Why the upcoming "Justice League" movie should politely leave the party early.

I know that it's been a while since I wrote something on this blog. Mostly because I've been pretty occupied with things that have kept me away from the movie theaters. Don't worry, the next post on this blog will be an actual movie review, I promise. With a little luck, the next movie I review, which is something I really want to see, will be "Wind River". So please be on the look out for that.

Until then, I really want to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while now. I'm not planning on reviewing the "Justice League" movie before it comes out, that would be just stupid and unprofessional. Instead, this is going to be a kind of speculation experiment. Where I express my feelings about the movie as I see it now and what I suspect might happen based upon the events surrounding the movies production as well as the people involved in its creation. I really hope that my suspicions will be wrong and that the movie actually turns out to be good, but please forgive me if I'm not as usually optimistic about this one as I otherwise would be.

For those of you who have not been following the recent live action DC movies, the short version is that they have not been very good, and that's putting it mildly. So far, with the exception of "Wonder Woman", they have not been made with the best of intentions, none off them have anything remotely relatable to human beings, and, worst of all, they all share an overly dark tone for no justifiable reason, other than they were trying too hard to stand out against MARVEL. Now, in that sense of trying to do something different from MARVEL, that is admirable and understandable. I just think that DC took it way too far. Case in point: In "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice", which by the way is the absolute WORST movie of 2016, there is a dream sequence which literally serves no real purpose other than to have an excuse for dark and ugly depictions of Batman and Superman as opposing military powers, and to have an excuse to see Superman brutaly murder people on screen. This is followed by yet another dream sequence which only serves the purpose of setting up events for the next movie. Neither of these dream sequences do anything to advance the story, develop the characters, or give the audience a reason to care. Something that director Zach Snyder has proven himself to be unable to deliver.

This leads me to one of the main problems with the DC movies, Zach Snyder. Before I go into greater detail about my feelings about Mr. Snyder as a director, I would like to make it very clear that I do not hate him, nor do I mean him any offense to his character. I want to make this clear because I do not want to give the impression that I am belittling Mr. Snyder as a person, especially considering the horrible tragedy that has fallen upon him and his family. All I will say to Mr. Snyder is that I still wish him well, I hope that he and his family are coping as well as they can, and that my thoughts are with them all. From here on, all I have to say about Mr. Snyder is in regards to his ability as a filmmaker and nothing more.

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, lets talk about the stylistic approach of Zach Snyder.

To put it bluntly, it's not very good. Snyder has a very bad habit of emphasizing and prioritizing style and strong visuals over story and character. While Snyder is excellent at creating visually intreaging images and has a very distinct style that has, in its own way, revolutionized the action movie landscape as we know it today, he is not a very good storyteller. Even in his best film, his adaptation of "Watchmen", it's clear that Snyder didn't know how to handle the characters on his own. The only reason the characters in that film were even remotely interesting, is because they were made interesting in the book, and Zach Snyder did everything in his power to translate the book to screen, making very few changes and compromising pretty much nothing. Which, coincidentally, is the philosophy of the films protagonist, Rorschach.

When Zach Snyder tried to make something of his own, his grossly inadequate "Sucker Punch", that was intended to have a strong commentary on an aspect of the human condition, namely the mistreatment of women, it fell completely flat on its face. As a visual spectacle of many different kinds of genres and styles as only seen before in comics and Anime, it was a fantastic marvel to behold. However, as a commentary about the struggles of women, the horrors of mens abuse of power and the notion of sexualization as power, (which is a whole other subject that will likely be discussed at another time), it fails entirely. Without spoiling anything or going into too much detail for those who have not yet seen it for themselves, though I don't really recommend it, the films message really boils down to "all women are helpless victims and all men are evil pigs". Which is what a lot of people THINK that feminism is and that is simply NOT TRUE.

Zach Snyder seems to be under the impression that having strong style and cool visuals all the time will compensate for the lack of a compelling story and interesting characters. This is, quite simply, not true. As demonstrated in other high octane blockbusters such as "Baby Driver" and "Mad Max: Fury Road", (which by the way is a much better representation of feminism), all of the visual spectacles you can create don't mean anything if the story, and especially the characters, are not compelling, sympathetic and interesting. The best blockbuster films are the ones that use special effects and high octane action scenes in service to the story and the characters growth. Incidentally, George Miller, the director and co-writer of "Mad Max: Fury Road" had an original plan for a Justice League film that never fell through. I would not object if Warner Brothers gave that plan another look.

'Wink-Wink'.

Another thing worth mentioning as to why Zach Snyder was not a good choice for this franchise, one that I almost overlooked, is that he is not even a fan of these characters. Hell, Zach Snyder doesn't even like superheroes in general. You see, Snyder is a fan of the works of Ayn Rand, whom you may remember as the author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". Rand was, among other things, an objectivist. A political philosophy that believes that altruism is a weak ideology, and that those who embody said ideology are not only doomed to fail, but are also incapable of achieving anything. Zach Snyder does not BELIEVE in superhero's. He doesn't even seem to like them. This is greatly evidenced in his treatment of them in his films. Specifically in "Batman V. Superman" wherein Superman is depicted as a depressed masonic figure who can't get over the fact that people don't appreciate him, which is completely unlike his actual character, and Batman is depicted as a mindless, cruel and violent thug who thinks that murder is the solution to all of Earth's problems, which is even MORE unlike the actual character. If the director himself doesn't believe in what superheroes are all about, then how can you expect said director to deliver a compelling superhero movie?

Now, all of this comes back to "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice", which is, as I've already mentioned, the worst film of 2016. There are many reasons for this and I have discussed a few of them in my previous video "Five reasons Batman V. Superman is a Bad Film", but the biggest reason I want to bring up here is reason number 4, playing catch up with Marvel. As I mentioned in the aforementioned video, Warner Brothers and DC Comics have been trying to catch up with MARVEL'S success. As such, "Batman V. Superman" shoved a truck load of things that are intended to be touched upon and developed further in the upcoming "Justice League" film and potentially even later down the line. This is an unwise move for many reasons but the most important reason, at least in my opinion, is that this new movie is going to have at least three brand new characters that we have never met before. As such, the film is going to spend a lot of time trying to get us invested in them despite us having just met them. Also, as I have already mentioned earlier, we are very likely not going to get any development at all because the film will be more concerned with how cool the shot said character is in will look or just how desaturated the color can be before it's actually black & white.

You see, the reason the MARVEL movies have been so successful is because they spend each and every movie progressing an interesting story, and developing a group if equally interesting and three dimensional characters. The Thor movies and "Avengers: Age of Ultron" are among the few exceptions. Hopefully "Thor: Ragnarok" will be better, but I digress. Anyway, the very first Avengers was successful, not because it had great action and lots of special effects, but because it was built up to with years of individual movies building up each of the main members of the team and culminating into a team of multi-background people with similar ideologies and one unifying motive. To do better. This created what is, as far as I am concerned, the greatest movie event...EVER!!! The very moment that Hulk punched out that giant monster and The Avengers had finally united and proclaimed to the forces of evil, "we're here and we're gonna F*%# you up", was the single greatest and most joyful moment I have ever shared with an audience in a movie theater. As the entire audience stood up and cheered the arrival of a super team that had come together to save the day and give us all hope for the future in every conceivable way.

Now, in comparison, what will "Justice League" likely deliver upon its release? Well, the only movies that have come before it have been one less than stellar Superman movie, a three and a half hour monstrosity featuring two people who looked like Batman and Superman, (I say looked like because neither of them were anything like the Batman and Superman that we would otherwise recognize), A failed attempt at a darker, mean spirited and brutal remake of "The Avengers" with "Suicide Squad", (which, as of this writing, I have not seen yet but really have no desire to see and have been told enough about the film to know that it's really not worth my time), and one really, really, REALLY great "Wonder Woman" movie. The upcoming Justice League is going to have three more characters, (Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash), who have not yet had their own movies and we will, supposedly, spend some time getting to know. Except I highly doubt it. This sounds like an experiment that is just doomed to fail.

Now, I've been going on about all the stuff that has been building up to "Justice League", but I haven't really touched upon the films actual production just yet. Aside from the expected problem of it being under Zach Snyder's misguided direction, the film's production has hit enough brick walls that it really shouldn't even bother trying to grace the silver screen. At least not in my opinion.

Now, we all knew that the film was very likely going to be bad simply by the virtue of it being under Zach Snyder's direction. However, that was not the only warning sign. The first sign of trouble was when Warner Brothers announced that they would be inserting more humor into the film. Specifically 30% more jokes, or something to that extent. This was a big warning sign because it meant that the only reason Warner Brothers thought "Batman V. Superman" was a failure was because, unlike the MARVEL movies, it didn't have any levity. So, not only did they announce that they would insert more humor into the "Justice League" movie, they went out of their way to reshoot scenes of "Suicide Squat" just a few months before its release so they could try and inject more humor into that movie as well.

This was a clear sign that Warner Brothers was trying too hard to fix the problem they had just created. It also showed that Warner Brothers, like most of the other major movie studios, had learned the WRONG LESSON. More jokes is not going to magically make your bad movie any better. If anything, it's going to make your bad movie worse. Because there is nothing more boring to sit through than a comedy that isn't funny or a serious drama that doesn't have any moments of good levity to relieve the heavy weight of the drama.

Then, not too long before the films completion, Zach Snyder suffered the aforementioned tragedy, which caused him to step down from his role as director. Prompting Warner Brothers to seek out a replacement in an effort to at least have the film completed. In their search, they eventually hired Joss Whedon, the director of "The Avengers", to complete the film. He then went to work writing new scenes for the film and, to my knowledge, began changing some of the creative decisions made during Zach Snyder's run.

This is yet another warning sign that the film is not likely going to be any good. Not to say anything against Joss Whedon's ability as a storyteller, in fact he is usually pretty good. However, because of his drastically different style of storytelling, (see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" for an example), the film is likely going to have several moments in it that will make it painfully obvious that it is not one vision. Much like the criticisms that were put upon Steven Spielberg's "A.I.", (a film originally envisioned by Stanley Kubrick), it's easy to suspect that the "Justice League" film is going to be tonally schizophrenic. There will be moments that will make absolutely no sense, shifts of tone out of the blue and character moments that might seem funny at first but will likely turn out to be just badly improvised banter.

The next and latest warning sign was in regards to Cyborg himself. Apparently, someone involved in the creative process of the film, I can't say who, decided that his tone was "too dark". So they are going back to the drawing board yet again to try and liven it up some more. There really isn't much I can say about this other than it's kind of uncertain just how they plan to accomplish that.

With all of this in mind, I can't help but feel that the "Justice League" movie has too much going against it. It was mostly handled by a misguided director, then was picked up by another director on the opposite side of the spectrum, was put on hold by it's own studio to inject more humor, and now can't even decide how it wants to handle one of the new characters its planning to introduce. This feels so much like an obvious disaster waiting to happen that, in my honest opinion, Warner Brothers should simply not go through with it. They should simply pick this film up, put it on the shelf with the toys they haven't played with since they were little, and move on to something different and possibly better.

Now, I know that's not likely going to happen. Warner Brothers put an awful lot of money into this film, unwisely I might add, and they obviously have to at least try and make some of that money back. So, naturally, the only way they can accomplish this is to stay the course and release the film on their intended date.

Please understand, I do not mean to give the impression that I am a MARVEL fan boy and that I hate DC. I don't. I like DC. I like Superman and Batman and especially Wonder Woman. Which, by the way, is the best movie that DC has actually produced. I'm just getting really tired of the guys at Warner Brothers constantly making the wrong decisions with these characters. As much as I love and adore the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, I have longed for a new Superman movie that is just as good, if not even better. I have still yet to see said movie on the horizon. "Superman Returns" was close but not quite there.

Maybe this will all turn out to be wrong and the "Justice League" movie will actually turn out to be good and, believe you and me, I honestly hope that turns out to be the case. I just can't help but feel that, based upon everything I talked about, that it's just not going to happen. So, when this movie comes out this November, I will be walking into that theater with absolutely zero expectations. We'll see if it manages to raise the bar.

Ladies & Gentleman, I am TheNorm, telling you when Hollywood gets thins wrong, and when they get things right. Thank you all for reading.