Justice League

Starring Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher and Ciaran Hinds. Directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon. Now playing at GTA theatres. 120 minutes. PG

Frankenstein would love Justice League.

He’d recognize a kindred spirit in its ragged stitching, mindless momentum and vacant look behind the eyes, especially those belonging to Ben Affleck’s emotionally inert Batman.

The film is marginally better than last year’s sour and dispiriting Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but that’s like saying that dental surgery is preferable to passing a kidney stone.

The accumulated screen evidence is that DC Comics and its Warner Bros.’ enablers just can’t get this team thing right. They can score with single superhero stories — as Wonder Woman proved last summer — but mob scenes of men and women in tights seem to overwhelm all concerned.

Adding to the problem for Justice League was a late-innings switch of directors, due to a family tragedy, from action ace Zack Snyder to sardonic expositor Joss Whedon. This necessitated expensive reshoots and other tinkering and delays which result in a whole movie that is considerably less than the sum of its misshapen parts. The film even looks dreary, as if it had been dunked into a CGI version of used motor oil.

It opens with the weary cynicism of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” as the world mourns Superman’s loss in Batman v Superman. A terrible thing, but even sadder is the villain du jour: a fiery and anvil-headed demon named Steppenwolf, played by Ciaran Hinds, who inspires not fear but rather an endless loop of “Born To Be Wild” in the mind of anyone over 50.

Steppenwolf and his “parademon” droogs seek to reduce the planet to a “primordial hellscape,” which I suppose sounds scarier than a modern hellscape. To do so, he needs to collect and connect three ancient cubes called Mother Boxes, which look for all the world like portable space heaters. How much of a hellscape is that? I am not making this up.

We are not obliged to take Steppenwolf seriously, but our collective heroes are, and a couple of them are worth watching. Gal Gadot’s bullet-dodging and man-kicking Wonder Woman remains as vital as presence as she was in her own film. Her Lasso of Truth turns out to be a dandy device for slipping in a few details of the scant plot, which was cobbled together by Snyder, Whedon and Chris Terrio (Batman v Superman).

Also rating more than a yawn are Jason Momoa’s gruff Aquaman, lord of his own watery domain, and Ezra Miller’s clownish The Flash, who contributes a few fleeting laughs. Both will be getting their own films in due course, and their appearances here will serve to whet appetites (or at least not kill them) for their solo endeavours, much the way Gadot’s brief appearance in Batman v Superman stoked anticipation for Wonder Woman.

Less thrilling is Ray Fisher’s gloomy Cyborg, a biomechanical being who is still trying to figure out who he is, much less why he’s in this movie.

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Such existential befuddlement must also be on the minds of characters old and new played by Amy Adams, J.K. Simmons, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Robin Wright, Billy Crudup and Amber Heard. Don’t worry if you blink and fail to notice them, because the directors barely do.

This leaves the two guys who got everybody into this mess: Affleck’s unhappy Batman, who has many toys and who seems to gain 100 lbs. whenever he suits up, and Henry Cavill’s super-square Superman, who is officially still dead, even though Cavill somehow still rates prominent marquee billing.

My lips are sealed, except to say that if you go to Justice League seriously wondering if you’ll see Superman, I have three used space heaters in my basement I want to sell you.

Put them together and they might blow up the world, or at least your fuse box. I’m not making any promises, but either way it’ll look primordial.