they could hit the ground running. Add to that every MCU movie has a different tone to it. you have gods, and hero’s. You have war stories and heists. Loki as an antagonist was genius as we had already seen in previous films what a complicated character he was. We hate his motives but love his style. Then to introduce a shadowy figure behind Loki and it was enough to make audiences scream for more.
You can complain about Whedon all you like, but he knows dialogue and character development. It’s not his fault JL failed, he had to try to make a watchable movie out of what Snyder had vomited up. This delight of modern film makers to mute the colour palette and make everything dingy and grey is really annoying. the later Harry Potter films are almost unwatchable because of this. There is no joy in the film, just a director telling you how to feel. Infinity War ended in the bright sunlit landscape of Wakanda. It was colourful and frantic and exciting, and at the snap there was a genuine emotional punch to the heart. they didn’t need the cinematography to remind us how to feel, the storytelling did that for us. JL went too quickly and tried to introduce a story that didn’t feel earned. Steppenwolf had no development before hand so we didn’t care about him. Outside of comic fans nobody knew who he was or what he wanted or what was behind him. Darkseid is a mystery nobody knows unless they are actually fans, and fans don’t make massive box office. Thanos was introduced over the course of a dozen movies. by the time Infinity War came out the general public knew how dangerous he was and wanted to see more of him. He had relationships with characters we loved and when he got the chance to shine we felt we knew him. We understood his motivation and we felt he was a genuine threat rather than “Latest CGI Villain”. Disney/ Marvel took their time and crafted a masterpiece. WB/ DC tried to take a shortcut and just came up with a wildly inconsistent film that was a total shambles.
@70/Chris: it isn’t just his lip. It’s his entire face. To put it indelicately, he looks like a cross between Joaquin Phoenix and Peter Griffin when he had his stroke. The botch job is even more apparent due to the retention of some of the Snyder shots, in which Cavill still looks like a perfectly normal human being.
If there’s a viewing platform out there small enough for this horrendous misfire not to be obvious, I should probably check it out. What did you watch on?
FYI, a little while after I saw the movie, I read an interesting AMA on Reddit with one of the digital effects artists who had been involved in the project. He had to remain anonymous, of course, but he still sounded highly credible. And he said the mustache wipe could have been performed seamlessly had their team been given the proper amount of time and money. But they were rushed to make the announced release date, and they knew they couldn’t deliver anything watchable. The studio knew too, and just didn’t care. It was an embarrassment to everybody who worked on it, he said.
[citation needed]
Whedon knows quipping and “banter” (which is not the same as actual banter), but his dialogue skills are woefully inadequate in the current era.
This movie was an overall big “meh” and disappointment for me because it wasn’t nearly as fun as it could have been for such a big event flick. Whenever there’s a big unconvincing CGI baddie, it just takes me out of the whole movie and Steppenwolf was all over this thing. I’d still like to a see another attempt at a JL team-up and hopefully Ezra Miller gets his stand-alone movie.
Oh, and maybe I’m the only one in the world who didn’t notice but I watched Justice League on the big screen and never could tell that Henry Cavill’s upper lip was CGI’d! Even looking at still images I guess it looks a bit plastic but nothing that would stand out to me if someone hadn’t pointed it out.
@71/Adrian Lucas: I resist the attitude that “Marvel did it, therefore it’s the only possible right way to do it.” That’s nonsense — there’s always more than one valid way to tell a story. Multiple superhero movies have succeeded in introducing a full team from the start rather than needing to introduce them individually in earlier movies — X-Men, Mystery Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Incredibles, Big Hero 6, Guardians of the Galaxy. Even the 2005 Fantastic Four movie was successful at establishing the characters, for all its other weaknesses. So clearly it is something that can be done, and thus it makes no sense to call it impossible.
And frankly I’ve always felt that it would’ve been worse for DC to just slavishly copy Marvel’s formula. It’s always better to try something different, even if it’s not sure to succeed.
For that matter, I disagree with the consensus that Justice League failed in its introductions of the characters. I think it did just fine. It successfully made me like Flash and Cyborg and want to see their solo movies. It felt like the pilot episode to a team-based TV series, which maybe isn’t ideal for a movie, but for me, it succeeded reasonably well at what it was trying to do.
@72/Stephen: I don’t need the Superman-face issue explained to me. I’ve read all about it for years now. I’m just saying it looked reasonably okay to me aside from a slight oddness that I could easily ignore, and you won’t be able to change my perception with words. And that’s okay. My ability to accept the way Superman looks in this movie is to my benefit. It’s one less thing to bother me.
I don’t know if this is related to my general being horrible with faces but I’m glad I’m not the only one who actually can’t figure out what’s wrong with Superman’s face and what everybody is talking about… :)
I had normal amount of expectation and enthusiasm when I watched Justice League. I hadn’t known anything about the difficulties the movie making process went through. I watched it with my brother and both of us agreed (which is rather rare) that it was disappointing. Especially the final battle and how it ended (I was reminded of the way the Rise of the Guardians’ Pitch Black was taken away by his minions.) I liked it better than Suicide Squad but that’s about it. An okay-ish movie. Not a particularly great or memorable one.
As for Superman’s face, I could tell something was very off about it. It bothered me throughout. I didn’t find out about the digital mustache erasure until months after. I was happy to finally understand and shared the info with my brother.
College Humour skewered this very concept in one of their sketches well before the film came out:
“SUPERMAN: We should team up.
BATMAN: Why? Bullets literally bounce off you, I’m just basically a rich guy who’s nuts”
And….this film pretty much plays that out. There is a huge threat….lets get Superman to deal with that. And he does.
End of film.
@76/Lisamarie: Interesting — I’ve had the same thought. I’m not great with faces either, and I’ve wondered if that might be why the Superman face thing doesn’t bother me. Although if that’s so, it’s weird that Cyborg seems so uncanny-valley to me, that even the human half of his face looks distractingly like digital animation. I suspect they just replaced his whole face rather than trying to match-move the robotic part with his real features. But if so, why am I able to recognize that but not be bothered by the Superman thing?
@78/line: Sure, maybe Superman saved the day, but the others saved him. So they were still needed.
Plus they were there to save civilians from the henchmonsters and stuff while Superman tackled the big bad. That kind of support was something Superman (and Metropolis) could really have benefited from in Man of Steel, say.
Once upon a time, back in 1982, John Carpenter released his remake of The Thing. Nowadays it’s considered a classic. Back then, the critics despised it:
“Instant junk.”
— The New York Times
“It’s my contention that John Carpenter was never meant to direct a science-fiction horror movie. Here’s some things he’d be better suited to direct: traffic accidents, train wrecks and public floggings.”
— Starlog
“Is this the most hated film of all time?”
— Cinefantastique
Sound familiar? Now, you may say there’s no way that people will ever look back on Zack Snyder’s superhero films as classics. But the critics of 1982 would have said the same about John Carpenter.
@80 You could say that for every bad movie ever made. It doesn’t usually come tru
@79CB
Yeah they gave the rest of the group something to do, but (Cyborg excepted) it did feel a bit like giving the bass guitarist a solo to make him feel better. It also felt a bit manufactured .
That family sitting around not being harmed in their extremely easy to break into house just so flash would have something to do and Superman having some relationship time just so he won’t be there at the beginning felt like manufactured problems.
Also I wonder how often they can go back to that well before it runs very dry. To be honest I think this is a fundamental problem with Superman as a character – he’s too OP. It forces formulaic jeopardy or kryptonite into the plot. Kinda like how every romantic comedy has to have a misunderstanding between the leads to draw out the plot, every Superman seems to need an excuse to put him on ice until the last 15 minutes.
@82/line: There have been many great stories told about Superman, and sometimes they’re about the problems that arise from being so powerful. Elliot S! Maggin’s ’70s comics and novels were often quite good at exploring this, and Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman does an excellent job of it too. Of course it can be mishandled, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to handle well. It’s just a challenge that needs to be creatively resolved, like anything else in fiction.
But yes, delaying Superman’s arrival has all too often been the lazy fallback for prolonging the danger. Man of Steel is a standout example, with the plot being contrived to keep Superman on literally the exact opposite side of the planet while Metropolis was falling apart. But it goes back to the ’40s radio series, in which a lot of the plotting often revolved around contrived ways to keep Clark Kent from becoming aware of the danger to Lois, Jimmy, etc. until the last installment of the serial.
@82. It is the same problem the X-men movies had, how to put Professor X out out action so he doesn’t just mind control the problem away, and the rest of the movies can happen. He’s in a coma, he’s drugged and kidnapped, he’s temporarily dead, he’s too inexperienced/in love with his bestie to notice, he’s drugged up again, he’s kidnapped again…etc.
I think with Superman that adding Batman into the mix actually makes it harder to put Superman out of commission. The traditional way to do it in Supe’s own series (comic and tv) is to give him a mystery to untangle before he can punch someone into orbit. And that works when Clark is alone, but add Bruce and suddenly the World’s Greatest Detective has to be the one who works on the mystery aspect leaving Supes just kinda hanging there.
The other way to make the JL work is to make the problem too widespread for any one hero to stop. The traditional alien invasion works because not even Superman can be in multiple places at once. While he’s punching the big bad, everyone else is punching the slightly smaller bads in various places around the world.
I know that Superman was the last to join the fight in the Snyder Cut (as evidenced by the clip I linked many comments ago). The sidelining him and the Flash with the Russian family was a Whedon invention, as was the entire Russian family subplot. It’s safe to assume that Superman had more of an actual fight in the Snyder Cut instead of the boringly easy beatdown Whedon gave us. But that’s one of the glaring problems with the Whedonized JL: there’s no struggle.
@cb Yeah I’d think the best way to handle Superman is to lean into his OP status as a the basis for the story (the idea of Batman seeing Superman as a threat is a pretty decent premise even if many people didn’t like the execution) rather than icing him for the majority of the plot.
@84. Huh, Its true re Professor X and I have to say I didn’t realise that until now. I think that shoes you that X-Men (at least in films) ice Xavier with a lot more style. When I look back its seems to me the likes of Stryker and Magneto realise the threat Xavier is to their plans so only execute those plans when they know he will be out of the action/plan to take him out of the conflict somehow.
@87/line: You’re talking about Superman’s great power seeming like a problem to other people. I’m saying there have been good stories in which Superman’s almost limitless power created unique challenges for him as a person, like the burden of the responsibilities he bore to the universe, or the question of whether he was harming humanity by being overprotective. That’s the kind of story Elliot Maggin excelled at. He proved that it’s possible to humanize Superman and give him vulnerabilities even when his power is nigh-godlike.
And as far as action stories are concerned rather than character stories, one can make them work by focusing less on problems that can be solved with superpowers and more on puzzles or mysteries that need to be solved. That’s how it was pretty routinely done in the early comics, on radio, and in the George Reeves TV series. The bad guys Superman fought were usually ordinary humans that he could defeat without working up a sweat, but first he had to solve the case and figure out who they were.
Yup, this film is a mess, and while it has some nice action scenes, and some sweet Superman moments, the end result is absolutely mediocre and boring. Yes, it’s also bad that we lost Affleck and Irons.
I HATED Ezra Miller as Flash, he is nothing like the character he’s supposed to be, and does not even have the charisma Momoa does (also not playing a recognizable version of the comic book character). Cyborg is meh, and on top of that, his CGI looks awful most of the time.
@11 – Chris: You are SO right.
@15 – Austin: I honestly never noticed any bad CGI on Cavill’s face, and I was looking for it.
@16 – Stormbrother: Then you must really find Batman boring, because he can also do everything, albeit with different methods.
@19 – Chris: Indeed, Gal Gadot filmed the reshoots for Wonder Woman while pregnant.
@38 – Gareth: I squeed at seeing the Lantern.
@57 – Word.
@66 – Almuric: Snyder may have shot that scene, and perhaps he intended it to be colorful… but the editing and color correction was done under Whedon’s direction.
@68 – scimarad: You were lucky. I was quite excited about this film, and ended up disappointed. Ditto with the great reviews I saw for Aquaman.
Heh. https://twitter.com/kryptonscodex/status/1137329133774692353
I love this movie – no, correction, I Love this cinematic feature; I don’t adore it because it’s an All Time Classic, I Love it because I am (at heart and not quite to the exclusion of other Superhero settings) a DC mark with an especial fondness for the Justice League AND I GOT TO SEE THEIR MOVIE!
Recursive logic, I know, but one makes no apologies – I had a good time at the cinema with this one (twice!) and it still makes me smile when I watch it; what more can a fan ask for? (Actually, now that I think on it, reading that Mr Ciaran Hinds got some coaching on playing CGI characters from his good friend Mr Liam Neeson seriously makes me want to see the latter as Darkseid).
Oh, and @@@@@13robertstadler – my understanding is that Superman is not as smart as Batman, not as skilled a fighter as Wonder Woman or faster than The Flash (who is the Fastest Man Alive, no matter what Superman may claim for the sake of ginning up interest in more charity races), but while he’s something of a jack-of-all-trades superpower wise he’s the master of none; Big Blue pulls his weight and a little more, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the Justice League are dead weight (for example is Superman as good a detective as Batman? Is he as skilled in weaponry & politicking as Diana? Has he ever been able to match The Flash’s knack for pulling off crazy stunts with the Speed Force?).
It should also be noted that Clark has such an impressive list of vulnerabilities – Kryptonite, Red Sun radiation, magic, girlfriends with the initials ‘LL’ that it’s easy to see why he prefers to work with friends while facing Existential Threats to … well, EVERYTHING. Superman is definitely one of the League’s heavy hitters, but there’s no reason he should make the others redundant.
Well, today we learned that this debacle will have the best of all possible outcomes: https://www.cbr.com/justice-league-zack-snyder-cut-hbo-max/
@92/Almuric: Or the worst. I don’t expect the Snyder version to be any good, and regardless of that, it sets a terrible precedent for a studio to cave to the demands of entitled fans.
@93,
Yeah, considering all the many flaws of Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman, I also don’t understand this popular, rabid belief that the Snyder cut will somehow magically turn Justice League into the best thing since sliced bread.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t change that WB rushed to build a competitor to the MCU while ignoring the lessons that the MCU worked because it took its time with the worldbuilding. It doesn’t change that this rush caused the DCEU to blow up in Warner’s faces as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It just feels like WB is trying to do this to offset the financial damage of Birds of Prey bombing, Wonder Woman 1984 getting pushed back, and trying to promote HBOMax (which also trying to shut up this segment of the fandom once and for all).
I find myself reminded of the words Spock spoke in “Amok Time” on the original Star Trek: “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting.”
I guess we’ll find out in 2021. But while the final cut was a train wreck, there’s nothing in Snyder’s oeuvre that indicates to me that his “cut” will be any better…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The Snyder Cut movement has always amused me. Did people forget how bad Snyder’s DC movies were?
@94/Mr. Magic: “It just feels like WB is trying to do this to offset the financial damage of Birds of Prey bombing, Wonder Woman 1984 getting pushed back, and trying to promote HBOMax (which also trying to shut up this segment of the fandom once and for all).”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, it’s also partly to help keep industry pros employed during a time when new movie production is on hold due to the pandemic.
Lets put it this way: even if I wasn’t a fan of Snyder’s DC films, I’d still want him to get the chance to tell the story he intended. WB used the death of his daughter to oust him from his own movie and try to change it for more $$$. Only they failed to get the $$$. Not every creator screwed over by Hollywood gets a second chance like this and I for one am very pleased, no matter what else happens.
@97,
Oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought about that.
Yeah. that does makes sense.
I’m not at all surprised that this is COVID related — there’s a dearth of new material being produced, and that’s going to become a bigger and bigger problem the longer the pandemic goes on. So this is less caving in to fan outcry and more giving people work and providing content for the near future when there will be very little.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think the Snyder-cut release will be more an event out of curiosity for the average person than something that most people have a pent up desire to see. Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman after all were joyless slogs to get through as were the Snyder-filmed parts of the theatrical version of Justice League. If anything, I’d rather get an all Joss Whedon version but that’ll never happen.
@98/Almuric: “WB used the death of his daughter to oust him from his own movie and try to change it for more $$$.”
That’s not what happened. Officially, Whedon was brought on to make changes in collaboration with Snyder months before his daughter’s death, and after trying to distract himself with work for a while, Snyder chose to leave of his own accord. Even the alternative, less flattering version out there is that WB had already decided to let him go well before his daughter’s death, because they were unsatisfied with his work. So in both accounts, the decision to alter the film was made months before his daughter died.
@95. Having seen what got released, that’s a chance I’m more than willing to take. Can’t be worse than thirsty Martha, sunburned Lois and losing the carkeys of hope in a river.
@102. JL shooting started in April 2016, well into the BvS backlash. WB didn’t replace him then. Snyder finished principal photography on JL in October 2016, which is why there is a Snyder Cut to begin with. It was already well into post-production, as evidenced by some of the SC leaks which show scenes with CGI ranging from skeletal to nearly finished.
I know the studio spin was that Whedon worked with Snyder, but I’m very suspicious about WB spin because they outright lied about the amount and duration of the JL reshoots. They made it sound like it was just a few scenes to finish the movie, instead of over an hour of new material. Some Vero users questioned Snyder about some of Whedon’s contributions, like the Russian family, and Snyder had no idea what they were talking about. If the whole story comes out and I’m wrong, I’ll happily revise my opinion. I only know what it looks like and it sure looks like they took advantage of a family tragedy.
This isn’t just a win for Zack Snyder. It’s a win for the writer and the actors and the crew who saw their work chopped up or replaced altogether. It’s a win for his fans — and yes, he does have them — who felt cheated when they paid their ticket for a movie that was marketed largely with Snyder’s material and ended up being something else entirely.
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One aspect of the Snyder Cut I am looking forward to is the (presumable) restoration of Tom Holkenborg’s original score. He confirmed last year that it had been completed in post production before he was ousted in favor of Danny Elfman’s re-scoring.
Don’t get me wrong, Holkenborg’s not quite a favorite composer of mine (though I did like his Sonic score more than I’d expected). But Elfman’s Justice League score also eally didn’t really wow me, either. It also drove me crazy that apart from Wonder Woman (and one Superman instance), Elfman ignored Zimmer and Holkenborg’s already established leitmotifs for Batman and Superman in favor of reusing his own Batman theme and John Williams’ Superman.
So it’ll be nice to presumably have musical consistency back in the re-cut film and see what Holkenborg originally intended.
Following up on @106,
Snyder has confirmed that the Junkie XL and Hans Zimmer score will be used.
Well, Snyder says that it was his choice to leave, but from the panel he did Saturday it sounds like Whedon came in after his exit.
https://comicbook.com/movies/news/zack-snyder-justice-league-his-decision-to-leave-justice-con/