Justice League And The Fourth World!

Like many folks I guess, I went to see the Justice League movie in the theaters and I admit I was entertained. Though far from a perfect movie, this flick did do what a Justice League movie is supposed to do, put together recognizable heroes of the DC Universe and have them battle a menace of world-conquering proportions, one that none of them could battle and defeat alone. This movie went one step further and took the concepts of the Jack Kirby's Fourth World and fused them into a flick for all the world to wonder at.

More after these SPOILER WARNINGS.

We enter a world we've visited a few times now -- a world in which Superman's appearance some years before rocked the philosophical underpinnings of how mankind saw itself. This is a world in despair after the fall of its newest messiah and a world in which Bruce Wayne as Batman is plumbing the shadows of the cities looking for the vestiges of a new threat which has appeared in the wake of Superman's passing. The threat is the one Luthor invoked at the end of the last movie, the fell threat of Darkseid. But it's not Darkseid we meet, but rather his uncle and agent Steppenwolf. Spread around the Earth are three "Mother Boxes" which when joined together will form a "Unity" which bodes poorly for the survival of mankind as we know it. The threat is vague but it's a threat which was beaten back thousands of years before by the combined might of the Amazons, the Atlanteans, the Olympian Gods, and even some Green Lanterns, in addition to mankind itself. Then in a Tolkienesque touch the tokens of the deadly menace which they had beaten back were distributed to the various populations and hidden. The Atlanteans guard one, the Amazons guard one and mankind has hidden one somewhere. In the role of Frodo is Victor Stone who has become a superhero because his life was saved by using Mother Box technology to make him a Cyborg. And now Steppenwolf has returned with an army of deadly Parademons to do his bidding. Batman knows that he and Wonder Woman will not be sufficient to face the threat and despite getting help from Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman, still knows they need to resurrect Superman. They do and combined into a fighting unit they confront the enemy and as we know they must defeat the threat for now.

That's the story, straightforward enough, but alas still filled with lots of unknowns, so many that in the final analysis feeling good about the defeat of Steppenwolf is difficult to do. He is always a proxy for Darkseid and any victory against him is a small and temporary one. It is in establishing the villain that the movie fails most thoroughly. Steppenwolf is a CGI creation and unfortunately not a very compelling one. Despite a dandy actor (Cirian Hinds) we get little from him beside the obligatory bluster and contempt all such villains bray. And in failing to define the threat, the movie makers fail to give the League menace which can define them. They all rise to the occasion, but beyond marking their bravery, the attacks on Steppenwolf demands little of them. As nifty as it was to see Parademons they never rise above cannon fodder and so are not unlike the rocks and cement which falls, dangerous but without wit or any sense of will.

As for the heroes, I found Cyborg to be a pleasant surprise. He had much more screen presence than I anticipated and the way his technological origin was folded into the menace made much of the story make more sense as there was instantly less reliance on coincidence to make events cohere. Fortunately there is very little inkling that the Mother Boxes exert a malign control on Cyborg or the Frodo comparison would be even more profound. The Flash was a nice alternative to the generally dour heroes, his lack of battle experience becoming a neat entry for the viewer as the war begins to rage with a hectic abandon. Batman and Wonder Woman are fighting machines, giving over to it so efficiently that there's no inner sense of danger for the viewer to latch onto. It is only in the Flash that we feel the weight of what they do. Aquaman was a ton of fun to watch and listen to, his sarcasm a worthy counterpoint to Batman's grim pronouncements and Wonder Woman's aged wisdom. It is in these heroes and their interactions that the film finds vitality.

I've read a lot of beef with Batman. But the Batman here is a generation removed from any we've seen before. This is the Batman after decades of battling crime in Gotham who faces a deadly menace beyond his ability to cope if not to understand. He knows he's a small fish now in a world filled with Supermen and Wonder Women and only his wits and his tech are going to allow him any chance to compete. I found him fun to watch, brutal and direct and canny. He's Wildcat with money, the grizzled boxer who wants to  give the new kids a sense of the danger they face and to simultaneously feed off some of that eagerness to wage the fight. Wonder Woman feels, Superman understands, but it's Batman who knows and that knowledge weighs on him like years which separate him from his prime.

The mutation of the "Mother Boxes' into engines of destruction and not as they are represented in the Kirby comics as delicate devices of encouragement and comfort was hard to understand. I hope we learn more eventually about their nature and how they fit into worlds at the the end of the Boom Tubes. And that is my biggest gripe with this movie, the lack of any sense of a world beyond the Boom Tube. They appear to deliver Steppenwolf and eventually to suck him up but we never get any sense of the locale on the other side. That failing makes his menace less potent and turns all of the hectic battling into just spectacle and not a heartfelt war for survival it continually purports to be. There is no sacrifice in the end which makes the viewer feel the weight of the war. Amazons die when Steppenwolf first appears but in Atlantis the battle seems underwhelming and the finale was too much video game to really be that compelling.

The "Justice League" itself was wonderful see. Sadly the enemy was not up to the task. As the second tag ending showcased though, maybe next time Luthor and The Exterminator can round up some baddies that do answer the call. We'll have to hope and see.

End of SPOILERS.

The sad truth is I only liked the movie and I wanted to love Justice League. I don't. Alas, the movie failed to achieve the depth of theme that its predecessors reached.  That's largely because the villainy is incoherent. The threat of Darkseid and of Apokolips is the loss of free will and the resultant souless domination of man. Steppenwolf's threat appears much more a menace to the body and not to the spirit. Because he's just a big and very strong opponent, his defeat means less in the narrative and required less of the heroes. In the last movie we lost a hero who sacrificed himself for our sakes and in this one we gain heroes who battle on our behalf. The latter is noble and deserving of praise, but doesn't strike at the heart in the same way or make the same impression. Justice League is about a group of heroes who assemble to stop a villain from taking over the world. You'd think that would be enough, but as it turns out it wasn't quite.

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