Scene 7: Monster, box, warrior women (25:50-37:27)

This scene. It is long. My god is it long. This scene is so long and weighty that not even Zack Snyder could bench press it. At 11 minutes and 37 seconds, it is half the length of a network sitcom. You can watch this scene twice over in the time it takes to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory.

It’s sufficiently long that you can break it up into several separate sequences.

Sequence 1: No words

From high above, crashing waves and sea foam. The camera swings to show a high cliff. A cluster of Amazons is gathered outside a building. Queen Hippolyta (a very non-Grecian looking Connie Neilson) strides into the building. The shot cuts on a subtle screen wipe and she’s walking down a long, long, long stone corridor to… oh, it’s circular room with the cracked box we saw in the opening credits! I know it seems like days since the credits, but you may recall a warrior hissing out “Alert the Queen!” Well here’s the Queen. But before she says a single word, she sighs. She sighs in a deeply weary fashion that communicates Oh, this fucking thing again. We later find out that the box has been quiet for thousands of years. For humans, it’s ancient history. For Queen Hippolyta, it’s last Tuesday.

Sequence 2: What’s with the box?

“Any changes today?” asks the Queen. “No my Queen,” someone answers. So it sounds as if the box has been cracked and glowing for a while now. Which makes me wonder why Hippolyta has bothered to show up. Does she drop by on a daily basis for box status updates? I have to say, I admire a queen with a hands-on approach to glowing alien technology.

The Queen’s companion says “The Mother Box has awoken after thousands of years”. This is likely not news to the Queen, but it’s helpful for us. We now know the thing is a) millennia old and b) called a Mother Box. They speculate on its reasons for being awake (again, very helpful for the audience) when the box suddenly goes quiet. An Amazon warrior (she of “Alert the Queen!” fame), who has clearly never seen these kinds of movies, wonders if it’s gone back to sleep. But the Queen, who probably has a huge library of classic horror flicks on laserdisc back at the palace, is not fooled. “Evil does not sleep. It waits”. The weird thing is that Hippolyta delivers this line not to the random warrior but directly to her companion. That’s a bit rude, Queen.

Predictably, things do not improve from here.

Sequence 3: The Rumble in the Rotunda

The Mother Box snaps back to life. The Amazons draw even more weapons somehow, ready for battle with whatever may come. A tube-portal thing (technically a Boom Tube* in Fourth World parlance) drops down from the sky. Flying troopers with weirdly delicate wings fly out. Finally the tube disgorges a gleaming monster with horns and shifting metallic armour. This is Steppenwolf. He’s supposed to look an uber-badass, but it’s hard to avoid the thought that he looks, as co-Destroyer Adam P Knave says, “like a nervous cheese grater”.

Wow, you think, what does this avatar of evil have to say? “I have come to enlighten you… to the darkness” is what he says, proving instantly that Steppenwolf is no Big Bad. He’s an edgelord flunky, desperately hoping that no one will call him on his bullshit.

Then the fight begins. I’d like to say that this part of the fight is cool, but it it’s largely a mess. Everything is a kind of 300-style brownish yellow, like everyone dipped themselves in ochre. Arrows and beams and parademons fly across the screen and it feels messy and dull. Your mileage may vary.

Things pick up considerably when the Queen’s companion is wounded. She takes an energy bolt to the chest and collapses, letting a scream of rage and despair. It’s the cry of an ass-kicker who does not fear death but resents it tremendously, because once death comes, there is no more ass to kick. Hyppolita recognizes that they’re on the losing end of this fight, and the only move now is to grab the Mother Box and run - but not before having the fighting Amazons seal themselves in the temple along with Steppenwolf.

And seal it they do, with gigantic hammers that bring down massive stone doors. I can only assume that Snyder roamed the length and breadth of the Earth for the most unbelievably jacked women he could find, because these are some fearsomely muscled people. When they swing those hammers and smash the pins that hold the doors in place, you believe it.

Hyppolita escapes by the skin of her teeth. The building tumbles into the sea. She gazes down in mourning at her sisters who sacrificed their lives to stop an apocalyptic evil, which is apocalyptic evil’s cue to come bursting out of its tomb.

Sequence 4: The Chase

Now we come to the best action scene in the whole damn movie. The Amazons are galloping away with the Mother Box, taking it to god only knows where in order to keep it out of Steppenwolf’s hands. There’s a palpable sense of the inevitable hanging over the sequence; even as they gallop at full speed and toss the box to other riders, it’s obvious that Steppenwolf is going to have his prize. He leaps through the air, smashing warriors and horses as he goes (note: it is not easy to watch horses’ bodies getting ragdolled around the screen). Parademons grab the box, Amazons retrieve it, but it’s no use. Steppenwolf comes out of nowhere, takes the box and smirks his way into the sky as a wave of mounted Amazons crest the hill. So long MacGuffin number one.

`Now that they’ve lost the battle, there’s nothing to do but use “the arrow of Artemis” to alert “the world of men”. Of course, it’s not men they are alerting.

Compare and contrast: This scene appears in JWJL in its usual truncated form, and it is by far one of the worst parts of the film. Steppenwolf appears with no buildup in tension (and he looks like he popped in from a nearby Ren Faire), the temple doesn’t fall into the sea, and Steppenwolf’s leaps look more like a video game bad guy sproinging around a badly rendered map. It’s such a failure of execution that I’m amazed it made it out of the editing bay in that form.

*Dedicated Jack Kirby fans (such as co-Destroyer Adam P Knave) will note that Zack Snyder’s conception of Boom Tubes is woefully unimaginative. In ZSJL, Boom Tubes come from the sky like a standard World Destroying Energy Beam, but there is no “above” in this scenario. The tube isn’t connecting to a spaceship in orbit or anything. Kirby’s Boom Tubes flout the rules of physical space and linear perspective, coming in at weird angles and making your eyes cross with their sheer Miskatonic weirdness. Snyder’s vision has no room for things that break Euclidean geometry into pieces.