What is Justice? Doing Justice to a Fine Comic Book Movie

You are going to a film with characters named “Wonder Woman,” “Superman, “Batman,” and other names that would make even George Lucas blush.

You are watching a movie that promises to blow things up and have fight sequences.

You can expect some fan service for oldsters (like I am!) who know Barry Allen.

Justice League does all of this competently with the luminous screen presence of Gail Gadot, the star of the much better Wonder Woman. The film isn’t Avengers, it is not Dark Knight, it isn’t even Thor, but then it isn’t Green Lantern either or any film with the Fantastic Four.

Is it worth the bucks for the ducats? Certainly, if you know what you are getting: competent amusement. This is a comic book movie for a Holiday weekend and it delivers solid comic book thrills. The Flash is there as decent comic relief. Aquaman manages to live down his Superfriends past to find some coolness and Cyborg is full of angst. There is nothing new here, but if you went for something new, you made a mistake. No comic book film has ever offered anything really new. 

Perhaps, we inflate the genre at the risk of being unable to enjoy standard fare: the day after Thanksgiving sort-of-feast from the fridge. No comic book movie has ever been Great or Serious or Ground Breaking. Let’s not pretend Dark Knight is actually deep, no decent freshman philosophy class discussion has ever been as shallow. Aquaman and Wonder Woman are equal opportunity objects of human beauty and if Wonder Woman was less exploitative than the television show of my youth, it wasn’t by much.

This is a serviceable good time. It could have been better, but not much better, because the genre never gets much better than this film. My family came, we saw, we had fun. The 41% on Rotten Tomato indicates that some critics either hate DC (Disney/Marvel power,  cough) or have forgotten why we get holiday and summer superhero films: they are fluff and the best that are a bit more should not confuse us. There are some that are so foolish one cannot, even for a moment, enter the fairy tale. The Hulk has not been served well by his films, but then he is a giant green man who says: “Hulk smash!” This is never going to be Shakespearean.

Possibly the deepest problem in the film is that it is about justice, Superman is for it, but has no means to define it. Superman is “for” truth and justice, but no longer cares for the American way. That’s fine, but other than fighting against our destruction by men with horns, what is justice? The old George Reeves Superman knew, but these Justice League fighters do not. They are much fitter physically, but metaphysically flabby.

The desire to do box office globally has been good for Holllywood, producing broader product, but it has also had a downside. To make a move that does not offend the Chinese Communist Party which runs labor camps for religious people, while pleasing decadent Hollywood, and the gentrifying European Union is a trick . . . And Justice League like most recent comic films does so by having no moral core.

What is justice? What does Atlantis have to do with Themyscira?

Nobody goes to a comic book movie looking for answers, but comic book movies depend on our having such an answer.  We do not and so films strain for bad-guys that offend nobody actually in power and heroes who fight for the right to existence and nothing else. 

Justice League is a league without a clue about justice, but so it goes.