There is a moment in “Justice League” when one of the assembled heroes exclaims “Booyah!” to celebrate the satisfactory conclusion of a particularly gruelling action sequence. Until that point, the film simply runs numbingly on the low end of the DC Films bell curve — not as offensively awful as “Suicide Squad,” but not quite reaching the functional incompetence of “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice” — but the utterance of the sassy, outdated, nearly anachronistic zinger suddenly crystalizes just how desperate “Justice League” is to please.
While producers understandably don’t want audiences to “think about how this movie was made,” and forget about the beleaguered production which included extensive reshoots and rewrites, eventually it’s simply hard to ignore. Everything is thrown at the wall here — armloads of cornball one-liners; rock ‘n roll character introductions; quiet, dramatic passages; overdriven CGI spectacle — but, ironically for a superhero team-up movie, none of it hangs together.
The story, thankfully, is at least fairly straightforward. Following Superman’s death, the Hope that the world once shared has been overtaken by Fear (these themes are very important, even if they’re penciled into the script with all the grace of an oversized crayon) providing the perfect breeding ground for Steppenwolf (Ciarin Hinds) and his legion of Parademons to try and turn Earth into a “primordial hellscape,” as Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) puts it. If you know about motherboxes and who Darkseid is, you’ll get a few bonus points. If you don’t, you’ll still be just fine. Essentially, a Big Scary God Demon is coming to destroy the planet.
Realizing that his big bank account and gadgets won’t be able to cut it on their own in the fight to save the globe, Bruce Wayne aka Batman (Ben Affleck) finds Wonder Woman and together they — you guessed it — assemble a team. Loner Barry Allen aka The Flash (Ezra Miller) is eager to have friends and a purpose, and readily signs up. Arthur Curry aka Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Victor Stone aka Cyborg (Ray Fisher) are initially reluctant, but it doesn’t take too long for them to come around. However, there’s one more person they’ll need — a hero who literally wears Hope on his chest — but whether or not he can return, and if he’ll even be the same person if he does, is uncertain.
Mandated to run no longer than two hours, you certainly won’t feel the length of “Justice League,” but the narrative winds up having no room to breathe, and the characters little space to define themselves as the story races by. However, the most unfortunate and noticeable consequence of the storytelling parameters is that the film’s tonal incongruity becomes all the more pronounced.
While it’s never quite oil and water, there is a distinct disconnect between Zack Snyder’s muscular style of filmmaking, and the lighter touch generally employed by Joss Whedon (who was brought into write additional scenes and direct the reshoots on the film). The thuddingly unfunny jokes and gags — inserted to try and achieve a Marvel-esque balance of action and levity — jar against the loud, clanging setpieces. Most curiously, however, while “Justice League” doesn’t feel like a seamless combination of Snyder and Whedon’s visions, the fingerprints of either director also seem missing. No matter where you stand on Snyder as a filmmaker, his style is instantly recognizable, yet the film might be the most anonymous yet to bear his credit. Meanwhile, Whedon-ites will find little to cling to here. “Justice League” winds up watering down the trademarks of both directors into a bland blockbuster soup.
When it comes to spectacle, however, it’s not for lack of trying to wow. Just like the DCEU pictures before it, the movie suffers from an overblown, third act finale that overstays its welcome, and burdens the viewer with a mess of poorly executed and badly choreographed visuals which mistakes busyness for coherence. When not assaulting the senses, “Justice League” plays catch-up with other franchises, particularly a couple sequences involving The Flash that don’t hide their debt to Fox’s famous Quicksilver centerpiece scenes in the X-Men movies. But there is one undeniably strong standout sequence — that I can’t really go into without spoilers — that for several minutes is the perfect marriage of Snyder’s ambition and Whedon’s care for character detail. It’s what “Justice League” could’ve been, but aside from that moment, never becomes.
It all makes you feel a bit sorry for the cast, who do their best to carry a movie that’s obviously been haphazardly cut and reconfigured around them. Ben Affleck gets to shed the all-consuming anger of Bruce Wayne from ‘Batman v Superman,’ with the wealthy hero (mostly) happily playing with others and even getting to smile. It’s a welcome change. Jason Momoa brings some enjoyable charisma to Aquaman, and gets the biggest (and arguably only) laugh of the movie in an unexpected monologue. Gal Gadot continues her solid work from “Wonder Woman,” Ray Fisher is serviceable as Cyborg, but the one member of the ensemble who simply doesn’t gel is Ezra Miller. The actor mugs for the camera with every line delivery, bringing the movie to a stop with each deadweight quip. The Flash is constantly, aggravatingly on; there is rarely any respite from the character’s need to make his presence felt at any available opportunity, but the humor is rarely organic and consistently labored, and more than anything else in the movie, feels like the most fussed upon element as DC Films pivots their brand to sunnier territory.
On the technical end, “Justice League” fails to deliver the way a film of this size and expectation should. Cinematographer Fabien Wagner makes his first real blockbuster outing here (we’ll kindly overlook “Victor Frankenstein”) but he can’t shake his TV roots. The interiors and exteriors that were clearly shot on soundstages feel extra artificial in IMAX, and Wagner is simply adrift in action scenes that are often more pixels than anything flesh and blood. The digital effects here are particularly slapdash, the green screen renderings often look cheap, and as for the computer assisted removal of Henry Cavill’s moustache in the reshot scenes with Superman aka Clark Kent (yes, he’s back, and you’ll wonder why Warner Bros. kept it a big secret in the marketing materials) you’ll be able to tell which ones they are. It’s amusingly awful work.
By time “Justice League” gets to the finish line and credits — stick around, there is an abysmal mid-credits scene, and a decent enough post-credits scene — exhaustion has long set in. Witnessing the seams and stitches where Warner Bros. and DC tried so very hard to make “Justice League” work becomes wearying with each unsuccessful attempt to land a joke, and action scene that fails to engage. Coupled with endless, dry exposition about the dangers the superhero team will face (the first half of the movie is particularly thick with it), the movie accumulates into a wave of bad decisions that are taxing to endure. This isn’t the worst movie you’ll see this year, but it’s by far the most worked over, which makes “Justice League” belong in an undistinguished category all its own. [C-]