"Justice League" review, part 1: How Infirm a Foundation

I'm not even going to touch the film in this post. I'm just going to explain why it was utterly doomed.

A while back, I wrote "undercutting Snyder with the BvS theatrical cut was the single dumbest thing in this entire attempt at a cinematic universe." Well... no, it wasn't. But at that point, it was the worst thing you could have done.

"That point" being: you've already committed to piggybacking your Big Shared Universe onto Zack Snyder's "The Only Way This Jesus Metaphor Could Be Less Subtle Is If I Released The Film On Easter Weekend," a title only slightly less cumbersome than what the studio ultimately went with. The Extended Cut only softens the blow as to what a train wreck Dawn of Justice is. There is no amount of excess footage that can get around the following problems:

1. Mark Zuckerberg cosplaying as Lex Luthor pulls a goddamn piss prank at a Senate hearing.
2. Batman and Superman team up because their mothers have the same name.
3. Wonder Woman teams up with them because Batman sent her an email.

So I'm just going to come out and say it: using Zack Snyder as the vehicle for your attempt to take on the Marvel juggernaut was a strategic mistake even Napoleon wouldn't have made.

I. The Red Capes are Coming

Set the wayback clock for 2011. Marvel has been building up to No, Not With Emma Peel, Directed by No, Not Twilight Guy for three years now and it's due out next year. Competing with that is Chris Nolan Attempts to Cram Knightfall and No Man's Land into Three and a Half Hours, and We're Only Letting Him Get Away With It Because His Attempt to Cram The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke into Three Hours was Such a Colossal Success. The Green Lantern movie just flopped. 

What do?

The only thing DC has in the pipeline is Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, a new take on Josef Stalin's Jesus Christ's origin story. Snyder has previously directed the divisive 300, the super-divisive Watchmen, and the ultra-divisive Sucker Punch. 

Now, I like the aforementioned films. But here's the thing: a lot of people don't. Film studios are not in the business of making movies I happen to like. They're in the business of making money. I can understand - barely - the logic behind giving Snyder the reins of a standalone Superman trilogy to complement Nolan's Batfilms. I could understand giving Snyder a smaller "shared universe" film like, say, Suicide Squad or even Birds of Prey. (I would still much rather see Zack Snyder's Birds of Prey than Joss Whedon's Batgirl. At least any complaints about sexy costumes could be dismissed as being comic-accurate this time.)

But that's not what they did.

I listed three main problems with the film. As far as I'm concerned, Jesse Eisenberg is on Snyder and Snyder alone. The other two, though, could just plausibly be the studio's fault.

I have a theory that in Snyder's original vision of Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman didn't appear. The final fight probably played out quite differently, without any explicit team up between Big Black and Big Blue because Martha. Like, "oh, I don't have time to kill Superman because Doomsday is ravaging my city," "oh, I don't have time to tussle with Batman because I have to sacrifice myself to stop Doomsday," "oh, I guess Superman was a hero after all." 

But then DC and WB came along and said, "no, we need Wonder Woman and we need YouTube clips of Flash and Aquaman and Affirmative Action Man.* And we're the men with the money so we're going to get what we want." 

*No, really, the Justice League is supposed to be Supes, Bats, Wondy, Flash, Aquablonde, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter. Cyborg - who used to be Dick Grayson's age - has been in MM's place for a while in the comics because representation (and Geoff Johns loves him), and don't pretend otherwise. I won't call him that again, but let's not pretend he's there because he's a popular character; the most recent issue of Cyborg shipped under 10,000 copies. It shipped fewer copies than a reprint of last-month's "Dark Knights" issue where Evil Batman steals Cyborg's powers, that's how bad it's doing. Those are cancellation numbers.

Now, again, that doesn't excuse Mark Lutherberg's piss prank. Mark Lutherberg's piss prank is just going to have to be chalked up to Snyder fundamentally misunderstanding the character and fundamentally miscasting him.

Now, fundamentally miscasting legendary comic book villains is something WB's had some familiarity with. After all, when you say "Roid Raging Latino Badass," Tom Hardy's the first thing to pop into your mind, right? (Sidebar: I'm amused that Chuck Dixon - who's apparently some sort of arch-conservative - has been putting tons of gratuitous Spanish in his current Bane story, which you should totally read because it's everything comics should be.)

And that brings me to my next point: The Dark Knight would not have been improved by the gratuitous presence of Wonder Woman. In fact, the gratuitous presence of Wonder Woman probably would have defeated the film's point about what must be done to stop terrible men. Hrm. Hard to do your Christ metaphor when the difference between Wondy and Supes (in Yawn of Martha, at least) apparently comes down to eye-beams and a weakness to Kryptonite.

Another reason why The Dark Knight wouldn't work as a springboard for a Big Dumb Shared Universe is that it's already a fairly complex story. I call this the Mom Rule: if my mother can't follow the plot, neither can the general audience. Remember, WB isn't trying to make high art here. (Which again begs the question of why they hired the guy who made Sucker Punch.) They're trying to make lots of money by selling tickets to people. You know. Them. Some of them even voted for Trump (this is a joke). A lot of them thought The Force Awakens was full of finer stuff than the contents of that jar Mark Lutherberg left on that senator's desk (not a joke). Snyder's never going to make a straightforward "there's the bad guy, everybody go kill him" movie - the closes analogue in his oeuvre, 300, still has plenty of treachery in among the greasepaint. Iron Man is a more accessible movie than The Dark Knight, partly because it's not fourteen hours long, but that doesn't necessarily make it better. In order to follow the Mom Rule, Snyder would have to water his vision down so far as to disappoint his core fandom, and wouldn't necessarily endear himself to the critics.

See, Marvel built their stuff from the ground up. Iron Man was just an Iron Man movie until after the credits rolled and Sam Jackson showed up. Thor had some MiBs in it, but was otherwise self-contained. Captain America: The First Avenger was the weakest of these introductory films, mainly because it had to spend its third act setting up both The Avengers and The Winter Soldier. And then they did the Big Dumb Team Up. (There was a Hulk movie? Haha no there was not.)

Now go back to Dawn of Justice. Is it a Batman movie? If so, why's he acting like that? Is it a Superman movie? Why is Batman given the opening monologue? Is it a Justice League movie? It's like a sequel to Man of Steel and some Batman film that was never made where Wayne Manor got torched and Jason Todd died. I can roll with that. Mom can't. I've read The Dark Knight Returns and A Lonely Place of Dying. She hasn't.

So I'm just going to say this again: Zack Snyder's The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Superman trilogy was a wholly inappropriate launch vehicle for the DC Shared Universe. They went with him because he was the only game in town, and now they're left with a mess on their hands.

It could be worse, of course. Yes, Dawn of Justice has Mark Lutherberg's piss prank, but at least it doesn't have Darth Hiltsaber throwing a temper tantrum and getting so utterly thrashed as to be impossible to take seriously as a threat in the sequels.

Oh God, that's coming out next month isn't it? My childhood can only take so much.

II. After Doomsday

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice bombed. It was killed by horrible compromises with the studio, hostile reviews, and hostile word of mouth. Or it was a victim of the hubris of its director. Whatever. Again: Piss prank, Martha, Mark Lutherberg. There is no amount of spin that can justify these things.

Man of Steel got trashed for being "bleak" and "depressing" and Dawn of Justice doubled down. Now again, STUDIOS ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF MAKING MONEY, so I don't know how you couldn't expect what happened next. Geoff Johns was brought in to ride herd on Zack Snyder and make Justice League more like The Avengers fun.

Now, look, Snyder's had three movies given the "extended cut" treatment, and everyone agrees that the extended cut, the one that most closely matches his vision, is the better cut. So you have a controversial director who does his best work when he's not hindered by the studio, being hindered by the studio.

Fantastic.

There is not a film made in the history of film that was improved by a studio riding herd on an auteur director. Justice League was set up to fail. We knew - or should have known - that bringing in Geoff Johns to ride herd on Snyder would lead to something watered down. Snyder was not going to be able to finish the trilogy on his own terms. I have some sympathy for him even before getting into what happened next, but it's not like Batman v. Superman set the world on fire. It's not like Zack Snyder delivered the goods. And people who don't deliver the goods don't get unlimited creative freedom with the studio's money.

Now as I said above, part of Yawn of Martha's problem was, undoubtedly, the "set up the Big Dumb Crossover" mandate imposed on the studio. Snyder was caught between trying to tell his story and doing what the studio wanted. And, in the end, he was unable to accomplish either. A victim of fate or a director wildly out of step with his audience; that's for you to decide.

What happened next was unforgivable.

The sequence of events appears to have gone something like this: Snyder turned in his first cut of Justice League. The studio brought in Joss Whedon to write material that Snyder would re-shoot. Then tragedy struck, and Snyder had to leave the project. Whedon was promoted to direct the re-shoots.

Joss Whedon directed the first two Avengers films. As both a writer and a director, he is not fit to tie Snyder's shoelaces. Sure, he was good fifteen years ago. Nothing he's made since Serenity has impressed me whatsoever. This is the man who saw fit to waste my time in 2014 with a goddamn Widow/Hulk romance, and that alone should merit, if not capital punishment, then at least permanent exile from the comic-book movie community. But my personal opinion aside, Whedon is a Marvel guy. Again: directed two Avengers movies.

If DC is going to hire the director of Marvel's The Avengers to make its Big Dumb Team-Up, what, precisely, is the point of DC's Big Dumb Crossover Universe? What point are you trying to prove? "We have popular characters too" appears to be the only answer. It's not "we can do it differently." If you wanted to do that, you would have had Patty Jenkins (director of Wonder Woman) handle it instead of Whedon. With Whedon, what you get is Marvel's The Avengers cosplaying as the Justice League. Hiring him makes it clear that they have no greater ambition than "copy Marvel and hope to recoup our losses."

To be perfectly blunt, the fact that Whedon was hired to finish the film (and brought composer Danny Elfman in with him) lowered my expectations to "Well, at least I'll be able to hear the One True Batman theme a few times in a movie theater. Yay."

Enjoy the DC Extended Universe, folks. Just don't pretend it's granny's peach tea.