In an interview with The Rake last month, Superman star Henry Cavill had some disparaging words for the knotty beginnings of the DCEU, particularly last year’s critical flop, Batman V. Superman:
“Even if Marvel didn’t exist, we’d struggle. There was a style they were going for, an attempt to be different and look at things from a slightly different perspective, which hasn’t necessarily worked.”
Thankfully, he's much more optimistic about the upcoming Justice League. Though his return as the last son of Krypton has long been assumed and finally officially confirmed in the latest trailer for the film, the character’s allegiances are still a little unclear. Cavill, on the other hand, couldn’t be more content with the chemistry shared between his co-stars.
“These guys smashed it, Knocked it out of the park,” Cavill said in reference to a rehearsal he watched.
Justice League is reported to be a return to the adventurous, childlike appeal to heroism found in the comic book classics of the old days. This, according to Cavill, will demarcate the film from the previous negatively reviewed films that launched the franchise. He’s impressed by what he saw and he’s sure you will be too.
“Watching the team dynamic as characters is one of my favorite things about this movie, because superheroes are all different factions of the human psyche, personality traits, just personified and made grand. So everyone who’s watched this movie will have something they can associate with while watching each one of these performances. And everyone watching this movie is going to identify with the differences between characters and the similarities between characters as well.”
For Warner Bros.’ sake, I hope he’s right. At the risk of sounding histrionic, the studio's would be franchise might very well live or die on the success of Justice League . It will most likely perform well at the box office, but another critical plunder will almost certainly cost them Ben Affleck, and the interest of other filmmakers. Moreover, if fans don’t take to Ezra Miller’s interpretation of The Flash, Jason Momoa's Aquaman, or Joe Morton’s Cyborg, it’ll likely spoil the box office receipts of their respective upcoming standalone films.
There are, of course, reasons to believe the film might turn out just fine. Cavill’s endorsement, for one, is not insignificant. The critical success of Wonder Woman , the long and impressive of work of Director Joss Whedon and the casting of Jeremy Irons, are all good omens, as far that stuff goes. The early audience response has also been generally good, so there’s that. We'll just have to wait and see when Justice League arrives in theaters on Nov. 17.
