Zack Snyder's Justice Lube Part 11: Mop that Grate
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Scene 10: The Mystery of Howie’s Family (40:11-42:07)
This is a short scene, but it introduces the most mysterious character in the entire film: Howard the STAR Labs janitor. Who is this man? Because after having watched this scene several times, I refuse to believe he’s an experienced custodian. My best guess is that he’s a spy, hired by a rival company or foreign government, there to conduct industrial espionage.
Here is the evidence:
As Silas Stone exits his lab, Howard is mopping a grated floor (pictured above). I suppose grated floors get mopped in the course of events, but I can’t get past this. He’s just squeezing dirty water through the grates and soaking the subfloor. This must be a significant detail, because Snyder provides us an artfully composed close-up of the mop. Only seconds before we get an insert of a Sony dictaphone that plays an important role later in the film. So what is this shot doing, exactly? [Note: I know what’s it doing.]
As Silas Stone exits his lab, he calls out “Lab’s all yours, Howie”. Howard responds with “11:30. Early night for you, Silas” (note: it sounds like he says “Cyrus” here). This scene establishes several things: one, that the two characters are on a first-name basis, even if Howard seems to think Silas’ name is pronounced Cyrus; two, that the staffing presence will be down to Howard and maybe some security guards; and three, that Howard the Janitor is so attuned to the comings and goings of the head of STAR Labs that he knows exactly when he’s leaves the building and whether this is typical behaviour. Who the hell vetted Howard? Did they notice his obsessive logging of the boss’ behaviour and think “Wow, that’s dedication”?
As Silas Stone pauses in exiting his lab, he says, in the most awkward mannner possible, “Tell your family I said hello?” and Howard, I kid you not, responds with this expression:
This is not the face of a man with an actual family. I can picture two scenarios: one, that Howard’s family is dead and Silas has completely forgotten this detail; or two, that industrial spy Howard T. Janitor has suddenly blanked on his cover story, and he’s praying that Silas doesn’t bring up any names or that bat mitzvah supposedly coming up next week.*
Anyway, Howard is so put out or freaked out by the mention of his family that he turns his back on Silas and gets back to work. No goodbye, no friendly wave. We don’t even cut to a shot of Stone awkwardly standing there, until, confused and embarrassed, he strolls off down the hall.
Then Howard hears a noise, encounters a Parademon with gnarly hoof-claw feet (there’s a closeup!) and that’s that. Maybe he’s dead? Unclear at this point.
This scene is also our introduction to Silas Stone. His only character traits so far are a preference for dramatically under lit working spaces and a tremendous lack of tact surrounding Howard’s possibly dead/fake family.
*There is indeed a reason for his crestfallen expression, but it’s not made clear in this edit. The theatrical cut does a better job of dealing with this moment, as we’ll see below.
Compare and contrast: The beginning of this scene in JWJL is nearly identical, with Silas Stone shuffling through some notes as he prepares to leave for the day. It omits the insert shot of the dictaphone. However, the conversation between Howard and Silas is completely different. We establish that Howard has an unhealthy obsession with tracking Silas’ movements, but then Howard hesitantly delivers his condolences on the fate of Silas’ son Victor. Ah ha. There’s the reason he looks so unnerved when Silas mentions family in the Snyder cut; Howard feels awkward about a tragedy in the Stone family. The scene cuts to Silas walking away. It ends here, with no Parademon encounter.
The JWJL version of the scene is illustrative of the different ends that can be achieved with the same pool of footage. In Snyder’s Justice League, this scene advances the plot and builds a connection between Silas Stone and The Case of the Missing Motherboxes (canny viewers will recall from the credits that a Motherbox is currently slumbering in the back of a closet of a young Black man with a partially metal head). The theatrical cut uses the scene to build up the character of Silas.
But here’s the weirdest thing: in the theatrical cut, Howard’s name tag reads “H. Jensen” (or something close to that); in the Snyder cut, the name is difficult to make out but is clearly not the same. In both scenes, the photo on the security fob is of a completely different person. Just how bad is the security at Star Labs? As we will discover in both movies, really bad.
EMERGENCY TRIVIA MOMENT
Howard the Janitor is played by British character actor Anthony Wise, whose very first screen role was “Policeman 2” in the cult ‘80s movie Withnail and I (1987). I was crossing my fingers as this information came to light, and yes, my wishes came true: Wise is indeed the policeman who says absolutely nothing for 30 seconds until he screams “Get in the back of the van!” like a meth-injected terrier.
