Since we’ve made it past Valentine’s Day, a holiday all about love, and we are about to jump into a well-deserved Spring Break, I figured let’s celebrate by talking about some really exciting movies. And we are going to …. sort of. This month, we will be reviewing two movies that, on the surface, look totally opposite but which I think explore the same concepts.
No doubt, you have already looked ahead and you are saying “Collin, you’ve lost me this month. There is no way you can convince me that those movies swim in the same waters,” but just roll with me a minute. I promise, you’ll see.
Justice League (2017) [PG-13]
Justice League takes over from where 2016’s Batman v Superman left off. Batman, played by Ben Affleck, and his new found ally Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) are working to recruit a team of heroes who will help them defeat a newly-awakened threat. The bad guy, who I won’t name here to save you a little mystery, is searching for a trio of mystical boxes that when brought together will bring about an apocalypse on Earth. Pretty standard action hero stuff, really.
It takes a fairly decent amount of run time to get the team put together. To be fair, they do have to raise Superman from the dead. Oh, wait, you didn’t realize he was going to be in this even though his face is on all of the posters and Henry Cavill is the second actor listed in the credits? I guess Warner Brothers isn’t as interested in preserving mystery as I am. Once the gang is all here, there is the standard destruction, fighting, explosions etc … The action is good if uninspired.
What was interesting to me was why these folks were fighting together in the first place. Thanks to their solo movies, we already know the back story on the big three of Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman. The new trio of Cyborg, Aquaman and The Flash we learn less about, but what seems to unite all of these heroes is guilt. Again, we don’t yet know much about these iterations of Aquaman and The Flash but the other four have all survived something terrible that their loved ones have not, and it drives them to be who they are. Survivor guilt, almost more than their genetics or industrial accidents, is what has made these characters strive to make the world a better place, and it is what binds them together as a group
Exploring more of that would have made this a far better movie, in my humble feline opinion. It doesn’t have to be a dark character study of a person’s broken psyche or anything, but touching on that survivor guilt just a little more would have drawn us closer to the characters and given motivation to their actions. These actions in response to their guilt are also what links Justice League to our next film, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
In the end, Justice League is more like Batman v Superman than Wonder Woman. It is flashy, loud and sadly, mostly forgettable. Which is a real shame because Wonder Woman felt like a watershed moment for the series. Instead, the studio went back to serving up just enough to keep their core audience from rioting. While I do give it credit for being entertaining, it is mostly vapid. There is so much more that can be done with these characters and their stories. It is just disappointing that we don’t get to experience that.
Does Justice League do justice to its source material? Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that it is a little bit of a disappointment. But I do think hidden beneath all of the explosions and deep voices and CGI, there is a genuinely interesting study of survivor guilt. That’s what draws the six heroes into the action. And it is what connects Justice League to our next review.
5.5 paws out of 10
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) [R]
Next up we have Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I suppose you could call this a darkly comedic drama. The plot revolves around a mother, played by Frances McDormand, who rents three rundown billboards, has them painted red and printed with large black letters asking why there has been no progress in the case of the rape and murder of her daughter.
This set-up might lead you to conclude that this is a movie about an angry, grieved mother taking on an indifferent police force, and Three Billboards does ruminate on this theme, but soon you realize that there are no strictly good or bad moral characters in the film. Nor is this a who-dun-it mystery where you can connect the dots to find the killer. Instead, the film is a bubbling stew of emotion, reaction and consequence.
Unlike Justice League above, there is no one specific bad guy here. One could argue that almost every character in the film fills that role at some point during the almost two-hour run time. Both films are, however, centered around a group of people bound together by guilt. It is guilt that prompts all of the action (and inaction). It is what binds these disparate characters together. And how they chose to deal with these emotions and how that affects the world around them is what Three Billboards is really about.
I don’t believe this is a masterpiece. It is really good. But if you are looking for easy answers or you are uncomfortable with ambiguity and emotion, this is definitely not a movie you are going to enjoy. The thing that stands out to me the most about Three Billboards is the way it creates an almost palpable sea of feelings and how writer-director Martin McDonagh uses this sea to stimulate a dialog about our world that can be both strikingly cruel and yet kind at the same time.
The movie can be a bit meandering, and there is certain to be something (if not multiple things) that makes you uncomfortable. By muddying the motivations and morals of its characters, Three Billboards makes it difficult to take sides or indeed recognize the good from the bad, but that’s also some of the point. It is a kind of cinematic tone poem about the basest emotions of our existence. Which is awesome. But if you are looking for a movie that takes your mind off of things for a while, this film isn’t for you, I’m afraid.
8 paws out of 10
Maybe Justice League would have been better if they had focused a little more on creating the emotional stew that Three Billboards does. And maybe Three Billboards could have benefited from some of the old school, Hollywood blockbuster moralizing that Justice League does. Neither is perfect. Nor is either bad. They are just different. But the same.
While each film is a creature of its own, the films feel like sisters. Sure, one of them is on the honor roll and the other is barely passing, but that doesn’t mean you love one more than the other. You just love them differently.
As always, if you have a movie you think I should check out or you want to talk further about one of these reviews, drop me a line at collincougar@collin.edu or leave me a message on Facebook.