Therefore, I've decided to put together this Justice League/DCEU FAQ, which I hope is helpful.
So what's the deal with the Flash? How did he get his powers?
He was struck by lightning, and this gave him the ability to create a "layer of dimensional reality that seems to manipulate space-time." At least, that's the "abridged version." (These are real lines from the movie.)
Um, OK. And the suit?
He built it.
Himself? Why? He doesn't need it to go super-fast, we see him do that at the supermarket and then again in the visitation line at the prison.
He needs protection against air friction when he runs for a sustained period of time.
When does he know in advance that he'll run for sustained periods of time?
Remember in Suicide Squad? He caught Captain Boomerang trying to rob that bank, while wearing his suit.
Oh, so he was already doing the superhero thing before Bruce even met him? That seems--odd? He's this goofy sidekick character who gets scared "doing battle," and barely even alludes to any other superhero work.
Why would a 23-year-old kid working four "dead-end jobs" to get a criminal justice degree in the hopes of exonerating his imprisoned father while squatting in warehouses give two craps that banks are being robbed?
Well, according to the DCEU wikia...
Wait, there's a DCEU wikia?
Actually, there's two.
Of course. Go on.
According to the wikia, he was inspired by Superman's heroic death.
Really? He never mentioned that while they were debating resurrecting Superman (which he was against). Or when Superman tried to kill him. Or when they chatted later.
Yep.
You know, when fans of your movie have to make up motivations for the main characters, that's not a good sign.
No, it is not.
OK, let's move on. Now what about Aquaman, where do his powers come from?
He's from an ancient race of superhumans, just like the Amazons. The Atlanteans adapted to the water Kevin Costner-style. As Diana says, they were "forced under the sea"--
Diana said that?
Yeah, that's what I said.
So she knows there are people in the water? Why does she act so shocked when she saw that video of Aquaman in Batman v. Superman?
That's the way all women look when they discover that Jason Momoa exists.
Oh OK.
Diana knows everything, she's an Amazon who studied the ancient, secret history of the world. Not only does she know about the Atlanteans, she knows that Steppenwolf almost conquered Earth thousands and thousands of years ago, and has plotted vengeance for his first defeat ever since.
And yet, when Bruce talked about how there was a threat coming to Earth in the BvS funeral scene, she seemed totally weirded out, like she had no damn clue what he was talking about.
She was playing things close to the vest. Really, really, really close to the vest.
I mean, Wonder Woman is the only character in the DCEU they've managed to give any relatability--and now they've got her registering shock on behalf of the audience in one movie and then acting as our Obi-Wan in the next.
Is that a question?
No. But this is: Why didn't Steppenwolf destroy Earth all those years ago when he had all three Mother Boxes?
Ah, because he wanted to conquer us first and make us suffer. That was his mistake, as Diana said, that he wouldn't repeat again.
So why didn't he just use them when he saw the battle was going badly?
Mother Boxes are like iPhones--the most powerful devices in the universe, but they take forever to turn on.
That seems...suspiciously plot-convenient.
Well, you figure out a better way to set up a third act showdown, Mr. Sorkin.
And Earth in the early Bronze Age was his first defeat? What were these other planets he conquered?
Remember, Mork came from a planet. Alf came from a planet. Spaceball was a planet.
I'm only authorized to answer questions about the movie, not myself.
In the space of 10 minutes they tell us that there's a person who can bend time and that Earth has a secret history of visitation from both friendly and hostile aliens, and the movie acts like this is only important or interesting insofar as it sets up the Justice League and its opponent.
Again, questions. That's what you're here for.
OK, so you said that Aquaman gets all of his powers from being an Atlantean.
Half-Atlantean, actually.
And the Atlanteans were supposed to guard one of these Mother Boxes. So...where are the rest of them? I'm pretty sure that 20 people like this could take Steppenwolf out in about five minutes.
They stay in the ocean. It was the job of the Atlantean royalty--and only the Atlantean royalty--to stop Steppenwolf after the box had been taken. As Mera says, if Aquaman's mom Queen Atlanna were there--we don't know why she isn't, that's for the next movie--she'd be the one to go up and stop him.
By herself?
I guess so.
Is it like in "Black Panther" where only the royalty have the superpowers? From the trident and armor he gets from Mera?
No--remember, he saves those fishermen just a few seconds before that. Plus he had the trident earlier, in that video, so I'm not really sure it's such a big deal.
Oh yeah, right, good catch. And even though it was Mera's job to guard the box, she just gets to sit back and chill in the water. She even acts all snooty and sarcastic about it to Aquaman.
Eh, I think she was going through her menst-seal cycle.
That's sexist. And an offensively bad pun. #CheckYourPrivilege.
What makes you so sure I'm a dude?
We're both obviously dudes.
I think you're missing the point, which is that Aquaman isn't lame anymore.
He's now a cool bad-ass who drinks whiskey, talks like a trucker and looks like Jason Momoa.
And like all straight men, I have a Pacific Ocean-sized mancrush on him. But aside from that business where they contrived it that he does water stuff at Gotham Harbor, most of his other powers are just generic superhero hopping around and the like. He could just as easily be another Amazonian warrior and it would have meant the same for the plot. And this focus on just him, out of his whole race, makes the whole thing seemed forced and arbitrary to me.
But that hair!
Let's move on. So the Amazons too don't want to fight Steppenwolf either?
They "can never leave" the island, according to Diana. Just accept this one, I'm begging you.
OK, I will.
Wait, are you telling me that huge battle with Steppenwolf and the Amazons and the Atlanteans and the Greek gods and the Green Lanterns all happened on that stupid little island?
I don't know, just leave me alone.
Fine. It's kind of like all of these characters know they're in a Justice League movie.
It's also kind of funny when Steppenwolf steals the Mother Box--the Amazons have done all this training for decades just for the off chance that something important will happen on Themyscira, and then when it finally does they all show up late for the battle.
Is it just me, or is this the ultimate "You had ONE job movie?"
You're not leaving me alone.
Where is the military during all this? The highest-ranking authority figure they talk about Steppenwolf with is Commissioner Gordon.
It'd be pretty funny if the League showed up all psyched for the big showdown, and found out that NATO/Russian forces had already blown Steppenwolf back to hell.
Steppenwolf is unconcerned about your primitive Earth weapons.
Really? He catches a missile and flicks away an arrow, which implies there's some danger of him being blown up or pierced by an arrow.
I mean, the guy's own parademons devour him at the end, and it's not like they're invincible--Batman kills about 50 of them. You're telling me that he could dodge 500 heat-seaking missiles?
That's what I'm telling you.
OK, whatever. I'm getting tired here so I just have a few more questions. Alfred mentions to Bruce that "one misses the days when one's biggest concerns were exploding wind-up penguins."
What was that referring to?
Seriously?
Oh yes.
The Penguin, obviously.
Really. The Penguin. This dark, gritty Batman who wears thick Kevlar armor and brands sex traffickers on the chest once fought this guy:
And why can't we see this, instead of just hearing about it in off-hand references?
Because it would look stupid.
Kind of like how we learn there was a Robin who the Joker killed, but we can't see that either.
I mean, it's Robin.
Who was this Penguin? Who would use wind-up penguins as an explosive delivery device?
Well, according to a Time Out Gotham ad tie-in with Turkish Airlines--
That's canon now?
I assume so, anyways it says the Penguin owns the Iceberg Lounge, just like in the comics.
So he's a Gotham mover and shaker and...terrorist?
Well maybe he lives a double life.
But the penguins would give it away!
Hmmm...
You know if you told me they were the Joker's penguins, I'd believe that. Exploding toys kind of seems like his jam, and it'd be really clever to give him attributes of other DC villains.
Does anything in this movie seem really clever to you?
Of course not. So, I bet the answer is that the Penguin is just crazy.
Yep. Like the Joker.
And Lex Luthor. Everyone in the Metropolis/Gotham metro area is crazy, apparently.
It's like Toledo.
And, aside from the nutballs, the genetic anomaly Killer Croc also operated in Gotham for a while.
And Deadshot, don't forget him. I mean, I know most of America already has.
Have you seen this city? It's a drab, indistinct industrial wasteland filled with warehouses and strip clubs. It's Gary to Metropolis's Chicago. Why is this place worth fighting for, or over?
I really don't buy that this slum has a bunch of weird, colorful villains.
Oh, but you buy that in the comics!
In the comics every third person wears a costume or has a superpower! It's a weird fantasy version of reality that's compelling. Not the drab, mundane version of reality where Andrew Sullivan is on TV.
OK, well you bought that the Gotham in "Batman Begins" had a Scarecrow.
Because they explained it. He wasn't just a weird dude with a mask, his mask actually had a very practical purpose--he used it to scare victims into insanity while they were under the influence of his fear gas, so he could maintain control of Arkham Asylum at the behest of the mob and Ra's Al Ghul.
All of the other villain shticks in the Dark Knight trilogy had some logic or function--even if it was the Joker self-mutilating his face to scare people. It wasn't always realistic, but it was appropriate for that reality.
OK, so you want the Chris Nolan movies again.
No! I don't care if it's some crazy-ass Burton/Schumacher thing or a gritty, realistic vision or something new, just do it with some thought and conviction.
Batman is a genre, not just a character.
The DC Universe deserves much more dedication than this. Don't just throw things as the screen and expect me to buy them.
Think of how "Wonder Woman" took this absurd premise of an island filled with brass plate-wearing women in the Mediterranean and applied it with such sincerity, you bought it even before the normal guy showed up. Or the way that "Black Panther" mixed scenes in a fantasy African wonderland and an Oakland housing project--and did it so well, you not only believed these two places co-existed, but you understood how the contrast explained the conflict of worldviews between the protagonist and villain. And you felt like that conflict mattered.
And what's the deal with Batman?
Wait, was that a question? I thought you were ranting.
No, I wanna know about Batman. What's he been doing all this time?
His parents were shot outside a movie theater, he fell into a well filled with bats at the funeral, decided to wear a bat-suit to terrify criminals...the standard comic book bio. Like he tells Aquaman, the shtick has worked for 20 years.
But...he's not the standard comic book Batman.
And even so...it should work? But it doesn't.
Even though Ben Affleck has turned out to be an amazingly good Bruce Wayne who gives the character a lot of charm and personality--(by Batman standards, at least)--something just doesn't click.
I think it goes back to this being a pretty realistic world we're seeing.
In real life, if a billionaire got it into his head to go running around in a bat-suit with tights, he wouldn't be some hero--he'd be sad tabloid fodder. You can't just assume Batman exists that way.
This concept needs work to work.
So again, you want "Batman Begins."
Absolutely not--another Bats origin story would be boring AF. But I need some inspiration, a consistent conception of Batman that I can glean by watching.
Here you have this wizened, world-weary warrior realizing for the first time that he's facing threats bigger than himself, and that he needs help. This ought to have weight, but it doesn't, because I don't really understand his journey.
Who told you you could turn this Q&A into a movie review?
I'll ask the questions here.
So tell me this--when during Batman's gritty urban warfare did this prove useful?
Hey, I'd rather be on the side with the wall-crawling spider-tanks.
They needed a version of Batman who could fight Superman & Steppenwolf while still being grounded, and they ended up with this hulking dark mass who uses extraordinary firepower to patrol what looks a scene from "The Wire."
He supposedly fought these great enemies, but what we see onscreen seems more like some psychopathic billionaire who goes around beating up poor people because he can. It's like some program the people from "Hostel" run.
Hey, that'd be a great premise for a dark Elseworlds Batman story.
Really dark.
This is going to get even weirder when they do Batgirl and Nightwing movies--characters who, by necessity, must be inspired by Batman. Inspired by what, exactly?
Affleck's awesome five-o-clock Bat-shadow?
A lot of this comes back to the grim pseudo-Nolan-esque tone they established from the get-go with "Man of Steel." They re-imagined the Superman story as this slick alien invasion film, and it worked OK for that movie...I guess. But using it to try to bootstrap the entire DC Universe into cinema has been a disaster.
So you're bothered about realism in a film series about humanoid aliens?
You can't just say that because it has aliens you can get away with anything. I mean, imagine if "Independence Day" ended with a bunch of beefcake mermaids from Atlantis showing up to help fight the aliens.
That sounds awesome.
That actually does sound awesome, I'd totally watch that movie. But it would work because the filmmakers would really sell the concept--they wouldn't just throw in Atlantis because it's canon and it has to be there.
OK, so you hated the movie.
I didn't! That's the weird thing. It's actually halfway decent. The action scenes kind of work. Affleck is good. The first scene would be poignant if Henry Cavill didn't look like he was French-kissing the Uncanny Valley.
I know. And I liked the first scene with Batman, and the way it played around with the cliche of the Caped Crusader stopping a crook on a roof.
Though LOL on the "World Without Superman" sequence over a Leonard Cohen cover showing this epidemic of fruitstand-kicking--are we 100% sure this really has anything to do with Superman?
I'm pretty sure people kicked fruit stands before Superman ever showed up.
Yeah. But that Wonder Woman scene in the museum was pretty bad-ass.
The action was decent, but these comic book movies aren't behemoths just because of the action. They make all the money because the fans love to dive into the mythology and world-building. And "Justice League" gives you nowhere to go.
You're telling me. Seems like I've been stuck here answering questions for an eternity.
You'll notice I haven't even mentioned the things that most people complain about--that Cyborg was created both before and after BvS, that it makes no sense that they left the Mother Boxes on Earth, that Superman is a dour sourpuss, etc. etc. I want to watch this movie on its own terms, but the movie won't let me.
But Flash is funny and relatable, he hates brunch!
I think most people walked away from that movie thinking "that was good/meh-ish," and then they never thought about it again. Whereas there are people who literally haven't stopped talking about "Avengers: Infinity War" since it came out more than a month ago.
And this is amazing because--"Justice League" is one of the most expensive movies ever made. It out-earned "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Get Out" combined, and Hollywood analysts don't think it will ever make its money back. I know that's partly because Warner Brothers started to throw good money after bad, but still--how did they manage to screw this up so much? Who's to blame?
Well a bunch of dorks on the Internet say it's the studios and Joss Whedon, for messing with Zack Snyder's true vision. And they've got a point, the mandatory 2-hour run-time clearly caused some stupid edits.
Wait, there's a Zack Snyder true vision?
A: Oh yeah, there's a whole Snyder-Verse based on some imaginary director's cut of "Justice League," plus some random stuff he's posted on Vero.
What's Vero?
No one knows.
So is it good?
I dunno, it mostly seems like some tedious 13-hour epic about Superman going insane because of Darkseid and the Anti-Life Equation.
Ah, the Knightmare sequence.
Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't asked me about that yet.
Who even cares anymore?
You're preaching to the choir there.
But the point is, these problems are all too deep-rooted to be the result of one bad studio cut or some rewrites.
I'd say there was a fundamental lack of vision, but Zack Snyder clearly had a vision--it just didn't really work for what WB was trying to do, and in the end it didn't produce very compelling movies.
The only one of these that's worked was a period piece that was halfway to being a comedy, and was totally disconnected from the overall DCEU tone.
They could have gone with Marvel's approach--build up each character with their own movie and then build to the big team-up.
I doubt it. First of all, those movies would have seemed anti-climactic after "The Avengers." And Marvel--that is, Disney--always had the option to back out if those early films weren't working. WB didn't really have that luxury. And finally, there's just a difficult tonal issue. Marvel's all kind of sci-fi-ish, but DC has Greek goddesses, invincible aliens and brooding bat-detectives all existing alongside each other. In comics it works but movies have this tactile reality that is harder to work with.
You almost wonder if a universe was right for DC/WB--especially after the Nolan trilogy was so effective while explicitly rejecting that approach.
I think there's a way it might have worked--if they'd gone in the direction of George Miller's abandoned "Justice League: Mortal," which just started with the Justice League members already established. Rely on your audience's knowledge of the characters and go from there, rather than the Batman Begins/Iron Man formula of trying to build it all the ground up.
That sounds nuts.
It does, but so did the idea of an inter-connected super-hero cinematic universe, until Disney did it and made a sextillion dollars. The downside is you really have to stick close to the comics, which--as we've discussed--is harder than it sounds.
So where does WB/DC go from here?
I have no idea, they're kind of screwed. They're too far deep in to turn around, but this will be hard to fix. My only answer would be to fire everyone, which they've already done.
They're going to rely more on the individual movies, which have worked the best so far. Hopefully James Wan will be as good at oceanic fantasy as he is with bodily dismemberment. And someday, someone will star in Matt Reeves' "The Batman." Which might have your Penguin after all.
I mean, WB/DC has Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in its corner, something has to work out eventually.
They'll have to take this slop of a canon backstory and somehow make it work for them. Which, in a weird way, is what the comics writers do all the time.
If Grant Morrison can turn this--
--then surely someone can find some gold in here.
That's a really good point, actually.
I have my moments.
Like, very few moments.
What's the deal with the Injustice League they teased in the end-credits scene, are we gonna see that in a movie soon?
LOL, we're probably never going to hear about it again. Odds seem good that it was supposed to be in one of the movies that got canceled.
Kind of defeats the purpose of a cinematic universe if all of the hints about future plot developments go nowhere.
It's kind of like reading a Q&A that goes on and on and doesn't know when to quit.
So what else do we have to look forward to?
Well there's Aquaman, Shazam, and they've already started casting for Wonder Woman 2. There are going to be like five different Joker movies. They'll eventually be a Green Lantern Corps movie, which they've described as "Lethal Weapon in space."
Sounds--potentially stupid? But they standards are really low for a Green Lantern movie.
And aforementioned Nightwing and Batgirl movies.
The Batgirl movie will almost certainly end up featuring the Joker.
We're about to get more annoyed with the Joker than Batman is.
And don't forget Ava DuVernay's New Gods movie.
Oh yeah, that's going to be awesome. It's not like DC doesn't have any talent in its stable.
Absolutely not, but it's messy, disordered talent.
Reminds me of someone.
Batman?
Batman.
Batman.
I'm Batman.
I'm Batman.
I'm Batman.
I'm Batman.
I'm Batman.
You're Batman.
I'm the goddamned Batman.
Is that a question?
No. It's not.
(Many thanks to the great Rob Bricken for inspiring this format. Yeah, we'll go with "inspiring.")
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