What Went Wrong With Justice League (and How to Fix It)

Too Much, Too Soon

Justice League didn’t feel as unremittingly bleak as some of its forebears. it worked hard to infuse a little humor. And while not all of it landed, Ezra Miller’s Flash was pretty much a top-to-bottom delight. Loved it when he tried to explain how he’s not really built to take on a universe of demigods. “I’ve just pushed some people and run away!” he says.

But while D.C. and Warner Bros. shoehorned a little more fun into Justice League, it stuffed way too much else in there, too: It crowded the screen with six superheroes, three of which most of us knew next-to-nothing about. It crammed in the concept of the Mother Boxes—a movie MacGuffin that seems roughly equivalent to Marvel’s Infinity Stones.

But here’s the thing about those Infinity Stones: The concept was introduced in the movies waaaaay back in 2011, with Captain America: The First Avenger, and we still haven’t gotten the payoff yet. And I’d suggest that’s a good thing.

Bit by bit, revelation by revelation, we’ve learned more about these stones. We’ve seen five of them now, I believe: The Space Stone was last seen in Thor: Ragnarok, likely pilfered by Loki; The Mind Stone is planted in Vision’s forehead; the Reality Stone took the form of a red cloud in Thor: The Dark World; the Time Stone, which we assume is engine in Doctor Strange’s Eye of Agamotto; and The Power Stone, which was introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy. There’s a sixth out there, but it has yet to be pinned down.

These stones are a big deal, we know. We know that the big bad Thanos wants them all. But unless you know your Marvel comics pretty well (and I don’t), they’re still pretty mysterious, and that’s by design. Their slow rollout builds anticipation and encourages our buy-in. It’s like Christmas: The anticipation is part of what makes it so fun.

Now, contrast that to Justice League’s Mother Boxes: In D.C.’s Fourth World storyline, they’re equally powerful and incredibly enigmatic. But they’re foisted upon us in a rush, and opened not like a mysterious Christmas present, but like a bag of chips. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is forced to unspool their whole history in what seems like 10 minutes of graceless exposition—telling us what they are, where they are and why we should care. This just isn’t good storytelling.

Justice League misuses its new superheroes in much the same way.

Marvel took a massive risk when it decided to unveil its Avengers team movie by movie. I mean, really—how many run-of-the-mill moviegoers knew about Iron Man before 2008? But Marvel understood that to build a squad like the Avengers, you need to take your time. It cooked its universe like a fine soufflé.

D.C. and Warner Bros. don’t want to take time for a soufflé. So we get Hamburger Helper.

Boom, here’s Aquaman (Jason Momoa), with his minimal backstory told in a few excruciatingly boring minutes. Bam, there’s Cyborg (Ray Fisher), whose tragic origin is given all the breathing space of a bagged sandwich. We’re given next-to-no time to get to know anything about these characters, much less care for them. Good movies depend on their characters’ ability to relate to the audience, but this doesn’t feel like a relationship: It feels like speed dating.

Listen, I wanted a Justice League movie as much as anyone. But before I see another one, I want to have a reason to invest in its members. I want Warner Bros. and D.C. to show me why I should. And along those lines …