Looking back at the first Justice League movie, 20 years later

Like most terrible superhero stories from last century, Justice League of America has aged well as an artifact of a lost world. What once seemed lazy now almost vibes like Outsider Art, from the days when superheroes were still outsiders. Come, children! Bear witness to modernity’s primordial ooze! See a long-gone era, before big budgets and Phase Fours and a widespread cultural awareness about the meaning of the word “Flashpoint.” Filmed with high hopes as a pilot for CBS, Justice League of America never had an official release in its titular country, was banished to the deep reaches of foreign television, the TV-hero equivalent of the barely-remembered college basketball star last seen riding the bench for some lesser team in the Mitteleuropa NBA.

There’s a new Justice League movie hitting theaters in November, a hundreds-million dollar investment by a Fortune 500 Company, with an all-star cast who have collectively earned five Oscar nominations, wait sorry that’s just counting Amy Adams. I can’t believe anyone involved in the new Justice League knows that their movie is arriving 20 years after the non-arrival of the last live-action Justice League. The telefilm is impossible to find legally and easy to watch immediately, the very purgatorial definition of unloved IP. Among fans it was once said to be terrible, one more ’90s-era example of Hollywood just not getting it. But I suspect the average Berlanti-bred DC fan barely even knows that it exists. Besotted with options, wine-drunk on cinematic universes, do the SnyderBros remember when things weren’t gritty? This year there are two Flashes, at least.

It’s a shame if Justice League of America is forgotten. It isn’t good, but watching it today, it’s hard to feel the old nerd rage that used to swirl around low-budget comic book adaptations. It’s got a cast of TV journeymen who shrugged off this failure and moved on to the next pilot season. Future Gossip Girl dad Matthew Settle is weirdly the best live-action Green Lantern, funny on purpose, with a costume that looks old-fashioned terrible but not CGI-paint terrible. (He’s the team’s noble cad, and he gets the most comic strip lines. The bad guy’s the Weatherman, see, and so it makes sense when Green Lantern says “Looks like our Weatherman’s gone with the wind.) Elisa Donovan, of the Clueless Cinematic Universe, has a couple scenes as Green Lantern’s regular-person girlfriend. She’s one-dimensional, but she’s also a disappointingly unique archetype in superhero cinema: The Love Interest Who Clearly Understands That The Superhero Is A Terrible Boyfriend.

John Kassir plays incredible shrinking super-scientist Ray Palmer, alias the Atom. Everything about the character’s presentation remnants archaic Revenge of the Nerds notions of geekery: Wears a bowtie, feels like a freak, falls for an attractive woman who calls him “nice.” Kassir’s the kind of great character performer with a face for voice-acting. He cackled as the Cryptkeeper on Tales From The Crypt and worked on every TV cartoon you can think of. And it’s a minor culture shock to watch him play Ray Palmer, since the character currently exists on CW’s Legends of Tomorrow, played by a 6-foot-2 person so supernaturally handsome he was literally Superman.

But superheroes today look better in every conceivable way: The effects more expensive, the costumes more workout-chic, the performers either bulked up on high-protein diets or trimmed down with kale and dust. Conversely, MASH star David Ogden Stiers pops up in Justice League of America as Martian Manhunter, shapeshifting leader of the League of Heroes. He never leaves the shadowy control room of the League’s underwater HQ, and he’s buried under a green-makeup-and-oversized-cape ensemble – and just like with Brando in Apocalypse Now, you can still see the performer’s prominent stomach bulging out of the shadows.

You could argue that’s an actor’s choice, or even some High Nerd referential storytelling. Despite the America appellation, the TV film vaguely derives its character lineup and tone from Justice League International, a tremendously endearing late ’80s riff on the DC superteam. The scripts by J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen trended humane, and droll. Artist Kevin Maguire had a unique flair for capturing facial expression, the kind of talent that all-but disappeared in mainstream comics during the porn-roid splashpage ’90s. And in Justice League International, it’s firmly established that Martian Manhunter has a taste for generic-brand oreos.

Then again, probably best not to assume the comics were important. Late in the movie, when a supervillain assault threatens to inflame their headquarters, Stiers’ Manhunter proudly intones, “Where I come from, 300 degrees is a beach day!” in flagrant violation of the comic character’s my-kryptonite-is-fire weakness. And for many, the primal sin committed by Justice League of America is the disinterest in the source material. The story is set in “New Metro, USA,” a nowhere city which feels both less and more specific than the usual DC nowhere city. Less specific, because it has no obvious landmarks, seems to exist alongside a Hudson River and a San Francisco Bay and an ocean, has an oft-assaulted skyscraping downtown but half the action takes place in the suburbs. (At one point, the Flash follows a possible bad guy home, and hides at the end of the guy’s driveway, behind his well-gardened shrubbery.)

But “New Metro” is also more specific: It’s Los Angeles, by way of Vancouver. The superhero Fire (Michelle Hurd) is a wannabe actress, who spends her off-hours going to auditions and meeting with her agents. Justice League of America is framed around a series of mockumentary confessionals featuring the heroes out of costume, many of which feel improvised. Hurd’s deadpan delight in the confessionals. She confidently states that she loves acting because of “these unbelievable parts, and characters, and costumes.” CUT TO: Fire, in a banana suit, auditioning for some health-food infomercial (and not getting the job.)

Later, she describes the first times her powers emerged: A childhood Christmas morning, when her older sister got a toy she desired. “Without even thinking about it, the Christmas tree just went up in flames,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Wow, I think this is something I need to deal with.'” It’s the funniest line in the whole film – ya think? – and I suspect part of the frustrating yet fascinating thing about Justice League of America is how fundamentally it treats the material as comedy, even sub-Schumacher camp. The everpresent score sounds like a workout video, the effects shrug-worthy. Like an old sci-fi exploitation film, the production’s complete inability to render its own material convincingly seems to encourage parodic grandeur; at one point, Green Lantern threatens the bad guy by conjuring up a glowing green chainsaw.

Most of the heroes live together, in a sitcom apartment built for the urban striving friend-family. A key subplot involves Atom shrinking down to try (and fail) to fix their television set. Barry Allen, per his confessional, is “Unemployed,” and he’s played by Kenny Johnston as a Tribbianic dimbulb, the endearing loser from an era that always found losers endearing. Meanwhile, Fire and Green Lantern carry on a will-they/won’t-they flirtmance, and the Atom pines for ingenue-ish new hero Ice. It’s all-too-clearly a work of trendspotting, like when the comics Poochie’d Superboy with a leather jacket and an earring and sunglasses and attitude.

And, weirdly, the sub-Friends side of Justice League of America works the best, suggests the most intriguing road not taken. The ’90s get remembered as the comic-book Dark Age, Superman-killing and Batman spine-breaking and, um, Green Arrow squeezing someone’s skull into blood-vapor, I guess? But the decade also introduced another tradition, often considered “realistic” but more accurately realist, a street’s-eye view upwards at superpowered people in an otherwise normal world.

This was the era of Astro City and Marvels, and although this hilariously low-budget Justice League adaptation bears no resemblance in execution to those projects, it is endearingly self-effacing about its own modesty. “Fighting for truth, justice, and the American way just isn’t helping my bank account, you know?” says the Flash. The villainous Weatherman (Miguel Ferrer!) isn’t a madman seeking power; he’s a bureaucrat scientist who needs money. “They were gonna cut our funding!” declares the Weatherman. Then he uses a cheap-looking machine to create cheap-looking clouds and a cheap-looking tidal wave. (Consider that funding cut!)

Justice League of America used to represent yet another failed live-action attempt at adapting comic books, one more sacrifice thrown on the fire atop the garish Generation X and the Hasselhoff’d Nick Fury: Agent of Shield and Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four, the latter not so much a cheap movie as an expensive negotiating tactic. The overall cheapness of these productions was always a point of hilarity; the fact that they seemed barely interested in comic book history was a point of contention.

Viewed today, the blithe indifference of Justice League of America is oddly appealing. Circa 2017, the narrative has changed. Superhero movies are arguably the most expensive genre in movie history. They honor comic book lore like gospel, Dark Phoenix and Doomsday, The Dark Knight Returns and Old Man Logan. They represent the most elaborate capitalist prayers of the Hollywood studio system, serve as awareness-building brand enterprises for even the most acclaimed performers. Stories do not end in one movie; stories do not end in ten movies. And still, sometimes, these new superhero movies are terrible. To quote Fire, I think this is something we need to deal with.