Title of the work
Studio / Production Company
Country of the First Edition
Country/countries of popularity
Original Language
First Edition Date
Running time
Date of the First DVD or VHS
Genre
Superhero films
Target Audience
Crossover (Teens and Adults )
Cover
We are still trying to obtain permission for posting the original cover.
Author of the Entry:
Amanda Potter, Open University, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Peer-reviewer of the Entry:
Susan Deacy, University of Roehampton, s.deacy@roehampton.ac.uk
Lisa Maurice, Bar-Ilan University, lisa.maurice@biu.ac.il
Jon Berg (Producer)
Jon Berg is a film producer who has worked on Wonder Woman (2017), Justice League and Aquaman.
Bio prepared by Amanda Potter, Open University, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Geoff Johns at Wondercon, 2006. Retrieved from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY 2.0 (accessed: January 5, 2022). No attribution made.
Geoff Johns
, b. 1973
(Producer)
Geoff Jones is an American screenwriter, comic book writer and producer, and was Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics 2010–2018. As a comic book writer he has written The Flash, Green Lantern, Justice Society of America and Teen Titans. He has written episodes for television series Blade (2006), Smallville (2001–2011), Arrow (2012– ) and The Flash (2014– ). He was co-producer for films The Green Lantern (2011) and Justice League, and was co-writer for Aquaman (2018).
Bio prepared by Amanda Potter, Open University, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Charles Roven in 2008, uploaded by Nerd City. Retrieved from flickr.com, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (accessed: January 5, 2022).
Charles Roven
, b. 1949
(Producer)
Charles Roven is an American film producer. He is best known for producing superhero films including The Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012), Man of Steel (2013), Suicide Squad (2016) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman (2017). Other films he has produced include fantasy films The Brothers Grimm (2005), Season of the Witch (2011) and Warcraft (2016), and crime films The Bank Job (2008) and American Hustle (2013).
Bio prepared by Amanda Potter, Open University UK, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Deborah Snyder (Producer)
Deborah Snyder (previously surnamed Johnson) is an American film producer. She has worked with her husband Zack Snyder producing a number of films including Watchmen (2009), Sucker Punch (2011), Man of Steel (2013), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman (2017) and Justice League (2017).
Bio prepared by Amanda Potter, Open University UK, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Zack Snyder by Elen Nivrae. Retrieved from flickr.com, licensed under CC BY 2.0 (accessed: January 5, 2022).
Zack Snyder
, b. 1966
(Director)
Zack Snyder is an American film director, producer and screenwriter, and co-founder of production company Cruel and Unusual Films. He directed Dawn of the Dead (2014), 300, based on Frank Miller’s comics telling the story of Thermopylae, Watchmen (2009), an animated film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010) Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League (2017). He was co-writer and director of fantasy action film Sucker Punch (2011), and was co-writer for 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) and Wonder Woman (2017). He has worked with his wife, Deborah Snyder, on a number of these films.
Bio prepared by Amanda Potter, Open University UK, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Chris Terrio
, b. 1976
(Scriptwriter)
Chris Terrio is an American screenwriter and director. He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film Argo, released in 2012, and based on the rescue of hostages in the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. Terrio co-wrote the screenplay for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice with David S. Goyer, and co-wrote the follow-up film, Justice League (2017). He has also co-written the script for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
Bio prepared by Amanda Potter, Open University UK, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Joss Whedon by Dominick D. Retrieved from flickr.com, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (accessed: December 28, 2021).
Joseph Hill Whedon
, b. 1964
(Director)
Joss Whedon, born in New York, is a screen writer and director, best known as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both the film and the tv series) and its spinoff, Angel. He is also credited with the sci-fi western television series Firefly (2002), Serenity (2005) and The Cabin in the Woods (2010). He also wrote and directed Marvel superhero films The Avengers (2012) and The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), as well as Justice League.
Source:
Profile at imdb.com (accessed: March 19, 2019)
Bio prepared by Kylie Constantine, University of New England, kconstan@myune.edu.au and Amanda Potter, Open University, amanda.potter@caramanda.co.uk
Casting
Ben Affleck – Bruce Wayne/Batman,
Henry Cavill – Clark Kent/Superman,
Gal Gadot – Diana Prince/Wonder Woman,
Amy Adams – Lois Lane,
Diane Lane – Martha Kent,
Jeremy Irons – Alfred Pennyworth,
Ezra Miller – Barry Allen/The Flash,
Jason Momoa – Arthur Curry/Aquaman,
Ray Fisher – Victor Stone/Cyborg,
Connie Nielsen – Hippolyta,
J. K. Simmons – Commissioner James Gordon.
Summary
In Gotham (a fictional city in the DC universe) Batman (alter ego of Bruce Wayne) fights with a flying creature, who dies revealing a pattern on a wall featuring three boxes. Looking for another Metahuman, Aquaman, in a remote village, Bruce Wayne sees the same three boxes on an ancient drawing on a wall. Aquaman refuses to join him. On the Amazon island of Themyscira a box opens and a large powerful being, Steppenwolf, appears. Flying creatures follow him and attack the Amazons who are led by Hippolyta. The Amazons try to protect the box, but the Steppenwolf takes it. Hippolyta has an Amazon warning fire lit, so that Amazon Princess Diana, who now lives as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman in the world beyond Themyscira, will be aware of the threat. Diana goes to Bruce Wayne to help him form his army and tells him about Steppenwolf, ‘the end of worlds’ who ‘lived only to conquer’. The flying creatures are parademons, formed from the victims he has killed. She advises Wayne that two more ‘mother boxes’ exist, one protected by men and one by the Atlanteans. If they are brought together they will combine to form ‘the Unity’ and can transform the earth into Steppenwolf’s hell world. It transpires that Steppenwolf has returned and the boxes are activated because Superman has died.
Diana/Wonder Woman agrees to recruit Cyborg/Victor Stone. Initially he refuses to help but quickly joins the team. Bruce Wayne recruits the Flash/Barry Allen. Once the Atlantean box is stolen by Steppenwolf Aquaman/Arthur Curry also joins. Steppenwolf kidnaps people who he thinks can help him find the last mother box, including Victor’s father, who has the mother box which he calls the change engine. He had used the box to create Cyborg after Victor was in an accident. When the team find Steppenwolf they fight him and save the hostages, and Cyborg retrieves the mother box from his father’s lab. Bruce Wayne wants to use the power of the mother box and the Kryptonian chamber previously used by Lex Luthor, the villain from Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice (2016), to create Doomsday to bring Superman (alter ego of Clark Kent) back from the dead, as ‘the world needs Superman and the team needs Clark’. Clark Kent is exhumed and his body taken to the Kryptonian Chamber with the mother box. Superman comes back but initially fights the team. He is about to kill Batman when Alfred brings Lois Lane (girlfriend of Clark Kent). Clark takes her to the Kent farm, the home of Clark Kent’s mother, Martha. Steppenwolf takes the mother box.
The team fight the parademons and Steppenwolf and Cyborg tries to reprogram the mother boxes. The hell world creation starts to happen in Russia. The team are struggling until Superman arrives to fight Steppenwolf, and to help the Flash save civilians. Cyborg reprograms the mother boxes, and the parademons surround the failed Steppenwolf and destroy him.
At the end of the film, Bruce Wayne buys the bank which is foreclosing on the Kent farm. The superheroes are seen separately in costume in their own elements, voiced over by Lois Lane, who is writing a story about the heroes.
Analysis
Justice League (2017) was released after Wonder Woman (2017), a film in the same series featuring superheroes from the DC Universe, and which includes a short scene at the beginning of the film on Themyscira, the Amazon’s island home. As in Wonder Woman (2017) younger viewers, and particularly young female viewers, might be expected to admire these strong female character noted for their fighting and riding skills. However, the Amazons in Justice League are more skimpily dressed than in Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman’s own superhero outfit skirt is shorter too.
The costume designer, Michael Wilkinson, argued that as the film is set in the present day, rather than the World War One era of the first film (for which the costume designer was Lindy Hemming), there has been ‘a slight development in their armor’ (screenrant.com, accessed: September 9, 2019). The new ‘armour,’ often revealing bare midriffs does show off the athletic physique of the actresses, who according to Wilkinson went through intense physical training for the film, however some viewers may think the costumes are made unnecessarily revealing, when these characters are otherwise role models for young female viewers.
As in Batman v Superman (2016) Diana Prince/Wonder Woman is associated with classical myth (and shares her name with a Roman goddess, Diana). Her lasso that compels people to tell the truth is called ‘the lasso of Hestia’, but no further information about Hestia is provided. Hestia is not one of the most well-known goddesses, and so young –or older – viewers would not be expected to have heard of her before. The lasso first appears in Sensation Comics #6 (1942) created by Hippolyta from Aphrodite’s girdle, which causes anyone bound by it to obey Diana. It is called the ‘lasso of truth’ in Wonder Woman #2 (1987) written by George Perez, and is more often referred to in this way (see Bergstrom, 2017)
Diana is seen at work cleaning what appears to be oversized classical statue of a goddess, while undertaking her role as museum creator at the Louvre in Paris. At the end of the film Wonder Woman has apprehended thieves outside another museum, the British Museum in London, and is in costume in public talking to children, something she has not done before, as she has preferred to keep her identity secret. A goddess figure with arms crossed like Wonder Woman is shown on a poster outside the museum and Wonder Woman puts a small version of this statue into a crate. Diana as Wonder Woman can therefore be seen as a goddess herself. She has the super strength of a deity, and at the end of Wonder Woman (2017), Ares had told Wonder Woman that she is the daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta, and was not created of clay given life by Zeus as her mother had told her (although Ares is an unreliable character and so this might not be true). If we do see Wonder Woman as a goddess then she is a benign deity, using her powers for good in direct contrast with Steppenwolf. Situating her with children at the end of the episode also highlights the role she has taken within the human world, that of protector of the innocent. She has now fully accepted her role as a superhero and force for good.
Information linked with classical myth that drives the plot, rather than being incidental, concerns the history of Steppenwolf. Diana relates information about Steppenwolf and the mother boxes to Bruce by way of a flash back, as she voices over that ‘one mother box was guarded by the Amazons, one by the Atlanteans, and one by man. It was truly an age of heroes’. Diana tells Bruce that aliens and the gods also joined with the heroes to fight Steppenwolf, and the gods that we briefly see include an archer goddess who could be Artemis and a god throwing thunderbolts who could be Zeus. The ancient Greek gods are included here, together with the ancient races of Amazons, Atlanteans and humans, to indicate that Steppenwolf existed in ancient times on earth. The idea of the age of heroes also invokes Hesiod’s Ages of Man (Hesiod, Works and Days, 109-201), but this is an age that has past, and so the names of the gods are perhaps no longer relevant: the Greek gods are now dead, but Steppenwolf, the Amazons and the Atlanteans remain. The gods, and particularly Zeus, are linked with Diana’s heritage as an Amazon, as we learn from Queen Hippolyta in Wonder Woman (2017) that the dying Zeus created the island of the Amazons. By building the Greek gods into the story of Steppenwolf, a modern fictional villain from the DC universe, viewers are encouraged to see Steppenwolf as a being with god-like powers who has taken a different path from the superheroes, who also possess powers
Further Reading
Bergstrom, Signe, Wonder Woman: Ambassador of Truth, New York: Harper Collins, 2017.
Bernstein, Abbie, Justice League; The Art of the Film, London: Titan, 2017.
Potter, Amanda, "Feminist heroines for our times: Screening the Amazon Warrior in Wonder Woman (1975–1979), Xena: Warrior Princess (1996–2001) and Wonder Woman (2017)", Thersites 7 (2018).
Puchko, Kristy, How Justice League fails Wonder Woman, available at syfy.com (accessed: August 4, 2019).
Rivera, Brittany, Justice League Costume Designer Defends Amazonian Armor, available at screenrant.com (accessed: September 1, 2019).
Soo Hoo, Fawnia, Justice League Movie Costumes, available at fashionista.com (accessed: September 1, 2019).
