DC and Warner Bros., let loose the latest trailer for Justice League. It starts with a recap of Lois remembering Clark. It’s a well shot sequence with Amy Adams as Lois Lane stepping out onto the porch for the idyllic white ranch on a Kansas farm. In the distance, we see Henry Cavill overlooking the crops with a picturesque ray of hope and brightness in the sky beyond the horizon. With a chivalrous grin, and a confident voice, he says “I’ll take that as a yes”.
His solemn and almost depressingly tragic theme song plays with the piano front and center during the sequence. It’s amazing but it’s one of the only few moments where Clark was portrayed as confident, endearing, steadfast and hopeful… something that was clearly missing form the last two films featuring Cavill’s Superman.
The trailer then zoops back to the present time after Superman died in Batman v Superman; an underwhelming and mostly ill-timed death. Lois somberly looks over at the empty bed pillow where Clark used to lay his head. The trailer then goes over how crime and terrorism has spiked since Superman’s death.
It’s interesting because the promotional piece seems to portray the world as having cared more about Superman than either Man of Steel or Batman v Superman. You can check it out below.
It’s a reminder of just how poorly the greatest super hero of all time has been handled by Warner Bros., and the DC Cinematic Universe.
The big, blue boyscout many of us grew up with has never made an appearance in the grim-dark setting we’ve been given where Superman is portrayed as a selfish, inconsiderate, less-than-heroic illegal alien.
It’s a lot different than how DC has very carefully crafted the character of Wonder Woman, who seems to represent what Superman used to be.
On the bright side, this is probably one of the few trailers that really seems to hammer home the stakes and weight resting on the shoulders of the cobbled-together Justice League members.
Batman realizes that without Superman they’re facing a serious uphill struggle against Steppenwolf, and they also bring home the point that he needs heavy muscle to really help save the Earth from an otherworldly invasion.
It’s a real shame because it’s hard to miss Superman in the upcoming Justice League when it was hard to pin down if he leaned more-so toward being a hero or a villain. His allegiance was to Lois but hardly to humanity, making him seem completely unlikable compared to Christopher Reeve, Tim Daly, and Brandon Routh’s portrayal of the iconic hero. This isn’t a knock against Cavill, of course, it’s a knock against the fact that DC screwed over their version of Captain America.
On the upside, at least Jason Momoa seems to be having fun as Aquaman, and is clearly the most badass rendition of the character ever.
I still don’t have much hope for Justice League but the trailers are definitely getting better. The whole grim-dark nature of the DC Universe and turning favored heroes into these depressing, sullen, mopey douche bags inspires very little expectations from the upcoming film, but hopefully it’s better put together than the overly long and less-than-stellar Batman v Superman.
