Zack Snyder's Justice Lube Part 9: "It's Toxic"
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Scene 8: “… That’s good” (37:37-38:41)
The unthinkable has happened: a brief and concise scene in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Steppenwolf pops up with the Motherbox in an abandoned cityscape. Nuclear cooling towers line the background. “It’s toxic… that’s good,” he says to no one in particular (I refuse to believe he’s making small talk with his Parademons). The scene cuts to the interior of a cooling tower, where he’s leveraging the power of the Motherbox to transform the environment into something more Apokolips-y. Apokoliptical. Apokolesque. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s gross and scaly, like a saurian reconfiguration of kudzu. Steppenwolf sends his skittery minions off to find the other two boxes, then mumbles to himself about an unknown agent whom he wishes to please. “He will see my worth again,” Steppenwolf says to himself, looking extremely contemplative for someone wearing a cheese grater bodysuit.
It’s a good bet (which is later confirmed) that we’re somewhere in Asia Minor, maybe in one of the Soviet Union’s secret nuclear testing facilities scattered amongst the -stans. Or it may be a fanciful version of Chernobyl. Astute moviegoers will be reminded of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and its use of a Soviet ghost city as the hometown of its villain and the site of the climactic/anticlimactic showdown/downshow. As stand-ins for the lacunae of Western consciousness, these ghost cities have the advantage of being uninhabited. It’s a great place for an avatar of evil to set up shop.
Also, who is the mysterious figure Steppenwolf wants so badly to please? It’s a mystery! Just kidding, we know exactly who it is. It’s Darkseid. This line is there to excite the fans who bought an HBO Max subscription so they could watch Darkseid going ham on humanity.
Compare and contrast: This may be a good time to bring up the most unloved addition to the theatrical release: the plucky Russian family. Instead of an uninhabited city, Steppenwolf has set up shop in a place with a few heroic peasants. It’s a good move on paper: show the world-in-peril stakes by introducing a small group of humans. It’s also a profoundly anti-Snyderian tactic. I like the idea in theory, but in practice it’s liked a smoked oyster in a strawberry milkshake. Justice League isn’t really interested in everyday people. Introducing them into the mix without developing their characters only highlights how bad a fit the Whedon sensibility is in this world.
Once the family situation is established, the sequence cuts to Steppenwolf in his cooling tower. This part serves as a dump site for the irradiated remains of Snyder’s plot, processed into highly toxic exposition. Curiously, Steppenwolf drops Darkseid’s name here, even though he will play no part in the actual film.
