BEFORE: I face a dilemma today, because of the Hollywood sexual harassment scandals - I happened to know Brett Ratner, one of the men standing accused in the news - or, rather, I knew him back at NYU in the late 80's. He was there solely to get his diploma, and to do as little work as possible in order to make that happen, because he apparently had a job waiting for him in Hollywood, and just needed the piece of paper to make that happen. So sophomore year I was on his crew and he was supposed to be on mine, but he never showed up to carry my equipment when it was my turn to direct, not even once. And when I crewed for him, he seemed to spend every spare minute between shots trying to pick up girls by offering them gum, that was his move. So I've known for 30 years that the guy's a sleaze ball with a one-track mind, and wouldn't lift a finger to help anyone else, and finally the rest of the world is catching up with me.
I've spent those 30 years avoiding as many of his films as possible, making exceptions only for "X-Men: The Last Stand", which happens to be the worst film in that franchise. I slipped up and watched "Tower Heist" and "Red Dragon" too, but hey, I'm only human. Ratner also got very sneaky and got into producing, so that his name got attached to big-budget films like "The Revenant", "Black Mass" and "Rules Don't Apply" - but since the scandal has broken it appears that most companies have severed ties with him, and encouraged others to do the same. If karma is an actual thing, then he should spend whatever fortune he has amassed over his career to either settle or satisfy the lawsuits against him, and then live out the rest of his days penniless and, preferably, homeless.
(Bitter? Moi? Why should I be bitter against the person who taught me that the vast majority of people in this industry are selfish and unreliable, because I learned that if I wanted to make a movie, I could only count on myself, so for that semester I became writer, director, cameraman and star of my student films, in the vein of Renaissance men like Orson Welles. OK, so I hold grudges. My motto is "forget, but don't forgive". Or should that be the other way around?)
But I've been planning for months to see "Justice League", it's an integral part of my chain, and also the DC Universe that I've been keeping track of. Am I supposed to boycott this film, and not see how these superheroes come together to form their universe's greatest team? My solution is to use the Fandango gift certificate I received as a birthday gift from my co-workers, so at least it's not MY money contributing to the box office of a Ratner-produced film. And hopefully by the time another DC superhero film rolls around, Warner Bros. will have cleaned up their yard a little better, so the rodents don't get back in.
Robin Wright carries over from "Blade Runner 2049", and as it turns out, I didn't need to hold that film back from the Ryan Gosling chain - there's an actress that could have carried over from "Paranoia" to this one, I didn't dive very deep into the credits to find better connections, because once I found a way to connect between all the films I wanted to see for the rest of 2017, I didn't see the need to try to improve it. It could have been a great quadrilogy, with four films set in Los Angeles with Ryan Gosling in them. Oh, well, what's done is done - and now I get to watch five films in which Ben Affleck plays a rich person. First up, Affleck as Bruce Wayne.
OK, now for dilemma #2, Ben Affleck has been accused of (and admitted to) other bad behavior, beyond being closely associated with Harvey Weinstein. Two years ago it was revealed that he was having a relationship with his kids' nanny, and this eventually led to the break-up of his marriage. This was what passed for a scandal two years ago, before Cosby, before Louis CK, before (insert three more names here, based on this week's top stories). Again, we learn that people, in general, are untrustworthy and unreliable over long spans of time. I'm spending this whole week watching movies with Affleck, who's probably thanking his lucky stars that the current wave of scandals has made his behavior seem better by comparison. Though he may or may not have done anything illegal, adultery still counts as a very shitty thing to do, depending on one's own morals of course, so your mileage may vary.
But where do we even begin to draw the lines on regulating the moral behavior of others? We think we know where to start, but where do we stop? Will this become a Hollywood "witch hunt" for pervy behavior, similar to the anti-Communist McCarthy hearings of the 1950's, and if so, will there be anyone left in Hollywood afterwards to make movies? Stay tuned.
I've spent those 30 years avoiding as many of his films as possible, making exceptions only for "X-Men: The Last Stand", which happens to be the worst film in that franchise. I slipped up and watched "Tower Heist" and "Red Dragon" too, but hey, I'm only human. Ratner also got very sneaky and got into producing, so that his name got attached to big-budget films like "The Revenant", "Black Mass" and "Rules Don't Apply" - but since the scandal has broken it appears that most companies have severed ties with him, and encouraged others to do the same. If karma is an actual thing, then he should spend whatever fortune he has amassed over his career to either settle or satisfy the lawsuits against him, and then live out the rest of his days penniless and, preferably, homeless.
(Bitter? Moi? Why should I be bitter against the person who taught me that the vast majority of people in this industry are selfish and unreliable, because I learned that if I wanted to make a movie, I could only count on myself, so for that semester I became writer, director, cameraman and star of my student films, in the vein of Renaissance men like Orson Welles. OK, so I hold grudges. My motto is "forget, but don't forgive". Or should that be the other way around?)
But I've been planning for months to see "Justice League", it's an integral part of my chain, and also the DC Universe that I've been keeping track of. Am I supposed to boycott this film, and not see how these superheroes come together to form their universe's greatest team? My solution is to use the Fandango gift certificate I received as a birthday gift from my co-workers, so at least it's not MY money contributing to the box office of a Ratner-produced film. And hopefully by the time another DC superhero film rolls around, Warner Bros. will have cleaned up their yard a little better, so the rodents don't get back in.
Robin Wright carries over from "Blade Runner 2049", and as it turns out, I didn't need to hold that film back from the Ryan Gosling chain - there's an actress that could have carried over from "Paranoia" to this one, I didn't dive very deep into the credits to find better connections, because once I found a way to connect between all the films I wanted to see for the rest of 2017, I didn't see the need to try to improve it. It could have been a great quadrilogy, with four films set in Los Angeles with Ryan Gosling in them. Oh, well, what's done is done - and now I get to watch five films in which Ben Affleck plays a rich person. First up, Affleck as Bruce Wayne.
OK, now for dilemma #2, Ben Affleck has been accused of (and admitted to) other bad behavior, beyond being closely associated with Harvey Weinstein. Two years ago it was revealed that he was having a relationship with his kids' nanny, and this eventually led to the break-up of his marriage. This was what passed for a scandal two years ago, before Cosby, before Louis CK, before (insert three more names here, based on this week's top stories). Again, we learn that people, in general, are untrustworthy and unreliable over long spans of time. I'm spending this whole week watching movies with Affleck, who's probably thanking his lucky stars that the current wave of scandals has made his behavior seem better by comparison. Though he may or may not have done anything illegal, adultery still counts as a very shitty thing to do, depending on one's own morals of course, so your mileage may vary.
But where do we even begin to draw the lines on regulating the moral behavior of others? We think we know where to start, but where do we stop? Will this become a Hollywood "witch hunt" for pervy behavior, similar to the anti-Communist McCarthy hearings of the 1950's, and if so, will there be anyone left in Hollywood afterwards to make movies? Stay tuned.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" (Movie #2,295), "Wonder Woman" (Movie #2,652)
THE PLOT: Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman's selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy.
AFTER: This is finally the film that galvanizes the DC universe, where all of its most powerful heroes come together to compare their origin stories, and work together to defeat the evil power. Which in this case is the dreaded Spoiler, the villain who ruins movie plots by posting them online. Just kidding, but I do try to create a spoiler-free zone here, and since I'm viewing the "Justice League" film just three days after its release, I'm going to try to be very careful, because I know that not everyone rushes out to see a big film like this during its opening weekend.
I went on Monday night, and there were only about 15 people in the large IMAX theater I went to, but yet somehow I still ended up sitting in front of the only two people in the screening who insisted upon having a conversation during the film. Sure, but if I turn around and ask them to stop talking, then I'm the bad guy. But they did eventually quiet down, so I was able to fully enjoy the second half of this film. (Sure, I could have moved my seat, but it's the principle of the matter.)
I'm mostly a Marvel Comics man, but about 10% of my monthly reading list comes from DC - the 3 Batman books, the 2 Superman books, and the Justice League trades. (It's kind of like how I mostly drink Mountain Dew, which is a Pepsi product, but if a restaurant only has cola, I'll drink Coke over Pepsi.) I've been reading DC since the Big Reboot back in 1985, and through the two (or is it 3) re-boots that have occurred since then. I got on board with the JLA when the comic was revamped in 1997 - it had existed for decades, but I guess had begun to suffer from having too many characters and spin-offs, so the 1997 version brought the book back to basics, with a focus on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. In 2006 the "Infinite Crisis" mini-series marked a return to multiple dimensions and parallel Earths, so what followed was a 5-year run called "Justice League of America", with the trinity of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a rotating cast of minor heroes like Vixen, Black Lightning and Hawkgirl. This run culminated with the "Flashpoint" storyline, where Flash traveled through time, changed history and years of DC's continuity (or so it seemed...)
The 2011 DC reboot was another attempt to go "back to basics", with a new Justice League line-up of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Flash (Barry Allen) and Cyborg. Hmm, with the exception of Green Lantern, that's VERY close to the line-up of this movie. This reboot was called "The New 52" because there were 52 initial series in the publication line-up, and many of those books ended up being published for 52 issues before the next re-boot, which took place in 2016 and was called "Rebirth". (I won't bore you with the argument over whether this was a reboot or not, because in some ways it was a return to the pre-Flashpoint continuity, but in other cases it wasn't, it's all very technical and overly nerdy, and very little of this argument relates to the movie.)
My point is, DC seems to have now settled on who constitutes the "core" of the movie Justice League, and it's this line-up very similar to the 2011 "New 52" reboot. (Which wasn't really a reboot, it was just some villain who somehow stole 10 years out of history and made every hero think they had a new origin story. Again, very complicated and super-nerdy.) But in the movie continuity, the Justice League forms in a world without its Superman, where Batman and Wonder Woman have to unite and recruit the other team members: Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg. (Thanks to his solo movie failing, DC requests that you ignore the absence of Green Lantern.)
The problem here is, we've seen this film before, in 2012, and it was called "The Avengers". Which is probably very ironic because the Justice League's been around longer in the comic books, and if anything the Avengers comic was an attempt to rip off the Justice League. Only Marvel got there first during the current wave of superhero movies, and did this "team up the heroes to defeat the alien invasion thing" first, so now it looks like DC is copying Marvel, at least on the screen. So if the box office for "Justice League" ends up being under-whelming, I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the fact that the audience might have plot deja vu, and that perhaps no new ground was broken here.
I went on Monday night, and there were only about 15 people in the large IMAX theater I went to, but yet somehow I still ended up sitting in front of the only two people in the screening who insisted upon having a conversation during the film. Sure, but if I turn around and ask them to stop talking, then I'm the bad guy. But they did eventually quiet down, so I was able to fully enjoy the second half of this film. (Sure, I could have moved my seat, but it's the principle of the matter.)
I'm mostly a Marvel Comics man, but about 10% of my monthly reading list comes from DC - the 3 Batman books, the 2 Superman books, and the Justice League trades. (It's kind of like how I mostly drink Mountain Dew, which is a Pepsi product, but if a restaurant only has cola, I'll drink Coke over Pepsi.) I've been reading DC since the Big Reboot back in 1985, and through the two (or is it 3) re-boots that have occurred since then. I got on board with the JLA when the comic was revamped in 1997 - it had existed for decades, but I guess had begun to suffer from having too many characters and spin-offs, so the 1997 version brought the book back to basics, with a focus on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. In 2006 the "Infinite Crisis" mini-series marked a return to multiple dimensions and parallel Earths, so what followed was a 5-year run called "Justice League of America", with the trinity of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a rotating cast of minor heroes like Vixen, Black Lightning and Hawkgirl. This run culminated with the "Flashpoint" storyline, where Flash traveled through time, changed history and years of DC's continuity (or so it seemed...)
The 2011 DC reboot was another attempt to go "back to basics", with a new Justice League line-up of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Flash (Barry Allen) and Cyborg. Hmm, with the exception of Green Lantern, that's VERY close to the line-up of this movie. This reboot was called "The New 52" because there were 52 initial series in the publication line-up, and many of those books ended up being published for 52 issues before the next re-boot, which took place in 2016 and was called "Rebirth". (I won't bore you with the argument over whether this was a reboot or not, because in some ways it was a return to the pre-Flashpoint continuity, but in other cases it wasn't, it's all very technical and overly nerdy, and very little of this argument relates to the movie.)
My point is, DC seems to have now settled on who constitutes the "core" of the movie Justice League, and it's this line-up very similar to the 2011 "New 52" reboot. (Which wasn't really a reboot, it was just some villain who somehow stole 10 years out of history and made every hero think they had a new origin story. Again, very complicated and super-nerdy.) But in the movie continuity, the Justice League forms in a world without its Superman, where Batman and Wonder Woman have to unite and recruit the other team members: Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg. (Thanks to his solo movie failing, DC requests that you ignore the absence of Green Lantern.)
The problem here is, we've seen this film before, in 2012, and it was called "The Avengers". Which is probably very ironic because the Justice League's been around longer in the comic books, and if anything the Avengers comic was an attempt to rip off the Justice League. Only Marvel got there first during the current wave of superhero movies, and did this "team up the heroes to defeat the alien invasion thing" first, so now it looks like DC is copying Marvel, at least on the screen. So if the box office for "Justice League" ends up being under-whelming, I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the fact that the audience might have plot deja vu, and that perhaps no new ground was broken here.
If I take this comparison to the extreme, consider this: Iron Man is the equivalent of Batman - both are orphaned millionaire playboys with unlimited resources, tons of gadgets and obsessive/addictive personalities. And just as "Iron Man" kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so did the three "Dark Knight" films kick off the DCU (I realize this is a debatable point, but work with me here...) Now, if Batman = Iron Man, then probably Superman = Thor (both are aliens, with unlimited strength, energy-based powers and both wear red capes) and that leaves Wonder Woman = Captain America, which is not a great analogy, except that the World War I-based origin story for Wonder Woman reminded me of the World War II-set "Captain America: The First Avenger".
If you scratch a little deeper, you can find equivalencies for just about every member of the JLA on the Avengers squad - like Flash = Quicksilver, Aquaman = Namor the Sub-Mariner (with a fair amount of Black Panther mixed in), and if you extend to the comic books then obviously Green Arrow = Hawkeye, Black Canary = Black Widow, Red Tornado = Vision, Zatanna = Scarlet Witch, The Atom = Ant-Man, and so on ad infinitum. Sure, there are differences, and there are no doubt many characters in each universe that have no counterparts on the other side of the comic-book store aisle, like Hulk. DC has no Hulk-type character, but then Marvel has no Lex Luthor, for example. (Obadiah Stane was an obvious Luthor rip-off, but he didn't last...)
Now, is "Justice League" a complete rip-off of the first "Avengers" movie? No, of course not, but the main thrust is the same. But if you change "Chitauri" to "parademons", "Loki" to "Steppenwolf", and "Tesseract" to "Mother Box", I'm afraid you'll find you're already halfway there. We may have reached the point where all of these superhero films are essentially drawing from the same pool for plots. That being said, I did find that the events in "Justice League" did feel like a perfectly natural logical progression from the events depicted in "Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice". We saw those scenes where Batman reviewed the files on those other heroes Luthor was tracking, plus the flash-forward/dream sequence where we saw Batman battling the parademons. So we all knew this was coming, and now it's here.
Now, is "Justice League" a complete rip-off of the first "Avengers" movie? No, of course not, but the main thrust is the same. But if you change "Chitauri" to "parademons", "Loki" to "Steppenwolf", and "Tesseract" to "Mother Box", I'm afraid you'll find you're already halfway there. We may have reached the point where all of these superhero films are essentially drawing from the same pool for plots. That being said, I did find that the events in "Justice League" did feel like a perfectly natural logical progression from the events depicted in "Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice". We saw those scenes where Batman reviewed the files on those other heroes Luthor was tracking, plus the flash-forward/dream sequence where we saw Batman battling the parademons. So we all knew this was coming, and now it's here.
What I might have some problems with, however, are the characterizations of Aquaman and Flash in this film. In the comics Barry Allen was an accomplished hero, and then he died and was replaced by Wally West, who (having had been Kid Flash for a few years) was full of insecurities, and also had to eat a lot to keep up his runner's metabolism. In this film Barry Allen is a teenager, so it's like they're trying to combine the two comic-book Flashes into the same character. This character is Barry in name only, he's got the "eating disorder" of Wally West, plus all of his nebbishy (Jewish?) insecurities, so he's somehow Woody Allen in a red track-suit. I don't watch the "Flash" TV show, so maybe this is the way the character goes on TV now, but his personality doesn't resemble any Flash I know from the comics. Here he's like that awkward kid in school that nobody wants to sit with at lunch, and doesn't get invited to any parties. Are we geeks supposed to see ourselves here?
On the other end of the spectrum, the Aquaman from the old "Super-Friends" cartoons was too much of a straight arrow, with his neat blond hair and his green speedo, so the character was definitely in need of a personality injection if audiences were going to take him seriously. Plus he could talk to fish, and how often is that going to be useful in a fight, I mean, really? But I'm not sure that the direction they picked, which is part mountain man, part hipster, and part Maui from "Moana" was the way to go. I mean, the guy is the prince of Atlantis, should he really be saying things like "Hey, I dig it!" and "My man!" - that all seems way out of character. I mean, I get that a screenwriter might have to go to extremes to give these five do-gooders distinct personalities, but too far in any one direction, and it starts to become unbelievable.
Now, back to the alien invasion. What we have here is the parademons from Apokolips (even though that name is never uttered) and they're being commanded by a villain I've never heard of, who I assume is a minor villain from the "New Gods" storyline that Jack Kirby spear-headed back in the day. Now, you don't HAVE to be familiar with Apokolips, the New Gods and the Fourth World to enjoy this movie, but it couldn't hurt. (Yeah, it turns out the villain here is from the comics, but I hadn't heard his name, except for the fact that it's also a novel by Herman Hesse, and the name of the band that recorded "Born to Be Wild".) So, this leads to my first NITPICK POINT, namely where the hell is Darkseid? When you get all of the big DC heroes together, the challenge they face should be world-threatening, and if you're really going to swing for the fences, they should be fighting Darkseid, the "big boss" of Apokolips. But maybe they're saving him for the next film, the way that Marvel's been building up to Thanos and "Avengers: Infinity War".
Now, my other NITPICK POINT concerns Suicide Squad. We know from that 2016 film that Bruce Wayne was aware of who Suicide Squad was as a team, and what they were capable of. When he learned that an invasion of parademons was imminent, why wouldn't he turn to the team that was already formed, instead of putting together the new Justice League and racing against time to get these disparate heroes to form bonds, relate to each other's powers and start to work together? For that matter, why couldn't he do both, put the J.L. together and also throw Suicide Squad into the mix? When the fate of the entire world is at stake, why wouldn't he use EVERY resource he had to try to fix the problem?
OK, one could say that being aware of the Suicide Squad and what they could do, maybe they're just not on the same power level as Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman et al. But then TELL us that, it would only take two lines of dialogue, with Alfred saying, "Master Bruce, what about that team of criminals that's already been formed, and has trained together?" And Batman would say, "I considered that, Alfred, great suggestion, but they're just not powerful enough for this situation." And now I'm doing all this work, writing dialogue that fixes a professional screenwriter's plotholes...
On the other hand, "Justice League" resolved my greatest NITPICK POINT from "Wonder Woman", namely, where was she for the last 100 years, following her battles during World War I? This film managed to answer that question, with just a few simple lines of dialogue. So why couldn't this have been addressed in her own film? It turns out that she was always there, sticking to the shadows, fighting injustice on her own terms, but avoiding the spotlight for personal reasons, while remaining very unsure about whether the world was ready for a female superhero. It's the god damn patriarchy system, it even affects the heroes now.
Which is really a shame, because even Batman admits during this film that he's not cut out to be the leader of the Justice League, because he's not really a "people person", as we should all be able to discern from the fact that he dresses up like a BAT and spends his nights beating up criminals. He may have the tools, but not the talent. The person with the most power and the best managerial skill, the one who really should be leading the team, is Wonder Woman. But even in the JLA comic books, I don't think she's even held that position, but I could be wrong. Maybe this is what's wrong with the world, that more women should be running things - they certainly can't muck things up worse than the men have done, so I'm all for them driving the proverbial the bus for a while. Now is the time, if ever there was one, when the world needs more Wonder Women. And a few genuinely super men.
Also starring Ben Affleck (last seen in Suicide Squad"), Gal Gadot (last seen in "Keeping Up with the Joneses"), Jason Momoa (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Ray Fisher (ditto) Ezra Miller (last seen in "Suicide Squad"), Henry Cavill (last seen in "Tristan + Isolde"), Jeremy Irons (last seen in "Race"), Diane Lane (last seen in "Trumbo"), Connie Nielsen (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "La La Land"), Joe Morton (also last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Amy Adams (last seen in "Arrival"), Amber Heard (last seen in "Paranoia"), Billy Crudup (last seen in "Spotlight"), Kiersey Clemons (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Julian Lewis Jones, Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Michael McElhatton (last heard in "Norm of the North"), the voice of Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "Calendar Girls"), and cameos from Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "Café Society"), David Thewlis (last seen in "The Zero Theorem", Holt McCallany (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Joe Manganiello.
RATING: 8 out of 10 Viking warriors
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