I’ve been slagging the Justice League of America movie ever since it busted from the phantom zone and into a holy-shit-they’re actually-making-this entry on the Warner Bros’ production slate. Then the writers’ strike scissor kicked the project at the neck, which caused me to boogy and perform several other sacrilegious acts upon its grave. And now the damn thing is back. It’s the Michael Myers of dumbass film projects—as long as money can be made, you can’t kill the bastard.
It’s not that I want a craptastic JLA flick (especially one with some of my favorite characters such as Supes and Bats). I’m a fan of director George Miller, and if he pulls this rabbit from out his hat then maybe he’ll have enough clout to make the fabled Mad Max 4: Fury Road. Nothing would please me more than to stroll into a screening of JLA and come crawling out, humbled and with crow feathers between my teeth.
However, my beef with JLA isn’t the direction the film appears to be heading (bad script, horrible casting), it has more to do with the fact that I don’t believe a good film can be made of JLA. The concept doesn’t easily lend itself to film. Too many characters with too divergent of backgrounds. How do you fit Wonder Woman with her weird ass origins into the same puzzle with the Green Lantern or Batman and make sense of it? How do you do it without a flood of silliness spilling in? Shit, how do you translate Wonder Woman’s and The Flash’s costumes to live action without looking ridiculous? The guy has got freakin’ wings on his head. Wings!
Either the film will be all setup or a choppy mess brimming with quarter-baked characters and ideas. The comic book universe can pull off super teams because the exposition is spread out through decades of ongoing continuity. The first installment of a film franchise doesn’t have this luxury—although sequels do (so maybe if JLA was a trilogy filmed back-to-back, I’d be on board). Movies should do the heavy lifting of characterization and settings and not expect the audience to know these characters and their situations through cultural osmosis. Otherwise the movie feels lazy and superficial; yeah I’m talking to you The Passion of The Christ.
Outrageously awesome hyperbole of the most brilliantly insipid masterpiece nature (!!!) and Harry Knowles go together like Fonzie and his leather jacket. Without it Knowles would just be another rumor chasing greaser with a bad haircut in the movie news business. Nonetheless, despite my opinion of Knowles (unrepentant shill!!! but likeable guy!!!), I occasionally get caught up in the man’s contagious enthusiasm—falsely constructed or not. So the other day, as an impulse buy, I dropped a few dollars for The New Frontier (mission accomplished Sir Knowles, well played). I figured if this film is half as great as proclaimed, then maybe there’s hope for a live-action JLA film.
Hope quashed.
The New Frontier didn’t form a black hole of suck and collapse my skull or anything. Nor did it rock my Reeboks off either. It was mediocre. But more than that, it emphasized all of the pickles I foresee with Miller’s JLA boondoggle: half-baked characters, thudding stretches of exposition, and jarring juxtapositions of the characters’ wildly different worlds. Even with so much of the film dedicated to exposition, you’d have to be a comic fan to understand a fair share of whom and what is happening in the movie. What’s the deal with Wonder Woman and chicks? Or who in the hell is that gay looking Robin Hood wannabe who shows up for no apparent reason during the climax? And what do some egg-head dudes have to do with the Green Lantern? In fact, what is a “Green Lantern” and why in the fuck does his Cracker Jack decoder ring do cool shit that mine can’t. Some noncomic readers, such as my mom, would suffer an aneurism trying to figure out this stuff if the movie was her sole stream of info. What’s that? My mom isn’t the target audience? Don’t talk about my mom you dick!
Now, I understand with the film being animated it would have a significantly shorter running time than a live-action version. Yet, even a two hour version of this story would still suffer from the discombobulated tones and exposition issues—and two hours still isn’t a big enough canvass to make a well rounded film with so many characters. Plus the live-action version would still have to deal with the wings on The Flash’s head. Freakin’ wings!
So, if The New Frontier, according to Knowles and others, is the ideal Justice League film, then I’m just going to keep sharpening my knives for Miller’s version. The foundation is sand. It won’t work. However, I’d love nothing more than to be proven wrong.*
* I won’t.
