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five-rivers · 3 years

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Loved chapter 4

Written for Dannymay 2021 Day 3: Portal, even though the connection is sort of tenuous.

Bad things happened when Vlad came to Amity Park. For that matter, bad things happened wherever Vlad was. It was part of what made Vlad Vlad. Some part of his otherness, some twist of the shadow-fabric he was made of that left rot and ruin wherever his hem brushed. Of course, Vlad was never affected by this misfortune. In fact, he seemed to suck the luck out of everyone around him. Like a vampire.

Along with sanity. But that was a given for the others, even partial others, like Vlad. Or Danny.

But Vlad didn’t even try to hide or ameliorate the effects he had on people, didn’t try to keep them safe, to make their lives shine like the precious lights they were.

(Danny drummed his fingers on his chest and wondered, if, perhaps, it would feel less empty if Clockwork let him become a jewel box.)

But that was the way Vlad was, and Danny felt him enter Amity Park like nails on a chalkboard. His skin started to itch. His teeth hurt. Pressure pulsed in his head like waves of heat coming off asphalt. Being human, being real, was too tight, too heavy. It would be so easy to slip into the cool waters of the Dream and cut through them to wherever Vlad was.

No. He couldn’t. As shown time and time again, that would just exacerbate things. No matter what Vlad did, it would be worse if they fought, especially if there was anyone there to see it. Like what had happened with Jazz…

Danny was beyond lucky he’d been able to snap her out of whatever Vlad had done to her, but she still was quite right. The Vultures had actually apologized on Vlad’s behalf, after that.

(And wasn’t that strange, standing in the Dream on ground covered by bones and feathers, the Vultures on a dead tree, speaking as one. A thing of terror, apologizing for their ward. For pain suffered through Love. For lines crossed.)

Still. He had better… supervise Vlad, for a lack of a better word. Make sure he wasn’t getting up to anything. He’d go as a human – as himself.

He sighed and splayed his hands out on the table.

“Something wrong?” asked Sam, who had been making a complex sigil out of her fries and ketchup.

“Vlad’s in town,” said Danny. “I—”

The doors to the Nasty Burger were thrown open with a bang as Jazz came running in. She ran halfway through the store, to weak protests from the employee behind the counter, and skidded to a stop in front of their table.

“Vlad’s here,” he said.

“You saw him?” asked Danny, concerned. “Did he try—”

“No,” said Jazz. “I can just—It’s like he’s under my skin, and I—” She made a sound of frustration and gripped both sides of her head with clawed hands.

“Hey,” said Danny, gently, grasping her wrists. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay,” said Jazz, breathing deeply. “Alright. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”

“It’s okay,” said Danny. He looked back to his friends. “Anyway, I’m going to go see what he wants, okay?”

“I’m coming with you,” said Sam, standing.

“Me too,” said Tucker. “Sort of. Halfway.”

“You really shouldn’t,” said Danny. “You know what happens when we get together.”

“Which is why we want to back you up,” said Sam. “As long as he stays physical, there’s stuff we can do.”

Unless Danny was prepared to do something incredibly inadvisable, there wasn’t much he could do to stop her. “Okay,” he said. “Just… be careful. If it looks like it’s going to turn into a fight, you need to leave.” He didn’t want them to get anymore spiritually messed up than they already were.

“We know, we know, you give us the spiel every time,” said Sam.

Yes, and Sam ignored it every other time. Danny shook his head. “Alright, let’s—”

Danny was promptly interrupted yet again, this time by his parents rushing in wearing… He could loosely call them clothes.

“It’s retro night, baby!” shouted Jack.

It was not retro night. There was no such thing as retro night at the Nasty Burger.

“I’ll take care of them,” said Jazz.

“Thanks,” muttered Danny, sliding out of the booth. “Come on, let’s go out the back.”

The alley behind the Nasty Burger was fetid in a way that made Danny’s shadow lift from the pavement and float on the air. Something that inhabited rats skittered in the corners at Danny’s presence and ran for a storm drain. He breathed shallowly.

“Which way?” prompted Tucker.

“He’s actually coming this way,” said Danny, frowning, debating facing him in this alley, just to see the disgust that would surely paint itself on Vlad’s face, paper-thin mask that it was.

Reality rippled, the surface tension that kept the Dream from bleeding in snapping. A miasma rose from the ground. Vlad stumbled into the alley, clutching at his face, which was melting. No, transforming. No, stretching. No, layering over itself a in dozen sickening ways, all the masks Vlad wore flickering over whatever truth he had all at once.

“Help me,” he grated. His words felt sick, diseased.

“Guys,” said Danny, fighting back the urge to vomit, “run.”

“No!” shrieked Vlad. “Help me!”

And sanity fractured like glass.

Whatever Danny’s parents had done to stabilize Vlad had worked, to a degree. It hadn’t fixed the underlying problem, which Danny could still feel slinking through the Dream. It also didn’t fix whatever he’d done to Sam and Tucker, although it had kept it from progressing further.

Danny took a slow, angry breath and ran a mental count of the lives stored inside his chest. They were there, all of them. Whatever happened to Sam and Tucker, they wouldn’t die.

But Danny knew there were fates worse than death.

His fingernails left half moon impressions on his palms as he clenched his fists. The Dream roiled with his fury, the force of it enough to keep Vlad’s diseased thoughts away.

“Daniel,” croaked Vlad. “Cure me.”

“That’s what Mom and Dad are trying to do.”

“Find a cure for me,” said Vlad, as if he hadn’t heard Danny at all, “and you’ll find a cure for your precious little friends.”

Danny stilled. “You did this on purpose.”

Vlad laughed. “Of course, I did, my dear boy. What value is a simple human mind compared to those such as we?”

Any rage Danny had felt up to this moment paled in comparison. The mirror over the sink cracked down the middle, never to show a true physical reflection again. He hated—

A concerned tug at Danny’s throat jolted him from his thoughts. Clockwork. Clockwork would know what to do. He turned, and without a second glance at Vlad, strode bodily into the Dream.

It took Danny even less time than usual to find Clockwork, and, when he did, he immediately found himself at Clockwork’s center, deep within the castle that was his metaphor. Dozens of Chains were fixed to Danny’s collar, each of them completely taut, holding him perfectly immobile, the embrace of a relieved but panicking parent. Clockwork’s emotions, too vast for Danny to fully comprehend, were transmitted directly through those chains, microscopic vibrations raising gooseflesh on Danny’s skin. A wordless noise both distressed and pleased wound its way from Danny’s throat, continuing to echo long after he’d run out of the breath to maintain it.

Clockwork’s avatar cupped Danny’s face in its hands, long fingers almost completely encircling his head. There was more of Clockwork in it that there usually was.

“Clockwork…?” asked Danny, weakly, confused and overwhelmed by the sudden flood of affection.

Poor little one, whispered the avatar, this is what happens when matters are not properly attended to. The Vultures should know better, should take care of him properly… It pressed its forehead to Danny’s, startling a squeak from him.

Danny, reflexively, brought his hands up to clutch at the avatar’s robes.

My poor child. What are they thinking, letting him run around so ill, so that he might infect other children?

Clockwork saw Vlad as a child, too. Not surprising, considering how ancient Clockwork must be, but good to know.

That emotion! It was only a shadow, and even so-!

“Emotion?”

Hatred, hissed Clockwork’s avatar.

The collar around Danny’s neck constricted, a tighter, more Loving, more comforting, hug. Danny gasped, although breathing here was psychological rather than physiological. The cloth of the avatar’s robes began to wind up Danny’s arms.

Even the pale, human shadow of it is not something you should experience, my child.

Danny didn’t like being that angry, but—

Even the concept of it is too much, too heavy. You should not have to bear it. I should not have overlooked it. The avatar’s hands moved to the back of Danny’s head, pressing his face against its shoulder. It must hurt you so,murmured the avatar, carding fingers through Danny’s hair. Fear not. I will excise it. All of it, even the idea of it shall not touch you, shall not sully your thoughts.

The avatar stepped away.

“Wait!” shouted Danny, panicking.

Not being able to hate? Danny had mixed feelings about that, but he doubted he’d be able to talk Clockwork out of it, not with how damaging Hate could be. In the end, it wouldn’t be that much of a loss. Not being able to understand that it existed? Not being aware of hate at all? Being unable to understand that, sometimes, people would go out of their way to hurt one another?

That was dangerous. That would render him unable to even begin to comprehend vast swathes of human history and humanity.

“If I don’t know what it is,” said Danny, “if I don’t know that it exists, how can I protect myself against it?”

A gust of wind blew through Clockwork’s sepulchral hall like the sigh of a giant. It is my duty to protect you, my child.

The sheer possessiveness of the words lingered on Danny’s skin. He wanted to lean into them but held his imaginary breath.

But very well.

Danny let himself relax, slightly, even as the avatar walked to somewhere he couldn’t see, its silent footsteps giving him no clue as to where it was. With only the constant, regular hum and tick of Clockwork’s gears to stimulate him, it was hard for Danny to stay vigilant. He found himself drifting, his thoughts wandering.

Did his hatred of Vlad cause him pain, as Clockwork said? What was it going to be like, to not be able to hate at all, rather than just not being able to Hate? Would he still be angry at Vlad? He hoped so. The man deserved it.

Two points of frigid cold touched the back of his head, contracted into a single point, and pulled. Danny felt something within him come free, and he sagged as much as the chains would allow him.

The avatar walked back into view, and Danny recoiled from the thing he was carrying, clasped in a long, silver pair of tweezers. “Is that,” started Danny, before he swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “Was that in me?”

Yes, said Clockwork’s avatar, lowering it into a small, jeweled box. Danny felt relieved as soon as the lid closed on it and he was no longer forced to look at it. At the same time… Fear not, said the avatar. I could never destroy something of you. It will be remade into something more useful.

Danny nodded as much as he could and shuddered. He felt… dirty. Unclean. Just remembering what he’d felt, what he’d thought… It left a deep sense of wrongness.

Come, said Clockwork. I have just the thing for that. You are due for a bath. A cleansing, inside and out.

The metaphor of the chains fell away, leaving just the one, usual, slack one. Danny knew Clockwork could call them back at any time, that, in truth, they had not gone anywhere at all.

“What about Vlad?” he asked, twisting his hands around the hem of his shirt. “And my friends? Can you help them? Please.”

He felt Clockwork examine him appraisingly.

Perhaps the bath can wait for another day.

The mirror was a portal, tall and wide as a door, glassy surface gleaming with otherworldly light. The edges were crimped, filigreed, flared. Beyond the reflection, Danny could just make out the suggestion of movement.

It is not real, said the avatar, putting a hand on Danny’s shoulder, but a might-have-been.

“But I can find a way to fix things in there?”

The avatar did not answer. A prickling feeling rose up inside Danny, settling in his stomach. Somehow, this felt similar to when he’d eaten the mirror with the bad future.

It is,confirmed the avatar, briefly nuzzling Danny.

“Why?” asked Danny, just a little horrified.

Is it not satisfying to complete two tasks at once? I told you, back then, that our next task would be to remove those presents that seek to exclude you.

Danny didn’t understand.

You will. Clockwork’s avatar paused, as if thinking. This is what the Vultures should have done for young Vladimir, although they would have accomplished it differently.

“Oh,” said Danny, trying to wrap his head around that.

Clockwork’s avatar nudged him forward. Follow the chain when you are ready to come home.

Danny wasn’t connected to anyone in this might-have-been world. It was odd, watching every eye slide off him as if he wasn’t even there. If he wanted to interact with someone directly, he’d have to put a lot of force of will into it.

It was strange. Other than that, everything here seemed perfectly real. Not imaginary at all. The sun shone. People spoke to one another. The grass crunched under his feet.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison lay before him in all its questionable glory.

He’d have to find Vlad and his parents. They had rented a small lab space for their experiments with the Dream and research into the others.

Normally, he’d follow his connection to them to find them, or the disturbance Vlad made in the dream, but neither of those things existed, now. Not yet. Danny didn’t exist yet.

He could just wander, try to seek out questionable lab space, but the university’s campus was large. Normally, he’d ask for directions, but…

Yeah, the no one being able to see or hear him thing really didn’t allow for that.

But there was one other thing he could try to do, one other thing he could try to sense. Their experiments. They should send waves across and through the Dream.

He let his eyes drift closed and walked blind across campus. When he opened them, he was in a lab, watching his parents and Vlad working on a kind of magic circle, inscribed with runes.

A portal, intended to let humans directly access the Dream. A portal that had created Vlad, all because he leaned too close, watched too closely, seen too much, became something else, changed.

Something like anger stirred under his skin. After this, his parents had continued to experiment, continued to try to reach the Dream, to create a weapon against the others, and in doing so both doomed Danny himself and Amity Park by making what amounted to a highway for the others to come to the real world.

But they hadn’t intended to do that, he knew. They’d been trying as best as they could to fix things. Had been trying to defend the world the best they knew, portal or no portal. And speaking of the portal… If others could damage human sanity, if Danny, small and weak and almost-human as he was, could damage human sanity, then how much more could a direct link to the Dream do? Discounting, of course, that normal dreams could lead to the Dream… That connection was more tenuous. Filtered.

His anger was a distraction from what was really bothering him.

These people, they looked like his parents. They were his parents. But… they weren’t. There was no attachment there. Nothing. It was like looking at empty shells. No Love.

It was distressing.

He watched, waiting, making note of the symbols and the placement of the ritual objects and the technological enhancements. There had to be something here that would help explain why Vlad was having such a hard time, while Danny had transitioned to his present existence without much problem.

He leaned over his not-mother’s calculations, then his not-father’s, made note of the differences. Looked at the fire, the knife, and the carved cylinders. Some of them didn’t feel quite right. One of them had been nudged out of alignment by a soda can put down by not-Jack, shifting the circle, making it bigger. Could that be something?

Vlad leaned over to examine the circle, and, at the same time, not-Jack pushed a button on the tape player, which started chanting. Danny could feel the hole boring into reality before the first syllable was finished. They’d made the portal both too well and too poorly.

Danny reached for Vlad and pulled him back, out of the way of the opening portal.

Danny may have made a mistake.

He’d saved Vlad from becoming other. In doing so, he’d changed things, altered this entire make-believe world. The way the story was progressing was no longer the same as his own. Which meant that it might be useless for collecting clues for fixing Vlad, Sam, and Tucker. Mostly Sam and Tucker.

(He’d help Vlad if it wouldn’t hurt his friends, he didn’t hate the man, not anymore, didn’t desire his suffering. But his friends were, of course, his main concern.)

But he couldn’t just leave. He’d made note of all the flaws in the portal, but that wasn’t in any way conclusive, wasn’t a guarantee.

And, in the meantime, his not-parents and not-Vlad had continued working on the portal, which they hadn’t shut down, unlike in the proper timeline. Or had it been disrupted by Vlad? He didn’t remember the exact sequence of events. His parents had never been clear.

But the portal was on, it was working, and it was wrong. Everything was wrong. The portal was in a class of things that should-not-be.

Just like Danny, in this world. He… With the portal, and the way things were going, he shouldn’t exist here, the butterfly effect would keep him from being born, and he was becoming painfully aware of that fact. Literally painfully. It was starting to hurt, being here, a throb in the back of his head.

Or was that the portal?

Either way…

(He couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was breaking things just by being here. Everything was going wrong. So many little accidents.)

(Or was that the portal?)

He kept watching.

It had been… a while, now. It was easy to lose track of time like this, with no one to talk to. Days? Maybe? He’d been drifting, which should have been troubling.

Maybe he should go back. Cut losses.

(Besides, it was disturbing watching his parents flirting with each other. And Vlad. Even if they weren’t really themselves.)

Then his parents wheeled in a… What was that? He walked closer. This was about the same size around as the pillars that had done this to him.

Danny would never forget those, after all.

Something hummed inside him, picking up a kind of resonance between the active portal and the pillar.

The ground fragmented beneath his feet.

Reality followed soon after.

He found himself nowhere with nothing. Only nowhere and nothing.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

What had he done? He’d, he’d destroyed a world, he’d—

There was a gentle, but insistent tug on his chain. He followed it home.

He clung to Clockwork’s avatar, gasping, as if he was the only real thing in the world. His emotions were too much, too great, uncontained and roiling. They battered him like a stormy sea.

It’s alright, it’s alright, comforted the avatar. It wasn’t real, and now it never will be. All those worlds where you would not be. All gone.

No. No. No. Horror buzzed in his brain. He couldn’t have destroyed so much.

Never were,continued the avatar, Clockwork apparently oblivious. All disproven. Paradox. You could not be and yet you were. You were in the places you were not. So, now you exist, in all these places, in everywhere that could be, and always will. It stroked Danny, brushing away tears. Only one more to go, until you never were not, my beloved child, until you always were mine, as you were meant to be.

Danny keened into the robes of Clockwork’s avatar, distraught. Wind ruffled his hair.

Considering the point in time in which you were placed, said the avatar, Vladimir will be well again.

Danny looked up, hopeful for the first time in hours.

Mostly. The underlying cause has been removed. You should bring the rest to your… progenitors. They are at least competent in this area.

Danny nodded vigorously and attempted to extract himself from the avatar’s grasp. He was unsuccessful, although the avatar did adjust its grip on him.

You have had a difficult day, it observed. It then presented Danny with a cookie.

Confused, Danny took it.

A gift, said the avatar, Clockwork having evidently returned to his normal laconic mode.

“What’s it made of?” asked Danny, suspicious.

Love. What else?

“How do you feel?” asked Danny.

“Weird,” said Sam. “But okay.”

“What was it like?”

Sam shrugged. “It was like…” She waved her hand. “Watching a thousand different movies of my life, but they were all wrong. Like if they were crappy biopics done fifty years after I died or something.”

“Speak for yourself,” grunted Tucker. “I just got a lot of sand. So, so much sand. And sun. Do I have a sunburn?”

“No?” said Danny. “You look fine.”

“Ugh, I forgot you were white. You don’t know what sunburns look like.”

“I’d argue,” said Sam, “but you’re not wrong.” She fell back against her pillows. “I just want to sleep.”

“Same,” said Tucker. “I never want to see the sun again.”

“We’ll make a goth of you yet,” joked Sam, tossing a pillow at him.

“Okay,” said Danny, backing away. “Should I get the lights?”

“You don’t mind?”

“Sleep well,” he said. He hoped they would.

(Because he would not.)

#danny phantom #loved #eldritch abomination AU #dannymay #dannymay 2021 #dannymay day 3: portal

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intergalactic-zoo · 3 years

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I decided, apropos of nothing, to put on Joss Whedon's Zack Snyder's "Justice League" while doing some work today. I discussed the movie when it came out eleventy billion years ago, and thought it was fine. It's not good, but grading on the curve of every DCEU movie up to that point, it was a solid B-. Sitting in 2021, I remember bits and pieces of it—Steppenwolf looking like he stepped out of an XBox 360 cutscene, the decent cell phone video of Superman that was marred by the terrible attempt to CGI out Cavill's moustache, all the characters sounding like their rough counterparts in "The Avengers"—but not a lot of details.

Obviously the intervening years have altered my perspective on the film, both through the revelations about the behind-the-scenes racism and abuse and through the fanatical and also frequently abusive behavior of the fans clamoring for this version of the film, which absolutely definitely existed and was finished years ago and also needed an additional $70 million dollars and reshoots to complete.

That perspective has not been altered for the better.

Against my better judgment, I'm going to watch the Snyder Cut sometime, probably this weekend, so I figured it'd be good to see how it deviates from the theatrical release, like I did for the Lester and Donner cuts of "Superman II" so very long ago. I don't expect to enjoy either one; my feelings on the superhero movies of Zack Snyder are well-documented, and even under the best circumstances, four hours is too @#%*$! long for a superhero movie. But four hours of nihilistic spite dressed up in cinematic deepities and CGI with a sepia-toned overlay is unlikely to be the best of circumstances.

Will it be better than two hours of the extremely generic re-skinned "Avengers: Age of Ultron" that got released to theaters? There's only one way to find out!

Boy, the New 52-ass character designs in the DC logo opening sure didn't age well. When was Rebirth, like, the year before?

Pretty neat that it's got Mogo and Jessica Cruz in there, though.

That cell phone scene was a lot better in my memory. Like, the kids with a podcast are kind of charming, but I remembered it being a good Superman moment, when it's really just kind of nothing. Certainly not enough to justify the extremely bad CGI. And is the negative space on the S-shield supposed to look so gray?

Gotham City looks like the background of a Robert Rodriguez movie, but I actually like it here. It feels grimy and a little uncanny, the way Gotham should. A big building with "JANUS" on it in glowing letters and big coal chimneys out of Victorian London are what I want to see in Gotham, along with copious brooding gargoyles and enormous iron statues of Greek gods that you could drive a car on.

A building that is continually being robbed by either Two-Face or Maxie Zeus

"Batman Forever," for comparison

Ben Affleck's Batman rasp is at least as silly as Christian Bale's. Batman can just talk in a voice, my dudes. I watched bits of "Batman & Robin" and "Batman Forever" to track down the right screenshots, and it's so much better when Batman is a guy with a deep voice rather than a guy who sounds like he's gargling gravel and sand.

The crook asking "where does that leave us?" because Superman's dead is a little weird given that Superman was a public figure in this universe for literally a year and a half. In 2021, it's a bit like asking how we could go on if Billie Eilish died, except Billie Eilish hasn't, to my knowledge, ever been involved in a fight that leveled a major city.

The maudlin mourning sequence probably should have come before Batman backflipped over a snarling Kirby monster and "Mindhunter's" Holt McCallany hopped around on a rooftop, because I laughed out loud at the unhoused person's "I Tried" sign and I do not think that was the intended reaction.

And then the Leonard Cohen cover gives way to the Danny Elfman score, and it sounds like "Batman" '89 again. God, this movie really is a mess.

I appreciate Wonder Woman explaining her powers like she's in a Chris Claremont comic. How long until we get a superhero movie with a proper reference caption? I just want to see a box in "Into the Spider-Verse 2" that says "*It happened in Spectacular Spider-Man #206, True Believers!"

I really wish superhero movies could stop having the scene where superheroes talk about how stupid superheroes are. It feels so self-conscious. Just embrace the concept without being ashamed of it, please.

I also wish we could have dialogue less on the nose than everything Henry Allen says. He talks exclusively in clichés about movement—"running in circles," "standing still," "find your own path." We get it, he's talking to the Flash.

I keep forgetting that this movie is a fetch quest. It could have worked if we'd seen more than Themyscira before. This could be like that sequence in "Avengers: Endgame" where we go on a little memory tour of the previous films, but instead it's a return to Paradise Island, our first brief, boring glimpse of Atlantis, and a nuclear plant cooling tower. This is one of the problems with setting the "let's get the team together" movie before you've met most of the team or established most of the set pieces.

The boom tube effect is pretty good. It's a shame Steppenwolf looks so much like a character from a Zemeckis film. I do appreciate that Joss had enough restraint to avoid dropping "Magic Carpet Ride" or something when he showed up.

Fus roh dah!

Also, I realize the ship has largely sailed on this, but the Amazons are supposed to be an incredibly advanced society; maybe we could stop depicting them as exclusively armed with bronze-age weaponry.

You know, it's hard to see Lois Lane so...despondent? Demoralized? Even in the wake of Clark's death. Like, Lois was pretty weepy for a few issues of the comics after Superman died, but within two months she was accosting cops and breaking into Cadmus in a wetsuit and punching dudes in the teeth. Lois Lane is a stone cold badass, and the only film in this erstwhile trilogy that came close to understanding that was "Man of Steel."

The frustrating thing about the dialogue is just how obvious it is that Joss knows how to write exactly as many characters as are on the Avengers. Batman just sounds like Tony Stark, Wonder Woman banters like Black Widow until she needs to exposit like Thor, it's just so lazy.

And so is the backstory of the Mother Boxes. I actually really like the "all the races of man joined together with the gods and the Green Lanterns to repel Steppenwolf" angle, because it makes this idea of uniting as a League into a theme that you could build a movie around (that movie was "The Fellowship of the Ring"). Unfortunately, they do it by stripping the Mother Boxes of anything that made them interesting as a concept and turning Steppenwolf into a low-rent Thanos. Thanos is supposed to be a low-rent Darkseid, get it right.

I was going to rag on Bruce for comparing Flash's suit to "the space shuttle" in the present tense, when the space shuttle program ended six years before this movie came out, but I suppose Bruce Wayne is a cranky old guy in this movie, so it kind of works.

Man, poor Ray Fisher, in addition to everything else, having to read this warmed-over Bruce Banner dialogue.

Not gonna lie, hearing the Elfman Batman theme is pretty great. It's nice that Batman and Wonder Woman have really solid, recognizable motifs in the score, even if they had to reach back 30 years to find one for Batman. It's a shame the other characters don't get anything so clear and distinctive.

Casting J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon was a pretty good move.

Our first full glimpse of Cyborg is a bit uncomfortable. Up until this point, we've seen him in sweats, so seeing him without clothes...it's like that bit in "Cats" where Idris Elba takes off his coat and even though he's covered in CGI, you can't help but think "okay, he's naked now," a thought you only have because he was wearing clothes before.

Batman does his "disappear while Gordon has his back turned" bit, and it becomes a gag because only Flash is left behind. Except that we've seen that Flash perceives things at a higher speed than others, so why would he be caught off-guard? Wouldn't their disappearance have happened in basically slow-motion to him? Why did Wonder Woman and Cyborg disappear when Batman did? How did they know to do that? The only reason Flash is left behind is for the gag, because he's the comic relief character right now, but it would make more sense for literally either of the others to be the one in that position. It feels like a "kill your darlings" moment. Like, they decided that this gag was more important than making sense, when they could easily have done a different gag—like Flash noticing that Batman was leaving and stopping him in the middle.

The Nightcrawler is a bad idea. It doesn't really make sense as the thing Batman would bring to this fight with Steppenwolf, and it's loaded up with guns, which...come on, guys. It doesn't even get a clear enough spotlight to be properly toyetic.

If you needed any confirmation that Joss saw how much better Quicksilver was in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" than in "Age of Ultron," the Flash is here in this battle to make it obvious.

God, the "Flash is awkward about being on top of Wonder Woman" gag feels like it lasts a thousand years. It's like something out of a "Big Bang Theory" episode.

It physically pained me to hear crappy Steppenwolf quoting New Gods #1.

I know there's pathos to Cyborg's character, but, like, is this really the version that they thought people wanted to see? Is this just the Brooding League? I thought a part of the reason for bumping Cyborg up to the big League was to bring in people who love the version on "Teen Titans," but there's nothing of that character here.

On the other hand, they've sidestepped the modern problem of making Barry Allen act like Wally West by instead making Barry Allen act like Bart Allen with a head injury.

I really like Bruce Wayne in a vest.

There's so many things that would have made this movie better, but honestly? I think Superman should've stayed dead. Obviously I love the character, and I even love Cavill's performance, but a movie about a superhero community coming together and being inspired by Superman's example to be better—you know, the thing Batman says at the end of "Dawn of Justice"—would have been a lot better than a movie where two characters we just met dig up Superman's grave to MacGuffin him back to life. It still wouldn't make that much sense that Superman would have such a massive impact after just a year and a half of public superheroing (come on, Snyder, if you're going to do the Christ allegory, why not give him three years?), but it would have been a better way to showcase what the character means to this universe and to these characters.

This runs into something I said way back when I first saw "Man of Steel": You shouldn't make General Zod your first-movie villain. I've been comparing this film to "Age of Ultron" a lot, but I'm starting to realize that the entire DCEU—with the possible exception of "Wonder Woman"—is made up of the second movie in each character's respective franchises. Zod should have been the villain Superman faced after he was established, to raise doubts about the character's allegiances and present him with a seemingly impossible threat. Batman should have fought Superman after a movie where we established what Batman's deal is, how he got to be so angry and bitter. The Justice League should have faced an enemy too big to fight without Superman after the movie where a threat and Superman's legacy inspired them to unite together. Heck, even "Suicide Squad" would've been better if they'd saved the "one of our own is a traitor" plot for a sequel, where we might have some emotional attachment to some of the characters.

Boy, Barry Allen attempting a fist bump with Cyborg and then laughing off the rejection with the phrase "racially charged" hits real bad in the wake of Ray Fisher's discussion about the environment on-set.

One thing to appreciate about Cavill's Superman is how much he exemplifies the hairy-chested, dimple-chinned version that Dan Jurgens draws.

And Elfman works the John Williams theme into the score. The motif works well the first time, less so the second when he's trying to kill the Flash. Hitting it in a more minor key would have been nice. Again, it's a shame they had to go literally forty years back in time to find a recognizable Superman theme when there were two Superman movies leading up to this.

This fight between Superman and the League is bad and unnecessary, but the bit where Superman reacts to Flash in super-speed is well-done, marred only by the incredibly doofy look on Flash's face.

God, Cavill doing the gravel-voice, asking "Do you bleed?" might be the worst part of this movie. Although Lois Lane entering the plot for the first time in an hour so she can say "the sun's gettin' real low" to Superman is a close second. Why isn't she involved in the formation of the League? Why wasn't she a major character in this?

Batman's "something's definitely bleeding" comedy bit feels like something out of a View Askew movie, and not only because it's Ben Affleck.

Clark's discussion with Lois, "it's itchy," it's yet another jarring tone shift from what we saw immediately before. And the greenscreen work on the farm (reshoots, I expect) is somehow worse than the moustache removal.

The bit with Aquaman baring his soul because he's sitting on the Lasso of Truth is the closest one of the comedy bits in this has come to actually working for me.

And then, adding to the "Age of Ultron" comparisons, we're back to fighting an enemy in a small Eastern European nation. The red skies are a nice touch. The Batmobile's 50-caliber cannon and chainguns, less so.

Did...did the Flash just say "oh snap"?

And Aquaman saying "my man" to Cyborg with the exact same inflection as Bradley Cooper in "Get Out" is another one of those real uncomfortable moments.

And then Batman gets a laser gun, because why not?

Superman asking "how can I help" and then rushing off to save civilians is maybe the best moment for the character in the entire DCEU. It's also nice that Superman gets a moment to help more or less each character with their individual missions.

And then Wonder Woman drops the "I work with children" line, which is the best line Black Widow gets in this movie.

Cyborg gets his "booyah" moment, which feels forced but at least makes some sense with his character arc. Flash gets his fistbump. Not-Sokovia gets to be the setting for a Jeff Vandermeer novel, and the team gets their triumphant moment in the sun.

We're on to denouement, and Lois gets the closing narration, which is mostly fine. It would work better if she weren't basically a cameo in the movie. I do like that it ends on "look, up in the sky," and that Cavill finally gets a chance to do the shirt pull.

Except that's not the end. First we get the beginning-of-credits scene with the Superman/Flash race, which is cute but unnecessary. And then a truly awful cover of "Come Together" before the post-credits sequence where Lex Luthor meets up with Deathstroke and his truly ridiculous dye job.

In summary, Joss Whedon's Zack Snyder's "Justice League" is a bad movie. In fact, it's several bad movies stitched together into a shambling bad movie Frankenstein. And tomorrow I'm going to watch Zack Snyder's Zack Snyder's "Justice League: The Snyder Cut," which is getting surprisingly positive reviews. I do not expect to enjoy it, because I really don't think my problems with this movie will be fixed by making it broodier and longer, and my track record with enjoying Snyder's films is basically nonexistent. But I'm watching it, because I'm a glutton for punishment, and at least if I do it while I'm still on vacation from Twitter, I won't be tempted to join in the undoubtedly toxic discourse.

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