Matchbox Cars and Hotwheels: A Justice League Review

Do any of you remember the days when you played with toy cars? I feel like I have to ask that because I'm honestly not quite sure who my audience is and if there is one at all. Perhaps you played with dolls or, in my case, the far more formidable and bloodthirsty Beanie Babies. They had the upper hand over all those garbage toys like "cars" and "tiny creepy replications of mini-humans" because I was able to knot plastic bags around their necks and throw them off the deck to see if they'd float gracefully to the ground. They never did, of course. We lost many good men but loss is par for the course of life so let's move on.

Anyways! Toy cars. They were the jocks of the toy kingdom, a dominant force of metal that couldn't handle running into the slightest pebble without severe structural damage. They were like Tesla in that way. (Full disclosure, I know nothing about Tesla so please don't fact check that. It would be impossible for me to care any less than I already do, so let's focus on the toys). No child in his damn mind wanted a Matchbox car. If there was one such child, probably raised in the woods not by wolves but by a mink and his malcontent rabid chipmunk pal, he probably didn't know a thing about toys. Pine cones? Sure. Toy cars? Leave that to the real boys, False Romulus. 

DC has, unfortunately and unfairly, become the Matchbox car of the comic book movie genre. While Marvel has churned out hit movie after hit movie, each cell of film somehow becoming more and more gummed up with the slime of cotton candy quips, DC has been what it's always been: A deeper and darker world that isn't afraid of going dark for the sake of its intent to tell tales steeped in morals and the battle for the soul of Metropolis or Gotham. Sometimes this is a fool's errand as the story and the script are rarely as grandiose as the creators believe them to be (we're all looking at you, Studio Interference Squad), but the intent has been there to build on the back of Nolan's grim reality and to tell stories that matter. Yet years have gone by with Hotwheel Marvel churning out bubblegum hits while DC has struggled through the grime of trying to be something more and, as earlier established, no one cares about Matchbox cars because sometimes they're crappy and take themselves much more seriously than they should. 

Thus, for every quasi-decent DC movie (Dawn of Justice and...well, the other ones...) there have been three critical and financial successes for Marvel (Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians with Sherlock, Guardians with Paul Rudd, Guardians with somehow even quippier Guardians, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera) and the world has laughed at DC directors who can't seem to escape the Instagram filter that is Gotham City. Meanwhile the youths of today have glammed onto the resulting joke-a-minute laughfests that reached peak absurdity in Thor: Ragnarok, a 150 minute Saturday Night Live episode that decided to go with the "Shotgun approach" to jokes in that, if you spray wide and often enough something will hopefully die. I died in that one, or at least my brain cells did, and I mourned for the days when people at least pretended there was something superhero movies could say. 

What's that? You want to destroy an entire world and, instead of granting us all a moment of silence, you'd rather make your last of 2,913 quippy one-liners? By all means, go for it! God knows we're all probably brain dead by this point anyways. Thanks for the Cotton Candy Comas, you bastards of humorless laughter! Let us laugh! Why? I have no idea but apparently that's something we should all do while led to the slaughterhouse so that we might be bled dry of any sense of humor that requires a smidgen of intelligence to appreciate. But do you know the worst part? In this world of "Dear god! They're more successful! We must mimic!", instead of staying true to their slightly-less-than brand of Matchbox, DC thought to themselves "Yes. Of course. We can also do that! Nothing can get rid of a cloud like a chunk of sickeningly sweet Coney Island Diabetes Foam that looks just like our clouds but is overwhelming and tries way too hard!"

And that brings us to today, when I saw Justice League and silently wept for the mass grave of all the promise that grit and grime can sometimes embrace. Why? Because DC had a brand. It might not have been the immediately sexy brand (the box office dynamos of Guardians, Deadpool, Ant Man, and every other joke-laden jokefest saw to that) but it was distinguishable. When the masses saw a Bat Signal float through the air or the S that apparently is a river (because to hell with how topography works, right?), they knew that it would at least be something different. It would have some metal in the timbre and a hint of nastiness in all things heroic. It would, as the laymen would perhaps put it, have balls. But, take it from a man who has been dumped by enough women to know that coming in second is pretty damn lousy, losing is a terrible thing and eventually DC got tired of losing. 

That's why, on the heels of Batman Vs. Superman (a grimy world of betrayal and dizzying plot devices) and Wonder Woman (a fantastic exercise in genre that finally gave the world a Diana Prince flick that was a stunning achievement), we got...this. Gone are the moral platitudes and the battles that are all grunts and agony, replaced with mortal heroes who somehow care so little about death that they quip on the battlefield constantly as the world dies. Gone! are the characters with some semblance of... character, so that they might be replaced with tension-killing one-liners. GONE! Is the Instagram filter, replaced by CGI so bright and boisterous that even Snapchat had no use for it. And here, risen from ashes into slightly more colorful ashes, is the new DC world where creators on the losing Matchbox team thought "Screw it. Maybe we should try to be Marvel."

Except they're not. Now they just look like a Matchbox car in a Hotwheels box. They're all style and they gave away their run-of-the-mill ordinariness for the sake of a little extra paint. They sold their soul for jokes that, on a scale of the best reasons to sell a soul, is pretty stupid. And their world which was at least anticipated and recognized became a strange collage of puzzles that was assembled by a blind teenager with ADHD. Momentous things happen...for the sake of a punchline. Lives are lost...between quips. And our heroes that were once spouting grievances and frustrations with such Shakespearean gravitas that it might have been inadvertently comedic a time or two...well, that's so frequently abandoned that it's relatively easy to assume they've been possessed by the same Voodoo witch that resurrected Robert Downey Jr.'s career. 

This may be treading into dangerous waters that make it sound like I hate this movie. I don't. It's actually not terrible and there's quite a bit to like even though it's often coated with that pinkish glow of insipidity. Ben Affleck continues to remind me why I don't actually hate him, even if he's taken to Bale-growling through even his Bruce Wayne scenes. Gal Gadot is a true treasure of empowerment as Wonder Woman, a well-written character and the true heart of this franchise. Jason Mamoa, even though he's not given a great deal to do here, shows why he has an Everest worth of Charisma that rightly has the masses screaming that Aquaman should be the Sexiest Man Alive and not a philanderer with a neck beard. And Ray Fisher does the best job at acting with half of a face since Tom Hardy and Aaron Eckhardt went back to back for Nolan (an admittedly odd and strange bar to set). In truth, from a character standpoint, Ezra Miller is the only one who finds himself truly lacking as he takes on the role of "I'm going to say a thing that's funny so we can all be in on the joke" guy and suffers for it. Sure his moments visiting his father in prison (there are two) are nice, but he's a talented young actor who deserves better than to be relegated to the status of Joss Whedon's Punchline Bag. 

But oh well. If the Rock Monster in Thor: Ragnarok can teach us anything, it's that audiences love nonsense for its own sake. 

And so we find ourselves in the imitation Hotwheel world that is now the DC Universe. Gone is the seriousness and the risk. Gone are the moral platitudes. Gone is the sense that, no matter how hard we might try, the good guys might still lose. And, thanks to you, the whimsical masses, we are given our finished product: A cinematic universe of our most conflicted heroes where there's really no conflict; where Armageddon is staved off and giant alien flowers grow to the joy of young children (they're probably poisonous, so goodbye, cute Chernobyl Child!); where there's never a death-defying scenario that can't be "bolstered" by a joke that punctures the tension balloon; and a world so full of CGI that you'd be hard pressed to find an actual set instead of a green screen. Indeed, where in the United States could you find a field of corn for Clark Kent to brood as he does his best impersonation of the Greek God of the JcPenney Cologne Counter? Seems like a case for some re-shoots to me!

In the end, this movie wasn't awful. It wasn't even bad. I have no doubt that I'll watch it a time or two more simply for the magnetism that can be found in its leads and I'll easily choose it over the last five years of Marvel drivel, save for a spare film here and there. It'll live forever in a little pocket universe as the first step DC took to turn its brand into something it wasn't for the sake of a comic book movie bubble that's going to pop relatively soon anyways. So in the spirit of that, perhaps a little more cinematic nihilism on my part would help to soften the blow? But no. I've had my fill of Cotton Candy and if I don't have diabetes then there's sure as hell a chance that I might have a cavity or twelve. 

Oh. And did I mention there was a villain? No? It doesn't matter. He could've died to the tune of Magic Carpet Ride and I would still wind up forgetting him before the next CGI-rampage even had the chance to occur. I hope you're happy, my friends. We all live in a Coney Island of Cinema now and, whether you like it or not, you finally get to play with toys that are imitation knockoffs of that one thing that seemed so much cooler when you were a child. The grass isn't greener over there, Billy. It never was. It's lifeless astroturf that may soon serve as the bedrock for the new home of the Cleveland Browns.

Now quickly! To the Cinema! I hear there are at least 75 minutes of after-credit scenes that are now as pointless and ego-stroking as the 'encore' songs that plague the setlists of even our greatest singers.