Let’s Talk About That Robin/Flash Parallel from JUSTICE LEAGUE That Didn’t Happen (and why that’s super important)

There’s a literary principle called Chekov’s Gun in which if an author shows you a gun, then there’s a good chance it’s going to be fired. Basically, if you bother to show the audience something significant then it has to have some kind of meaning behind it whether literal or symbolic; and if it doesn’t then it should be removed. NOTE: This shouldn’t be confused with foreshadowing as foreshadowing drops subtle hints along the way leading up to the big reveal (think Bruce Willis’ character from SIXTH SENSE). Chekov’s Gun isn’t a hard and fast rule per se and there are plenty of reasons to break it. Hemingway, for example, notoriously railed against the idea by introducing two characters in the first part of a short story and then never had them appear or mentioned again. Cheeky. But it’s a good rule of thumb, especially when talking about film as you only have so much time to tell a compelling story, why waste it on stuff that doesn’t matter?

This all plays into a larger thought I was having during the second hour of the four-hour long behemoth that is ZACH SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE which is: Snyder really, really likes to show his audience exactly what they want with almost no meaning or purpose behind those images. That’s not to say that everything has to have meaning or symbolism attached to them. But in the world of film, economical story-telling can make or break your movie. Every scene or piece of dialogue should build on your theme, reveal something about your character, and advance the story in some meaningful way. And this is pretty freaking hard to do in 100 pages. Heck, most producers will put down a script if they’re not in love with it after the first ten pages. I know what you’re going to say: what about the so-called “Easter Eggs” that have become a staple of these kinds of interconnected comic book movies? Good question. Easter eggs are fun little nods for the die-hard fans to let you know you’re a fan too, but they also shouldn’t be the dominant feature of a scene otherwise you’re forcing your audience to focus on inconsequential details and not the plot.

So let’s talk about that Bruce Wayne recruiting Barry Allen scene because it reveals a lot about Zach Snyder’s story instincts, or lack thereof. Sorry, no, first, let’s back-up to 2016. When the first trailer for BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE first came out, it featured a quick scene of Batfleck standing in front of a bronzed Robin statue with Joker-esque graffiti written all over it. Fans flipped out accordingly, because, like, Zach Snyder and Warner Bros. marketing/hype machine is probably one of the best in the business and they know how to cash in on internet buzz and all that trending hashtag stuff to get people talking about their movies. They’re really good at what they do, there’s no denying that but creating hype for your movie and telling a compelling story are not mutually exclusive goals. Anyway, this little scene glimpse certainly got the rumor mill got churning and fans theorized relentlessly: “Will we get to see Robin’s death?” “Who will play Robin?” “Will we see Jason Todd?”

All good questions. But, as it turns out, the brief scene from the trailer is all we really got in the movie as well. Which makes sense, with so many new characters and super convoluted plot points, how could we possibly cover what happened to Robin or introduce Jason Todd as well and have the movie not be four hours long (hint hint)? In the end, the scene was just another throw-away image that came to mean really nothing other than a superficial way of communicating that this new Batman/Bruce Wayne had been through a lot and seen a lot and was more hardened by past failures. However, superficiality is not character development, or even world-building. It’s almost like they included that scene just to get people talking with no other plan about how it plays into the narrative of the movie. It was an empty sandwich, a wink and nod to the fans and the fans are just like, “yeah, we get it” without any further explanation or exploration of what this scene means to the character. And you know what? It totally worked.

And this is a problem. On some level, we have to admit that either these kinds of movies are creating a shared narrative experience in the moment. That is, the story you see on screen is the story that is being told and we’re going to give you all the information you need to understand it; or, the alternative, is there is another entirely different story or world that you’ll never know about unless you read 50+ years of comic book lore before setting foot in the theater and if you don’t have that knowledge you’re not going to be able to understand what you’re watching. And the latter is pretty freaking horrifying to me. For the record, this isn’t exclusively a Zach Snyder or Warner Bros. problem and other big blockbuster franchises are just as guilty of it, but this is one of the most blatant examples I’ve seen and it comes back to hurt Justice League in some pretty big ways… but we’ll talk about that in a minute. In a lot of ways, this scene is pretty emblematic of the Snyderverse as a whole. Everything is window-dressing. It’s just a shortcut way to an emotional catharsis that isn’t earned. Showing us, the audience, a bronzed Robin statue was a shortcut way of making us feel pity or empathy for Bruce Wayne without actually doing the work to get us to that point.

Okay, so back to Justice League with that scene where Batman meets the Flash for the first time, you know the one: Bruce Wayne shows up to recruit Barry, Barry is rightfully suspicious, Bruce throws a batarang and outs himself as “The Batman”, they become awkward friends, Barry eats pizza and Bruce brags about being rich. Easy peasy, right? Yes, and also boring and completely misses any sort of characterization or narrative building opportunities. All we get is Barry being a clingy nerd and Bruce rolling his eyes. This is even more glaring if that Robin suit scene from BVS had really meant anything (hint: it didn’t). Batman recruiting the Flash is quite literally the biggest parallel you can draw with Robin and to either completely ignore that or miss it entirely given the fact that it was so overtly shown in the previous movie is one of the great sins of narrative story-telling. I know what you’re saying, but you’re reading too much into it and creating a story that doesn’t exist. To which I say: you’re right! I am reacting to the imagery and character building that you highlighted previously. Like Chekov’s Gun, I’m looking for the meaning in what was shown to me. Snyder didn’t have to show that scene of Bruce reflecting on the bronzed Robin suit. He didn’t have to make that a prominent part of the story he was telling. He could have left it out. But he didn’t. He included it because it was cool and nothing beyond that.

You would think Bruce would be a tad more hesitant about recruiting a young Barry into a very dangerous, likely-to-get-you-killed, superhero endeavor. I mean powers or no powers, there was zero build-up or exploration of the idea that was set-up in the previous movie or what it meant psychologically to Bruce or how it might appear to repeat his past mistakes. Through all the dialogue between Bruce and Alfred, who is trying to find Barry, there was no discussion about bringing Barry into the team and what would happen if he got injured or killed. At least the horrendous Joss Whedon version tried to build on their initial interaction with the “Just save one” exchange between Batman and the Flash in the first big fight in the tunnels underneath Gotham Harbor.

How amazing would it have been to see this new darker, older Batman fail? Really explore how this affects his psyche and mission as the protector of Gotham. The sacrifices he’s made and how it turned him meaner and more cruel. How this forces him to butt heads with some pretty boy in blue spandex and a red cape over in Metropolis. But then, show how he would grow beyond that hard exterior when recruiting Barry. Show how reluctant Bruce is to recruit someone who is still essentially a kid. How maybe he feels more protective of Barry and how maybe he doesn’t trust him to make the right decision in the fight in the tunnel until finally he has a real “It wasn’t my fault moment” or “Barry doesn’t need my protection, he’s not Robin” or something like that so we can see that character arc and from one film to the next. How cool would it have been to see Bruce forgive himself, or save Barry in a parallel way in which he lost Robin and finally we get that cathartic release that actually means something? This is the Bruce Wayne story we should have gotten, all the evidence and was right there but it was just one missed opportunity after the next and that should make fans f***ing furious. Affleck has admitted that he struggled to ‘Crack the character’ of Bruce Wayne/Batman but I don’t think it’s necessarily his fault, I don’t think he was given a chance to build something meaningful. All he did was drive a cool car with guns, kill some dudes in a warehouse, and mope across the world recruiting superheroes because that’s his job, apparently. He was let down by a story that didn’t actually know what it was building beyond the superficial.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that what you show your audience matters. It can’t be all shiny effects and slow-motion grandeur. Humans are funny in a lot of ways but one of the big things is how we look for meaning in things even when there is none and one of the great things about movies is that you have the ability to give audiences what they crave in life: meaning. Whether it’s a sled called Rosebud or a bronzed suit inside a glass box, you can create meaning and purpose to those images through purposeful story-telling. Movies are great big complicated things but every once in a while the pieces fit together perfectly and you get something that can transcend the moving images and sounds. It’s a lofty goal, but it’s one worth pursuing, I promise, because if what you’re showing your audience ultimately doesn’t matter then then nothing does and that’s something we shouldn’t stand for.

JK