Jus­tice League

Before the open­ing cred­its of Jus­tice League roll, Hen­ry Cavill’s Super­man is shown being inter­viewed by two young fans. He recalls a spot of bizarre advice passed on to him by his father (pre­sum­ably Kevin Cost­ner, not Rus­sell Crowe): ​“Hope is like your car keys. It’s easy to lose, but if you look close enough, it’s usu­al­ly close by.” The scene cuts to a som­bre mon­tage as the world mourns Superman’s untime­ly death, pick­ing up where Bat­man v Super­man left off, with racial ten­sions flar­ing and robot insects begin­ning to invade Earth.

Luck­i­ly for every­one, cur­mud­geon­ly billionaire/​bat enthu­si­ast Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) intends to assem­ble a rag-tag band of heroes to save the world from gener­ic-CG-bad­die-of-the-week Step­pen­wolf (Cia­rán Hinds), who’s try­ing to enslave the plan­et for nefar­i­ous, con­vo­lut­ed rea­sons best sum­marised as ​‘because’. Wayne awk­ward­ly reunites with his BvS col­league Won­der Woman (Gal Gadot, rid­ing high after her solo block­buster out­ing) and the pair trun­dle off to recruit – with the min­i­mum amount of back­sto­ry – The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fish­er), and Aqua­man (Jason Momoa) to their ​‘Jus­tice League’.

Fol­low­ing the major dis­ap­point­ments of BvS and Sui­cide Squad, Warn­er Bros and DC appear to be stick­ing to a new blue­print here. There’s a famil­iar­i­ty to pro­ceed­ings, even down to The Flash’s slo-mo sequences which we’ve seen some­thing sim­i­lar to before in X‑Men: Days of Future Past and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Com­par­isons will inevitably be drawn between direc­tor Zack Snyder’s work and its Mar­vel coun­ter­parts, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Joss Whe­don had a large hand in reshap­ing Jus­tice League at the behest of the studio.

But what Avengers: Assem­ble had that Jus­tice League fails to find is a cohe­sive, ful­ly-realised tone, and rec­on­cil­ing the inher­ent dark­ness of Bat­man with the per­pet­u­al light of Kal-El proves too great a task for an ensem­ble movie. There’s an unwill­ing­ness to com­mit, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Affleck’s case, as if he’s con­stant­ly being restrained from bring­ing any sort of con­vic­tion to the part. Bat­man, when squar­ing up with actu­al super­hu­mans, adds lit­tle more than com­ic relief. The uneven tone and feel­ing of under­de­vel­op­ment are best evi­denced in the for­get­table action sequences and an uncan­ny val­ley-esque air­brush job on Hen­ry Cavill’s face due to the incon­ve­nient reshoots which plagued production.

As a result of repeat­ed stu­dio inter­ven­tion, this is a Sny­der film in name only. Medi­oc­rity reigns, and although there’s a pleas­ing amount of Won­der Woman through­out the two-hour run­time, the film wastes its best asset in Ezra Miller, who gives a delight­ful­ly wide-eyed, quip­py per­for­mance but is effec­tive­ly rel­e­gat­ed to the role of DC’s knock­off Spi­der-Man. In the shad­ow of the almighty Super­man, fran­chise new­com­ers Jason Momoa and Ray Fish­er are sim­i­lar­ly giv­en lit­tle to do aside from stand around look­ing tough and deliv­er­ing stilt­ed sound­bites, which do lit­tle to estab­lish any sense of his­to­ry, per­son­al­i­ty or cama­raderie between them.

Ulti­mate­ly Jus­tice League feels like an exer­cise in con­tract oblig­a­tion, with Warn­er Bros and DC tick­ing box­es in order to keep the nec­es­sary cogs in the DCEU machine turn­ing (see uni­verse-expand­ing shots of Green Lantern Corps and a nod to Matt Reeves’ forth­com­ing The Bat­man). While notes have clear­ly been tak­en off the back of ear­li­er mis­fires, there remains a dis­tract­ing air of cyn­i­cism about this whole ven­ture. The best that can be said for this film is that it exists – and it’s not com­plete­ly awful. But if this is what DC’s first string looks like, don’t hold out on those car keys turn­ing up any­time soon.