What's in the Box

"Zack Snyder's Justice League" surpasses the easy hurdle of being an improvement upon the 2017 "Justice League," which Joss Whedon oversaw the completion of after Snyder stepped down during production. The Flash doesn't make one joke about brunch. There's no contrived racially-awkward moment between him and Cyborg. Instead, both of them are developed as characters. The camera spends less time trying to look up Wonder Woman's skirt and staring at her posterior. Not as much time is spent on how boring is Superman's rediscovered love of life. The main villains aren't as boring, either. The bugs aren't a hive attracted to fear. No dull family to rescue. Any one of these alterations alone would be a significant betterment. Oh, it's still not an especially good superhero flick, but one can only polish so much such originally misconceived and thereafter worsened franchise excrement. It's still a long and longer--four hours, for crying out loud--exercise in overly indulgent fan servicing and the so-called vision of the artist.

A lot of the extra runtime is spent on exposition and fully explaining its McGuffin and totally, assuredly not Infinity Stones of the Mother Boxes. It helps to make sense of the story, but it doesn't make it interesting. The same could be said for the Ultimate Edition of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016). In that sense of such pacing, this would've been more appropriate as a series--padded in unnecessary repetition and operational aesthetics as those tend to be. On the other hand, the boxes here are explored more for their rearranging of matter, which is a kind of neat metaphor for what was done with the material of this movie existing in a multiverse of two different versions, as well as, perhaps, the continued hypothetical picture that Snyder might've originally finished for the 2017 theatrical cut. The boxes still play into the vaginal Frankenstein narrative of rebirth, electrically resurrecting Cyborg and grave-robbed Superman (and it's still apparent, to me at least, that Flash is the sperm racing through the vaginal spaces of the Kryptonian ship to fertilize the box of an egg, I guess, as it graces the giant homunculus that is Superman's preserved corpse). But, they communicate within the narrative in ways beyond that, including as a signal to bring the Justice League and the baddies together to fight (the whole point of these movies) and showing them visions of alternate possibilities (what passes here for character dilemmas and development). The 4:3 aspect ratio, which reportedly has something to do with IMAX--not that it matters for a movie streamed on HBO Max--is also apt in that it shapes the picture like the square-shaped Mother Boxes. It also alludes to the most common means by which people used to at least see movies outside of a theatre: on their non-widescreen TVs.

Beyond that, there's nothing here that strikes me upon first viewing as especially interesting. The CGI, color grading, fights and score are different. Cyborg and The Flash having expanded roles makes sense if they're ever going to have solo movies of their own. There's no real point otherwise to Barry Allen receiving a bit of a love interest as he rescues a damsel-in-distress from slow-mo flying hot dogs, as cool as the sequence may look. The added stuff for Victor Stone, including the development of his relationship with his father and seeing him play some football as expected from the trailers for the last version, works better, and more than the rest of the League, he's at the center of Zack Snyder's cut. Appropriate, too, given that he's the character that is most closely linked to the Mother Boxes and has access to the internet that reaches into all the computerized boxes we have and carry around, to use, for instance, to stream this very movie.

The diminished parts for Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill make sense, too, if they're to be dropped from the DCEU. The introduction of Wonder Woman here thwarting a terrorist attack seems to have never made much sense, having nothing to do with the rest of the plot. Hints of a romantic relationship between Bruce and Diana also seem less here, which is fine, although we mostly get them exchanging exposition-heavy dialogue instead. I think Aquaman probably gets the short shrift this time around, but at least he's not serving as extended comic relief in this version. No stupid gag here involving his confession under the power of the Lasso of Truth. Albeit, unfortunately, he is rather a wet blanket--and I can't choose between whether to make that into a water or booze-based pun.

What I mostly enjoyed about the overly-maligned "Man of Steel" (2013) and "Batman v Superman" was how their comic-book characters reflected the real world, Clark Kent a migrant worker, as well as messiah figure, and Bruce Wayne a tough-on-crime plutocrat and cosplay enthusiast. The destruction of Metropolis was one big 9/11 allegory, and the sequel's fight over Kryptonite another corporate battle over finite resources and immigration paranoia. Both "Justice Leagues," however, are pure fantasy. Sure, I'll take Snyder's gloom over Whedon's jokey MCU rip-off, but neither aesthetic is compelling in itself. "The Dark Knight" (2008) didn't just work because it was dark, nor "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014) simply because it was light. What we get here are boxes--largely full of franchise building and superfluous superheroes and supervillains on top of the already extant continuation of Jesse Eisenberg's obnoxious Lex Luthor, for sequels that are likely to never happen. In the end, I suppose that's the nature of the box, though: full of manifold potential manifestations, but with only some to ever be realized.

(Included on my list of 50--and counting--Frankenstein films.)