Last year, I spent more than four months going through Batman v Superman in exhaustive detail,
and so it may not come as a surprise to readers of this blog that I do
occasionally find it difficult to remain objective about this sort of thing.
Though I maintain that there is objective gold in BvS, occluded by its occasional thematic indigestibility, I freely
admit that much of what I like about Justice League is born out of my desire to like the movie. I can see why the average filmgoer would not have liked this film, and I can certainly sympathize with the disciples of Zack Snyder (largely being one myself). As before, I do not want to relitigate the “Snyder v Whedon: Dawn of Reshoots” guessing game; indeed, I’d wager that within five years, if Snyder’s recent social media presence is any barometer, we’ll know more concretely about one or both sides of the question. What I think is key, though, is not to think of this as a Snyder film – it isn’t. It is closer to a Joss Whedon film, particularly his Avengers duology, but like the Justice League comic itself it more closely resembles a “greatest hits” collection of all the things that work so far about the DC universe. We have the strong casting of Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Henry Cavill; we have the striking visual design of Gotham, Metropolis, and Themyscira; and we get new pieces bolted on to those aspects, including – most striking on this rewatch – a terrifically engaging Ezra Miller as The Flash, whose boisterous Spider-Man charm is a brilliant audience substitute for a guy who’s really just excited to be in the company of gods and heroes.
Sitting a few feet from the screen on home video rather than dozens of feet in the theater, the film looks different. Some of the CGI on Henry Cavill’s Gumby mouth looks dodgier, though Steppenwolf acquits himself better, and there are at least two surprising moments when a green screen is solidly visible (once on Aquaman’s cheek, once on Flash’s boot). Where Batman v Superman worked very hard to bring superheroes into our world and give us a stylized vision of the struggles of their souls, Justice League follows instead the giddiness of The Flash and runs with an aesthetic that reminds one of the original X-Men film, in which the prevailing mood was, “Look, the comics are walking around!” While a lot of folks took Whedon to task for apparently altering the color grading of the film, I think it helps distance the film from the “Snyder Cut” we may never see, instead taking the movie into a surrealistic cartoon corner that feels more like a comic book come to life, rather than a comic book coming into my life.
On rewatch, consciously trying to watch Justice League as the next superhero film in a long tradition and looking for points of connection rather than disconnect, it does feel very much like an episode of the 2001-2004 Justice League cartoon as informed by The Avengers. We have the same emphasis on team dynamics, informed by the unhealthy mistrust that, for better or for worse, holds the Avengers together. Whedon (or Snyder – at this point, who cares?) cribs a few notes from his playbook with a scene that echoes the “we’re a timebomb” argument from The Avengers; in the film’s climax, which I previously described as “airlifted from Sokovia,” reprises the family-as-microcosm we saw menaced by Ultron, which in turn syncs up with Batman’s direction to The Flash: “Save one.” Save one, then a truck, then the world. These heroes ought to be about hope, about the belief that one human being can become something greater and can save the world, and in Justice League I believe that Batman learns that lesson enough to teach it to the next generation. I buy that Wonder Woman is the gifted and capable leader of the team. I buy that Flash and Cyborg rise to the challenge. And I completely accept that the very idea of Superman is enough to make them all believe in the promise of tomorrow, not least because I believe that too.
Back in November, I found myself enjoying Justice League. Five months later, I still liked Justice League, but I liked it from a different angle, a sideways enjoyment of the film for what it was and not in spite of what it could have been. I don’t know that I will go to the mat for Justice League in the way that I will, every time, for Batman v Superman, and I will always believe that there is a universe out there somewhere in which Zack Snyder was given the time and the resources to complete the vision he introduced with Man of Steel. I had hoped to change minds about Batman v Superman with my “10 @ a Time” series, but I accept that it’s not worth the effort to try with Justice League. You get out of this movie what you seek to find in it, and as it stands, this Justice League is fun enough to justify each matching set of hours I choose to spend with it.
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