Justice League (2017): written by Joss Whedon, Chris Terrio, and Zack Snyder; directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon; based story-wise on works by James Robinson, Gardner Fox, Nicola Scott, Mike Sekowsky, Geoff Johns, and Jim Lee; starring Ben Affleck (Batman), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Ezra Miller (The Flash), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Ciaran Hinds (Voice of Steppenwolf), Amber Heard (Mera), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), and Henry Cavill (Superman):
A partial list of mainstream superhero movies to which the hilariously maligned Justice League is clearly superior:
- Batman Forever
- Batman & Robin
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Hulk
- The Incredible Hulk
- Iron Man 2
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Thor
- Thor: The Dark World
- Dr. Strange
- Man of Steel
- Suicide Squad
- Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
- Superman III
- Superman IV
- Superman Returns
- X-Men: The Last Stand
- X-Men: Apocalypse
- Wolverine: Origins
- The Wolverine
- Spider-man 3
- The Amazing Spider-man 2
- Fantastic Four
- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
- Fantastic Four reboot...
I liked Justice League more on re-watching on TV, where the humour stands out more than the CGI bombast. I'm guessing 95% of that humour comes from Joss Whedon's frantic work to make Zack Snyder's scenes lighter, funnier, and less Ayn-Randish. Would I have gone with Jack Kirby's least interesting New Gods villain as the big bad, especially given that he shares a name with both a cult novel and a 1970's rock band? Probably not. Recommended.
Justice League (2017): written by Joss Whedon, Chris Terrio, and Zack Snyder; directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon; based story-wise on works by James Robinson, Gardner Fox, Nicola Scott, Mike Sekowsky, Geoff Johns, and Jim Lee; starring Ben Affleck (Batman), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Ezra Miller (The Flash), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Ciaran Hinds (Voice of Steppenwolf), Amber Heard (Mera), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), and Henry Cavill (Superman):
Saw Justice League at the 12:45 p.m. show in Galleria on opening day. The 'print' arrived late so they hadn't done a sound-check before showing it. Oops!
The first ten minutes played without any noticeable treble in the mix (seriously!), which made for an interesting audio experience. I wondered if Christopher Nolan had done the sound mix until they stopped the movie, fixed the sound, and started again from the beginning.
Then for another ten minutes or so, the theatre made almost inaudible announcements that it was seeking out the source of the fire alarm (which we couldn't hear) and not to panic. Friday was a PA Day for kids. Damn kids going to a superhero movie in the afternoon and pulling fire alarms! Rascals!
Also they never quite got the movie framed properly. But then we all got free passes at the end of the show, so really, who's complaining? Though it did all make me wonder if Disney is paying people to sabotage the film.
As to the film -- well, the stitches between the fairly light-hearted, earnest or snarky Whedon scenes and the glum, occasionally straining-to-be-funny Snyder scenes are pretty obvious. Whedon also turned up the Brightness, which means Superman is actually dressed in bright blue and red for the first time in the DCEU movies, so that's good.
Whedon clearly also had the job of hacking and slashing the movie down to two hours, and having it be basically 'stand-alone' rather than Part One. So Darkseid gets only one mention, though it's clear that the big bad works for him (the villain is Steppenwolf, who is a Kirby New Gods character whom writer James Robinson promoted to Darkseid's world-conquering general in the Earth-2 comic series from 2012).
The hacking and slashing results in some pretty funny 'infodumps' which end up feeling like homages to the crazily fast-paced, Gardner-Fox-scripted Silver Age Justice League comics from the 1960's. The explanation of what a Mother Box is is especially... compact... as is an exchange between Aquaman and Atlantean Mera (Amber Heard) which condenses Aquaman's back story into about 45 seconds of dialogue.
The acting is pretty solid. The Flash is genuinely funny and charming. Jason Momoa's Aquaman seems to have been written as a surly underwater hillbilly Wolderine by Snyder and as a jolly underwater stand-up comedian by Snyder. Cyborg is, well, a cipher.
Also, somebody (probably Snyder) basically restages the opening battle against Sauron from Fellowship of the Ring as part of the backstory of Steppenwolf's previous invasion of Earth, and even frames it in terms of it being the last time the various races of Earth (Atlanteans, Amazons and Greek Gods, and what seems to be King Arthur and his knights) united against a common foe. I kid you not. Wonder Woman narrates, per Galadriel in LOTR: TFOTR...
Bonus points for including parademons and getting a mention of Kirby's New Gods into the dialogue. Fun fact: the movie's 'Unity' seems to pretty clearly Jack Kirby's Anti-Life Equation restated euphemistically.
Though the only two rational explanations for Superman's unintentionally funny, late-movie line to Bruce Wayne ("How did you get the farm back from the bank ?!?!?") are that Superman doesn't understand how money works or that Lex Luthor owned the bank that foreclosed on the Kent farm.
Also, maybe it's swim-suit season on Themyscira, Snyder-haters! Did you ever think of that?
There are two end credits sequences, one early and one right at the end. Plan accordingly.
Hey, the movie is only 2 hours and one minute long. Kudos! My butt thanks you!
Far better than a lot of superhero movies, a list that includes Whedon's studio-garbled Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Dark Knight Rises, Superman III, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Spider-man 3, Amazing Spider-mans 1 and 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the first two Thor movies, Dr. Strange, the two Hulk movies, Wolverine: Origins and The Wolverine, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, X-Men: Apocalypse, Ant-man, Superman Returns, Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and many others. Recommended.
Avengers: Age of Ennui (2015): based on characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Jim Starlin, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and others; written and directed by Joss Whedon; starring Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/ Tony Stark), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/ Hulk), Chris Evans (Captain America/ Steve Rogers), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/ Hawkeye), James Spader (Ultron), and a bunch of other people:
Marvel Studios interfered with the production of the second Avengers movie so many times that Joss Whedon is now doing emergency surgery on DC's Justice League movie and developing a DC Batgirl movie. Yay!
Avengers: Age of Ultron is a busy, crowded mess with plot holes one could fly the SHIELD helicarrier through. It's a good time-waster on TV because one can pause it every 45 minutes or so and because, as with the majority of Marvel Studios movies, it looks like the world's most expensive movie to have ever been shot on the same videotape used for 1970's Doctor Who episodes. Jesus, I hate the colour palette of most Marvel Studios movies. Lightly recommended.
The Cabin in the Woods: written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard; directed by Drew Goddard; starring Kristen Connolly (Dana), Chris Hemsworth (Curt), Anna Hutchison (Jules), Fran Kranz (Marty), Jesse Williams (Holden), Richard Jenkins (Sitterson), Bradley Whitford (Hadley), and Sigourney Weaver (The Director) (2011): In a perfect world, The Cabin in the Woods would, at the very least, get a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination for 2012. But it's a horror movie and it's a comedy, so it won't. Nonetheless, it is a humdinger.
Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, who worked together on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, conjure up something special here: a postmodern, metafictional slasher movie that also works as a nifty addition to the Cthulhu Mythos and as a commentary on the tastes of both horror audiences and horror-film makers. Light-footed and well-acted, it never becomes leaden and it never punches the audience in the face with its cleverness. It's a Charlie Kaufman film without the underlying pomposity.
Five college students on Spring Break go to a cabin in the woods. And then...well, frankly, you should experience it yourself. The ads and trailers for the movie gave way too much away as it is. Like the Scream movies, The Cabin in the Woods plays with cliches of the modern horror film. Unlike the Scream movies, it never becomes what it parodies. As one character realizes, "We are not who we are."
If nothing else, this may be the first horror movie that could be read as a metaphor for U.S. drone strikes on targets in Pakistan. Or I may be overthinking it. But you'll never look at a bank of elevators the same way again. Or a Japanese horror movie. Highly recommended.
Thor Visionaries Walt Simonson Volume 3: written by Walt Simonson; illustrated by Walt Simonson and Sal Buscema (1986; collected 2004): Walt Simonson's great 1980's run on The Mighty Thor continues here, with Simonson relinquishing the artistic reins to Marvel veteran Sal Buscema towards the end of this collection. Asgard's succession crisis (Odin remains lost in battle with the Fire-Giant Surtur) supplies the overall arc here, as Loki schemes to become ruler of Asgard.
Simonson's gift for light fantasy comes to the forefront in three issues about Thor's transformation into, um, a frog. Loki's magic, supercharged by Surtur's abandoned sword, changes Thor into a frog to keep the Thunder God away from Asgard. But what a frog! The Thunderfrog has charming adventures with talking frogs, rats, and alligators in Central Park before we return to the crisis in Asgard.
Sal Buscema does a nice job of adapting his art to resemble Simonson's without sacrificing his own strengths -- he really was a solid pro. Thor mopes around a bit -- this was the 1980's, after all -- but Simonson keeps moving the book away from angst into something much more Kirbyesque in its sometimes bizarre mix of myth and science fiction and superheroics.
At times, the dialogue seems like a prototype for how Joss Whedon would approach fantasy ten years later on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an oddball mix of portent, contemporary idiom, bombast, and bombast-deflating insight. Recommended.
