Justice League review: Waiting for Gadot

In a deliciously neat piece of symmetry, the question that forms Justice League’s subtext is the same question that drives its plot: can a group of meta-humans/demigods save the universe?

For differing reasons, that question must twice go unanswered. On spoiler grounds I cannot reveal whether the fabled five — Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg — defeat Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds doing the motion-capture), a devil-horned genocidal maniac returned from the mists of prehistory with cosmic vengeance in his heart. But perhaps you can guess.

Nor, lacking the superpower of clairvoyance, can I say if the quintet will rescue the DC Extended Universe from its descent into dismal introspection. Once again, though, a guess might be made.

What I can say is that Justice League is better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the hyper-turgid prequel that this film is plainly designed to correct.

That isn’t saying much beyond this: finally it has dawned on them that any appetite for darkly dystopian, affectedly deep superhero movies is sated. As Marvel worked out long ago, audiences need fun and wit to distract from the formulaic tedium of CGI fight sequences and the wearying familiarity of the plotlines.

While this film provides far less of either than Marvel’s Avengers, it does at least make the effort. Eventually.

The situation at the end of Batman v Superman was bleak, and so it remains as Justice League begins. Superman (Henry Cavill, curiously featured in the credits) is dead, and a grieving planet is perpetually bathed in noirish gloom.

So is Bruce Wayne/Batman (a subdued Ben Affleck). Beset with guilt after bringing about the Man of Steel’s demise, he is angrier than ever. “What do you want of me?” asks a villain he is dangling over a building. “Fear,” he growls back. “I can smell it.”

For the opening 20 minutes the fearful scent in the cinema was Calvin Klein’s catchily named Oh God, No, Spare Me From Another Two Hours Wasted on Misplaced Grandiosity and Phoney Emotional Intensity.

Lois Lane (Amy Adams) reaches for Clark Kent’s hair in her sleep but finds only pillow. A Superman banner hangs poignantly over Tower Bridge. A poster sandwiches a photo of him between snaps of David Bowie and Prince, above the cheesy caption “Did they return to their planet?”

All right, you think, we get it. Superman’s gone, doves are crying, planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing we can do... Now could we please, in the name of mercy, move on to something lighter?

Praise be to Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), we could. By the end, disturbingly, she starts to morph into a mother figure, muttering “children, children” at the boys’ high jinks and possibly poised to check they have been washing behind their capes.

Until that ominous flirtation with gender stereotyping, however, she kicks arse with the same mix of balletic ferocity and baleful empathy that made her solo film such a smash back in May. She stands majestically on the statue of Madam Justice outside the Old Bailey, before disarming “a small group of reactionary terrorists”. The only problem with Wonder Woman is that there isn’t enough of her.

Of the newbies she helps Batman round up, Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Jason Momoa) is the standout. Despite looking like a refugee from Finnish mock-satanic hard rockers and Eurovision winners Lordi, Aquaman is too cool for the pool. Dramatically tattooed, draining bottles of hard liquor in seconds, the trident-wielding scion of lost Atlantis is a worthy Protector of the Oceans. Oh yes, and he can talk to fish.

Barry Allen/Flash (Ezra Miller) is an endearingly gauche prodigy with the nerviness of an eve-of-bar-mitzvah schoolboy. Eager to join the gang because he has no friends, he moves at such speed that time seems to freeze around him.

Victor Stone/Cyborg (Ray Fisher) is another outsider struggling for identity. His scientist father had the technology to rebuild him after an accident ended his dreams of a career in American Football.

With the back stories mechanically told, the five embark on their nominal mission to prevent Steppenwolf collecting the three boxes of infinite power that will let him and his army of flying vampire-y demons plunge this world and many others into eternal darkness.

Yet their real mission is to pose alongside one another in a line, looking awesome in shots stagily manufactured to be called “iconic”. There are too many such tableaux, and too few laughs. Occasionally, as when Wonder Woman drolly uses her golden lasso of truth to make Aquaman admit he fancies her, the humour works. More often, the banter reminds you of Last of the Summer Wine. The lines have the cadence of jokes without being funny.

The production was riven with problems (including the late replacement of director Zach Snyder with Joss Wheedon due to a family tragedy), which goes some way to explaining the clunkiness of a movie that owes a huge debt to its prequel.

Blockbuster sequels, like political elections, are largely about beating expectations. Justice League clears the spectacularly low bar set by Batman v Superman. Whether bare adequacy is a compelling reason to extend the franchise is another matter.

The Beatles’ Come Together plays at the end in celebration. But after spending $300 million to take a baby step on the long and winding road out of the darkness, DC might be wise to say hello, goodbye to the Justice League and let Wonder Woman get back to being its solo saviour across the universe.

Cert 12A, 120 mins