The newly formed Justice League enact their long-shot plan to resurrect Superman, but things don’t go quite as they hoped, and Cyborg is plagued with warnings of the future.
Read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Epilogue
The Plot
- The League exhume Superman’s corpse and infiltrate STAR Labs to use the Kryptonian ship and Mother Box to resurrect the Man of Steel
- While interfacing with the ship, Cyborg experiences a vision of Darkseid murdering them all and enthralling Superman to help him conquer the world.
- Confused, Superman attacks the team in a fit of rage until Lois’ arrival calms him and they fly away together.
- Steppenwolf easily takes the final Mother Box in the aftermath of the chaos, but in a dying act Silas Stone allows the team to track it.
The Good
- Digging up Superman’s body is exactly the kind of scene that needs and gets more time. You have Cyborg and Flash being respectful by not using their powers to make it faster, and Arthur and Diana realising they have common ground despite their people’s frosty relations. The subtle low horns of the score are great too.
- Showing Lois finally preparing to let go of her daily grief ritual and return to her life, one short snippet at a time, in parallel with the team’s steps towards bringing Clark back is a nice touch. After the first couple I thought nothing of it, but by the time she’s at the monument it clicked for me.
- Look man, it’s absolutely bait, but Darkseid sitting on his fiery throne in Cyborg’s vision of a possible future obviously rules. I’m not made of stone! Although… more below…
- Flash running so fast that time ever so slightly rewinds, bringing the Mother Box back out of the amniotic fluid looks pretty cool and obviously sets up the culmination of Flash’s arc later.
- Superman floating in the air for a while with everyone looking to the heavens is a good bit, and drawing that out for a few moments longer is nice.
- Superman being able to perceive Barry at super speed (expressed in slow motion) and slowly turning to look at him was always money and they knew it, hence its prominence in marketing and surviving almost identically in the Theatrical Cut. It’s the best part of a generally decent scene.
- I think there should have been some disagreement about the plan earlier, but I’m glad they started bickering once they got closer to actually going through with it, and Aquaman condemning their actions in the aftermath due to Silas Stone’s death makes sense. You also now have some more Victor pathos to play with heading into the final act.
The Bad
- “If you can’t bring down the charging bull, then don’t wave the red cape at it.” “You do when it’s this red cape. This red cape charges back!” is a swing and a miss for a cute line. I still just don’t like the idea of Bruce doing a total 180 and operating from a place of pure faith (motivated by guilt) in general, but I accept it’s a matter of personal taste, and at least it’s a character journey across multiple films. Even if I liked that larger concept, this is still a whiffed line.
- “I’m always dressed” would go way harder if Cyborg’s green-screened CGI ‘costume’ didn’t look fucking awful. This is the danger of going non-practical (looking at you too, Step!)
- Despite my above compliment about the initial imagery of Darkseid looking menacing in Victor’s vision, I’m MUCH less pumped about ‘Knightmare 2.0’ in general. Diana in an Amazon funeral pyre is fine, but Darkseid sloooowly stabbing Arthur with a trident underwater is dumb as fuck, and this promise of a long term story of Superman brought to heel as Darkseid’s chief destroyer is so fucking bleak. Not in a ‘oh wow what a cool dark story I want to see play out’ way. In the sense that this was Snyder’s grand vision for a multi-arc movie: starting out with a mopey drifter Superman, killing him, resurrecting him in the black suit, something, something, killing Lois and making him Darkseid’s servant to help him conquer the world, then a ragtag resistance battling to save the planet from him and ONLY THEN becoming the ‘shining beacon of hope’ Superman we know at the end of a SEVEN film arc. Absolutely no fucking thanks!
The Theatrical
- Barry and Victor comparing origin stories and labelling themselves ‘The Accidents’ isn’t bad. It’s not overly compelling, but it’s a sub-dynamic within the larger group. Is it also the only time Flash’s origin is explained in either version of the movie? I think it is!
- By having Bruce and Diana argue ahead of the plan, you unlock solid dialogue like “I’m here for HIM”, which elevates Superman’s mythic status, and gives you way more to play with in terms of the interpersonal relationships within the team. Everybody quietly getting along is boring. Arguments beget tough truths that lead to growth. Or sometimes it’s just juicy to watch people argue. I wouldn’t say the latter is true in this movie, but he takes a stab at the former.
- The downside of the brighter colour palette is when Cyborg is finally in full ‘costume’ rather than a hoodie, the model looks even worse!
- Whedon adds a short bit about Aquaman’s heart rate spiking due to anxiety, setting Superman on edge. I don’t think it works in execution as well as it may have on the page, possibly due to rushing the reshoot or Jason Mamoa just not being into it. I do think Clark being able to pick up on Arthur being a quick-tempered, impetuous man and creating an aggression feedback loop could have worked, but instead it’s played as a little joke and falls flat. Conversely Flash confirming this is a Pet Cemetery scenario is a good payoff to his earlier suggestion.
- Batman sending in Lois as “The Big Guns” (teased in Part 4) can be added to the pile of Whedon scriptwriting wins. It’s Batman’s brain winning out over The League’s raw might. It emphasises Lois’ importance (though at the expense of her having a little less screen time). By comparison Snyder just has her watching the entire fight and only running in when Clark is trying to kill Batman.
- “You won’t let me live, you won’t let me die!” and “Do you bleed?” would be good little callbacks… but all they do is remind of Snyder’s dreary hyper-aggressive vision for Superman in previous films. Also it creates a hilarious problem in Part 6. Likewise the follow up of Batman quipping to nobody that “something is definitely bleeding” sucks and is as ill-fitting to Batman’s character as anything I’ve complained about in previous parts. Bad!
- By removing Silas’ death scene, the final Mother Box being taken is such a nothing moment that makes the team look careless at best and dumb at worst, as you just get the teleportation effect and Diana surmising it’s been taken off-screen.
Overall
I believe as originally pitched, the first Justice League movie would have ended with Superman’s resurrection and the second film would have opened with this little hero vs hero fight. As I’ve alluded to above some of these scenes are among the most prominent in the original promotional material, and it’s clear a great deal of thought went into this set of scenes. They’re mostly good.
That being said it’s hard to say all that much about Part 5 as it boils down to some fairly nothing planning, the execution of an elaborate slow motion set piece, and then a big fight scene. It packs plenty of punch in terms of plot, but doesn’t lend itself to long form discussion whatsoever. These two scenes are kinda cool, but you’ve seen similar done better.
Whedon clips some stuff for the worse, but also adds some good little character beats. Of course the biggest sin in the eyes of ZSJL fans is the removal of both the time travel tease and Cyborg’s vision of Darkseid conquering. I agree with one of those criticisms, but definitely not the other. Sure, it would have been nice to keep some form of ‘Darkseid looms’ tease in the 2017 film, but as a protracted sequence it’s bad and gets to the rotten heart of Snyder’s ‘Grand Plan’. Still, these two characters’ arcs being the ones to be clipped over and over while the majority of the others’ remain in tact is less than ideal.
Soft win for Snyder? A tie? I really don’t know to be honest.
Read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Epilogue
The Reel World 