I’ve been falling asleep a lot during the movies. Someone on screen is explaining something about the plot with the canned cadence of an industrial film, and the warmth and dark of the theater lull me into a fugue state. It never lasts very long; a loud noise sounds, and I pop up wide-eyed and refreshed. I’d recommend it, if you’re ever bored. Many movies are boring for just a little bit, and anyways, you can always catch up through Wikipedia.
Most recently I fell asleep during Justice League, before a scene where Aquaman, a power swimmer who can talk to fish and is played by the very fit Jason Momoa, joins the titular league. Early in the movie, he’s approached by Batman (Ben Affleck) about the possibility of starting a superteam, and declines. “I don’t like you coming here, digging up my business, getting into my life,” he growls with the petulance of a teenaged battle rapper. He eventually changes his mind, because he has to in order for the promise of the movie’s poster to be fulfilled, but the moment where that happens is where I passed out, because my body instinctively realized it was only exposition, and not incredibly interesting on its own.
Justice League is two hours of exposition animated by $300 million of computer effects. It’s not quite unwatchable, but it can basically be ignored as it’s happening in front of you. This is not an original observation. The reviews have been largely brutal, and during its opening weekend the movie took home $94 million, a virtual failure considering the hopes this would be DC’s aesthetic and financial equivalent of Marvel’s The Avengers, which is the fifth-highest grossing movie of all-time. The theater I saw it in, which was mostly full and largely composed of single parents and their young children, was largely silent throughout the screening. No cheers, no boos, no laughs, no… nothing. It passed through us, and then it was over.
Justice League begins with a video of Superman (Henry Cavill) being interviewed via iPhone by an adoring fan who asks him what he likes most about Earth, prompting a reflective smile. It’s meant to inspire warm feelings for Krypton’s last son, who was previously seen dead at the end of 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but one is immediately distracted by an uncomfortable truth: Superman looks super fucked up. In this scene, and nearly all of the movie, Cavill’s upper lip is unnaturally smooth and slightly swollen, like he had an allergic reaction to the script. Once you’re aware of it, you can’t look away, undermining whatever dramatic weight he’s supposed to provide.
But enough of the lip, for now. Because Superman is dead, the world has fallen into moral crisis; as the credits roll we’re given scenes of Muslim shopkeepers being harassed by black metal fans, and homeless men holding dour signs like “I tried.” Bruce Wayne, who has been fighting crime as Batman for two decades, has a confrontation with a grotesque bug-like alien, here to invade the Earth now that its strongest protector is gone. He decides to recruit a team to fight the impending challenges, consisting of heroes glimpsed in recent DC movies: Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman, the Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Parker).
Batman’s invitation is declined by some, but an escalation in global security necessitates their involvement. Steppenwolf, a withered demigod-like alien in pursuit of three Macguffins called the Motherbox, whose unification will bring the end of the Earth, is the team’s first enemy. To better fight him, the newly formed league decides to revive the deceased Superman, through some combination of Kryptonian junk science and electricity generated by the Flash’s speed. It works, for reasons that are thankfully left unexplained, but the revived Superman returns in an amnesiac state, and begins to fight the amateur necromancers. Will he remember who he is? Will the league come together to fight Steppenwolf before he brings hell on Earth? Will Cavill’s lip ever look normal again?
The last question invites a wonderful story of bureaucratic and creative incompetence that parallels the film’s general disappointment. When Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad were pilloried for their darkness, the cast of Justice League was asked back for reshoots to make the movie lighter in tone. By that time, Cavill was already filming Mission Impossible 6, a role which required him to grow a porny mustache. The studio was willing to release him to finish his work on Justice League, with a caveat: He couldn’t shave the mustache. They got their reshoots, but DC then spent presumable thousands removing Cavill’s facial hair in every new scene, the end result being that the most important member of what is supposed to be the franchise’s cornerstone movie looks consistently inhuman, just because the brain trust couldn’t figure out the tone the first time around.
Superman’s CGI upper lip from Justice League looks like they just used the smile effect from FaceApp pic.twitter.com/cbvTKar0QR
— Aushed Potatoons 🦃 (@aus_toon) November 20, 2017
His teammates look similarly off. As Batman, Affleck is uncomfortably bulky in the suit, like he’s been mainlining steroids, and moves with the grace of a drunken gorilla. (He's already trying to exit the role.) Ezra Miller’s best lines were clearly edited in post-production, and his Flash is covered in thick, unseemly shoulder pads. There’s nearly no trace of humanity in Ray Parker’s Cyborg, as all but three-quarters of his face are replaced with chrome robotics, and the uncanny valley effect is just as distracting as Cavill’s shiny lip. (My note, after the dozenth close-up of his rendered, distractingly poreless face: “Cyborg looks very fucked up.”)
Momoa gives great face, though his moody line readings and slightly generic ability set — he spends almost the entire movie out of water, giving the impression his power is Crossfit — reduce his presence. There is one true success: Gal Gadot is exactly right as Wonder Woman, even if her Q rating amongst film journalists is directly dependent on her ability to avoid questions about Palestine. Her lithe martial arts film best in slow motion, and she’s beyond anything as demeaning as a romantic subplot; all of her teammates are in love with her, though nobody will admit it.
These DC movies have been haunted by a dark, gritty tone since they handed over the reins to Zack Snyder, whose only aesthetic interest is slow-motion; the last minute addition of Joss Whedon after Snyder had to leave the film for personal reasons didn’t provide much plausible warmth. (There is one good line: When Batman is asked what his powers are, he replies “I’m rich.”) These movies are supposed to take place in our world — a headline compares Superman to the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, which occurred around the same time — but there is nothing recognizably realistic about the way anything looks, or acts. Even the sole shots of nature, as when Superman stands in the middle of a Kansas corn field, appear computer-generated, like a Terrence Malick film assembled by algorithm. The main payoff is the formation of the team, so that they can come together pre-assembled in the next movie, which of course is teased in a post-credits scene.
Snyder can’t escape the influence of Christopher Nolan, who at least knew how to pace his films toward thrilling conclusions, and had a moral aversion to filler. His movies may have inspired unwavering fealty from the least interesting moviegoers possible, but they were fun to watch, while Snyder brings all of the plodding moralizing and none of the on-screen kineticism. The result is a vision too joyless for children, too corny for adults, too boring for everyone — and that DC is unable to capture the audience willing to go these comic book movies time and time again suggests some kind of extreme buffoonery at the corporate level.
There is something fascinating about the wave of snarky, critical reviews that accompany each of the DC movies. It’s fun to make fun of something this unenjoyable, though the uniform display of offense suggests there is some way to make a good comic book movie, when now the genre most exists as a justification to make more comic book movies, which mostly exist to make obscene amounts of money What would it have meant if this movie were “good”? It isn’t as though the failure of Justice League will inspire DC to stop its plans for sequels, and the perpetual success Marvel finds with even passably enjoyable installments proves that standards are only so high.
It’s easy to imagine what’ll happen from here. The higher-ups will eventually cut ties with Snyder and hire someone with a better aesthetic sense. (The Spider-Man franchise recently suffered through the awkward, underperforming Andrew Garfield films, and rebounded with the on-brand Spider-Man: Homecoming.) The next wave of Superman and Batman films will be appropriately funny, filled with tasteful celebrity cameos and empathic monologues. Critics will happily agree these movies are better; fanboys will tweet more positively; the wave of momentum will crest and provide much-improved box office returns, giving everybody what they want.
It’s true these movies are generally better than they were 17 years ago — Justice League is at least more coherent than Catwoman — when 2000’s X-Men launched the resurgent superhero genre, though not unimaginably better, which makes their critical popularity almost inconceivable. Maybe the deciders have been swayed by the mob. I still remember the paroxysms of rage when Nolan’s The Dark Knight lost its perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating, and failed to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, an event that directly led the Academy to expand the field. Superhero fans use the internet, and the internet creates jobs; amongst online media, there are entire career paths available if you have a fluency with nerd culture and an aversion to criticism. It’s easier to give in and accept what the studios now tell us is fun.
The story, though, is the same old thing: the hero prevails, the villain recedes, the forces of truth and justice pick up a big W, at least 2 or 3 new movies are set up. I was unconscious for at least ten minutes of Justice League, and though it’s hard to say I missed anything, and because it’s hard to say that I want them to make more superhero movies, I don’t know if a more enjoyable experience would’ve been that enjoyable. For a moment, I even felt relieved, because as the credits rolled it seemed obvious there would be no more of this, not in this form. Then, for the first time since I sat down, reality sank in, and I remembered all of the movies that are yet to come.
