Examining the characters and storytelling in the film By M.Schinke

The hits just keep on coming, Opinionnerds!

If you need a quick refresher, or you just missed it, go back and read Part 1.

So here we are embarking on part 2 of our, “epic journey” through the wasteland of wasted potential that is Justice League. In the last article we covered the films basic storytelling approach, talked a little about the portrayal of the team dynamics, got into the opening Superman scene and examined the Wonder Woman action scene from early in the movie. Here we’re going to look at our new heros through the various inter-textual storytelling methods to see if they measure up to the totally random, bullshit metric I’m holding in my mind.

So let’s continue onward and please remember, if I’m hurting you it’s only because – I care.

The Heart Of The Movie

Even though I want to regard this film as an individual entity I have to point out that storytelling problems with Cyborg arise when you try to resolve this film with the one that directly preceded it. There are major pieces of storytelling that don’t line up, as if Justice League is the sequel to a version of Batman v Superman that wasn’t made. To begin, there is something bothering me that has to do with how Alfred addresses Victor to Bruce early in the film while they are running down the team candidates. Alfred tells Bruce that facial recognition only returned a partial match for Victor Stone, but it was enough to get them the data the needed on his identity. For those that seem to think Batman was portrayed as a poor detective in BvS, this movie should do nothing more than add fuel to that fire. The BvS footage of Victor and the Mother Box is clearly marked as property of STAR labs and has Silas Stone’s name on it. It wouldn’t take much digging to find out about his GCU football star son and the accident he was involved in. It’s replacement is part of the alteration presented in JL meant to remove the character from how he was presented in BvS and make him seem like more of a ghost in need of work to track down. Except it doesn’t entirely work, because just swapping out the footage used doesn’t change the basic information they would have gotten from Luthor’s notes unless they suddenly don’t include where the information was found. The new footage isn’t labeled like the footage in BvS, but the film still contains multiple images from that previous footage – they aren’t even trying to hide it. This isn’t necessarily a plot problem but the continuity gaffe does create a storytelling problem, and it’s that kind of lack of attention to detail that ultimately derails the film.

Another example; the timing of Cyborgs creation doesn’t square with what’s revealed in BvS. In BvS the creation of the Cyborg has already happened, else it would not have been in Luthor’s files – the lamented, “Justice League cameos” that simply aren’t. In JL, Vic tells the gang that the Mother Box that created him doesn’t become active until after Superman’s death, while in BvS we are given the distinct impression that Silas finds a way to activate the box purposefully; specifically so he can use it to save Vic. This not only creates an incongruity between films but also introduces a story element that will not be explained even though it is central to why anything in the film is happening at all; why does the Mother Box light up after Superman dies? In Justice League, the lab video that featured Victors interaction with the Mother Box is completely different than the one shown in BvS. In JL, the amount of injury and damage to Vic’s body after his accident is significantly less than what was shown in BvS. Some might say this is not an important alteration but, again, it creates an incongruity with his character. The lessening of the amount of cybernetics in his body changes not only how the character should look, given that in BvS the Mother Box has to rebuild practically his entire body as opposed to just his legs and an arm in JL, but diminishes the trauma he would have experienced, which would have an effect on his characters state of mind not to mention how treating his accident would have been approached at all. The loss of one arm and both legs from mid thigh downwards is terrible, but survivable. There would be no reason a person in this condition wouldn’t be in a traditional hospital receiving standard medical care, whereas his condition in BvS is dire and would require drastic action, if an option were available. This is important in terms of character building – the father so desperate to save his son that he is willing to potentially create a monster to do it, and the son with survivors guilt who now has to somehow live with the existence altering choices someone else has made for him. Is he a man or is he a machine? Is he human or alien? This is not simply a matter of the proliferation of machinery in his body but the effect it has on his mind and his soul. As portrayed the attempt seems to be a half hearted commitment to the character, siphoning off the tragedy to, as stated previously, make the character easier to swallow. As far as I’m concerned it’s cowardly and dramatically bankrupt.

That aside, there are issues within the movie that are difficult to ignore upon multiple rewatches because they are brought up at key dramatic moments; and that’s this issue that Cyborg might be influenced by the Mother Box to turn on his allies. Victor himself first poses the idea to his father in his introductory scene, wondering if he is the next alien invasion. The importance of this idea is indicated by the fact that the line was delivered in close up – indicating its significance in film language. The second time the issue is broached is after Clark is resurrected, or however the movie wants to label it. During the face off at the monument, Victor’s, “armor” as he calls it (another attempt to somehow minimize the extent of the cybernetics within his body, though it’s plain to see how extensive they are) goes haywire. The specific statement he makes is that his armors defense system is, “stronger since the interface” and that he, “can’t control it” right before he shoots a blast at Superman. We have to assume that by, “the interface” he means the Kryptonian ship, because that’s all the storytelling gives us. But that interface happened about thirty seconds prior to this incident and we were given no indication that there were any issues with it. I can guess what this line was meant to be related to, but that’s not something to address here. The final time is when Arthur confronts him in the cave and Vic’s defense systems goes off again. Arthur flatly states the possibility that Vic might not be on their side, and that he can’t control the machine inside of him. This will be the last time the movie will pull on this thread. Towards the end of the movie, during the finale, Steppenwolf will mention something about Vic’s connection to the Mother Box but no one will again bring up the idea that he might not be in control or may be working for the other side.

We also get a little bit of confusion as to how the box even functions. As Victor tells the team, his father called it a, “perpetual energy matrix”. Now I know this sounds like technical doublespeak but, as I have said before, words have meanings. As a storyteller you cannot afford to just throw words out because if you don’t control them, they will control your story without you. Perpetual means never ending, and a matrix is an environment in which something develops. So the device is literally being called a never ending environment for the creation of energy. Victor’s father suggests, and the later Superman resurrection scene supports, that the Mother Box has to be powered up somehow before it begins generating energy. Basically, it’s flipping on a generator that never stops producing energy unless it’s turned off. So if that’s the case – how did it turn on after Superman died and what turned it off again after it was used on Victor? It also kind of begs the question of how you turn off a perpetual energy device. It’s very name suggests that once it gets going, it keeps going forever. If it can be turned off, it kind of defeats the purpose of it being a perpetual device. This incongruity was caught by a colleague of mine on Twitter that you should definitely give props to – @kennysama_d

The last, and possibly most important, dropped piece of storytelling is anything having to do with the relationship between Victor and his father, Silas. They begin the movie at odds with one another over what Silas did to Vic to keep him alive – exposing him to the Mother Box, which re-built his body and turned him into a Cyborg. Victor resents his father and calls him monster for what he’s done. After the rescue of the STAR Labs employees from Steppenwolf the relationship between Victor and his father will not be addressed again, not even in a manner that would inform us they were pushing it off for another film. We see them again at the end, reconciled and discovering a way to reconfigure Vic’s body into a new form. Whatever emotional process got them to this point was not addressed within the body of the film.

I Hear You Can Talk To Fish

Yes, I chose that image of JaMo (… I call him JaMo) for a reason.

You’re welcome.

Arthur has two major scenes in the film; first, meeting Bruce Wayne, and then when he returns to Atlantis and speaks with Mera. We don’t get to know the character of Arthur Curry very well in the course of the film – his emotional self, that is. What we do get is a very basic introduction to the character strung throughout the movie. Taken as a whole, the storytelling for this character is disjointed and has more than a few gaps in it. Firstly, we are given two different motivations for his involvement in the goings on that, while not contradictory, aren’t exactly what I would consider complimentary. When speaking with Bruce early in the film, Arthur tells him that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the business of either the surface world or Atlantis, and that he just wants to be left alone. Bruce asks if that’s why he helps the people of the small northern village where he finds him, to which Arthur replies, “I help these people because no one else will”. This is actually a strong piece of character information that I think goes overlooked. This person, who claims no attachment to either of his worlds, who just wants to be left to himself and has no reason to do otherwise, helps these surface people simply because no one else cares enough to do so. This says a lot about who the character of Arthur is at his core. There is a nice and subtle echo of this later in the film as the team is zeroing in on Steppenwolf’s location. As Barry is remarking on the, “rough sledding” faced by those trying to make a life in the area around the abandoned nuclear reactor where Steppenwolf is staged, he asks what kind of people would choose to live there. Quietly, Arthur responds, “People that have been kicked out of everywhere else”. This is an example of those forgotten people that Arthur responds to and tells me that, if for no other reason, they would be enough for him to join the fight. It’s a sincere moment that I like quite a bit; the kind of subtle storytelling that you process even if it’s just on a subconscious level. Unfortunately there isn’t much opportunity for Arthur to help those people in anything other than the broadest terms.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the scene in Atlantis. First off, the scene doesn’t look like it belongs in this movie. Something about it, to me, doesn’t match everything else and the visual discontinuity is a little off putting. It’s another example of a scene that doesn’t make use of any cinematic language; it sticks the camera and front of the actors and shoots them as the take a few steps this way or that way. The creation of an air bubble to keep the water out provides a convenient surrounding to obfuscate the more expensive underwater world just beyond; easy enough to shoot on a green screen. It doesn’t make a lot of sense why people who have adapted to live underwater need an air bubble to speak, and it’s not addressed in the movie but it hangs over the whole scene like a dagger threatening to pierce any concerned conversation at any time. It’s a functional scene, but it isn’t interesting and doesn’t do anything to help the storytelling, which is all exposition. Its a basic, “let’s tell the audience who you are” scene that, to me, feels somewhat out of place in the context of the movie. It also gives Arthur a, “sense of responsibility” motivation that, as I mentioned above, doesn’t exactly compliment his previously established drive. The movie also doesn’t give a clear explanation as to why he’s in Atlantis to begin with. We get to this point after Arthur saves a sailor who was attacked by a Parademon, an attack we are denied the spectacle of. Then, randomly, Arthur makes for Atlantis and arrives in the middle of Steppenwolf’s attack on the Mother Box’s keep. The assumption I’m making is that the attack on the fishing boat, an attack on the ocean, is supposed to make Arthur suspicious about Atlantis being attacked by linking the Parademon to the Mother Box. It’s a rather wild leap in logic but they at least try to lay out a storytelling reason. Reactions will vary on the success of this.

Exposition dumps are never fun, but they are sometimes necessary to get certain pieces of information into the hands of hands of the audience. The trick is to make them either as interesting, or as short, as you can. In this case, short was the order of the day. If a scene doesn’t service the plot, the question then becomes does it service the character? Ideally you want the scene to do both, but sometimes you have to settle for one or the other. I don’t believe the scene services the plot significantly, so now we have to ask if the scene services the character and that one’s a bit tricky to answer. It provides information about the character, but it doesn’t provide anything that will be built upon later. Because the movie doesn’t feature any character sub-plotting, choosing instead to focus all of its attention on the A-plot, we are left bereft of the kind of character work that draws us into the characters complex inner lives. So while there is some set up there is no real pay off on either a textual or emotional level. It’s like if I were to walk up to you in the middle of doing something and tell you I was born in the back of a taxi cab on a Tuesday, but I never follow it up with anything relevant to what you’re doing. You just kind of think to yourself, “Yeah, ok. Cool story” and then proceed to forget all about it. This is clearly setting up dominoes for the Aquaman solo film, and that’s fine from a larger universe, connective tissue perspective. But dumping this information into the middle of the movie and never touching on it again seems like haphazard storytelling to me.

In this situation I have to ask myself an important question; do I dislike this scene because I feel it doesn’t work, or do I feel it doesn’t work because I dislike it? Asking oneself these kinds of questions is vitally important to keeping ones analytical mind properly calibrated. We all suffer from biases on certain subjects. The quest is to recognize them and prevent them from influencing our analytical minds. Remember: how you feel about a piece of storytelling doesn’t change the facts of how it’s composed.

Lastly, aside from some swimming and an underwater fight, we don’t get any of what makes Arthur unique as a superhero character. We see some bits of him being sorta strong, but it doesn’t really come through in any way as a comparative to Diana or Clark. He has the magic trident, a weapon that shows up out of nowhere and who’s capabilities and limits are never addressed. Why does he have it? Why does he need it? He doesn’t do much with it besides holding back water at one time. It’s one of the frustrating things about how this character is used. JaMo is wonderful, but the character is still a big question mark. Since he doesn’t have the cultural cache of either Batman or Superman, two characters you can pretty much drop in whole and no one would ever question who or why they are, he needs a little more explanation that he just doesn’t get here.

That Seems Like An Oversimplification

The scene that introduces Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen into this movie is, possibly, the best scene in the film. The performances from Ezra and Billy Cruddup as Henry Allen are understated and emotional without being sentimental. It’s an expository scene but the exposition is delivered subtly, with the exception of one key piece of dialog that jumps out at me. The dialog uses references to speed, movement and time in a subtle way that draws allusions to the Barry’s life as the Flash. While I truly enjoy this scene for it’s sincerity, we unfortunately find ourselves once again presented with information that will not be relevant later in the movie. Again, since the film focuses solely on the A-plot, a way of addressing the complaints of too many subplots in BvS, we don’t spend any time on the emotional lives of the characters, so all of this fine work ends up feeling like it’s there to set up later movies instead of being part of this one.

From here the perspective on the character will shift greatly. What we lose in this bit of narrative round-a-bout isn’t just some pieces of character information; an entire aspect of the character of Barry Allen will disappear when this scene ends. During the remainder of the film Barry will be used as the comic relief. This humor will generally make use of quippy one liners, pop culture references and a few exaggerated facial expressions. But while he does present himself as having a sense of humor in the lead up to the scene with his father, as well as with Bruce afterwards (minus the obviously re-shot brunch joke, which I will call out for it’s obviousness) he isn’t portrayed as being a character always looking for an opening to be funny or clever. The sincerity he displays with his father would be open to that kind of opportunistic quippery if that were truly in the characters make up. In my opinion it doesn’t track – that’s not scientific, it’s just my observation. Like the scenes mentioned in the previous sections, this scene with his father feels like an outlier, an anomalous rendering of an otherwise humorous character being swept up in a moment of melodrama.

Another level of information not entirely capitalized on, in my opinion, is Barry’s intellect. Again, in these early scenes, the seeds are planted to convey just how incredibly intelligent this character is. His father calls him brilliant; a parental boast to be sure, but still information conveyed to the audience. But more than that it’s the, “lair” in which he meets Bruce Wayne that cements it. In this space are multiple monitors with bizarre information displays, toolboxes, books – multiple visual cues that inform us how smart the character is and where his interests lie. It’s what detectives might label an, “orgy of evidence”. Again, everything in a movie is storytelling. If his space were full of Teletubbies posters or creepy eyed baby dolls we would get very different information than what is being conveyed here. So the movie is giving us multiple pieces of information to inform a use of great intelligence later in the film. Do we get this? Somewhat – he does follow Bruce’s plan to resurrect Superman pretty well, and he does make the guess that he can jump start the Mother Box when they find the Kryptonian ship can’t power it. Each individual audience member is going to have to make a determination as to whether or not this is important to them. Honestly, it probably isn’t something anyone would even think of if they weren’t engaging in this level of dissection, so I can’t really knock the movie much on this point. I make note of it because my examination of the text is in an attempt to put all aspects of the film in context; to put all the ducks in a row and listen to them quack. You are free to take that egg it or leave it as it lay.

To Be Concluded….

The trend with these new character introductions seems to be to present a veritable cornucopia of information about them, only to do virtually nothing with it in the film. This is very, very different than what was presented in Batman v Superman, where the characters were shown but no real information about them was shared, save for the creation of Cyborg that went all but ignored here. These were full on, “here are these people and here is what they are about” scenes that don’t impact the character for the remainder of the movie in any substantial way. Some minor details get brought up but the real, overarching emotional pieces get ignored. I don’t know how that information would get used to further the overall storytelling but, to my credit, it isn’t my job to know these things.

We have a few more areas to cover before we reach the end, my dear friends. So no more wasted words or goodbyes. See you soon!

Clever endings aren’t my bag.

Laterz

Check out Part 3!

Justice League is available on UHD and standard Blu-ray at Amazon

(Follow *NotThePopularOpinion on Twitter @Only_Grey