One aspect of Batman v Superman that stands out above all others is its tone. Love it or hate it, you can't argue that it's not dark. From shoot-outs to the final smackdown, there's a lot of death and despair crammed into the film. A lot of criticism levelled toward it focused on the volume of these bleaker moments, but Ben Affleck says that the follow-up movie Justice League has the potential for added levity.
“There’s definitely room for more humor," Affleck tells Collider. "[Batman v Superman] was very dark and heavy because it was really rooted in The Dark Knight Returns, which is a heavy, dark book. And this is not that... it’s about hope and about working together and the kind of conflicts of trying to work together with others. It’s a world where superheroes exist, so there’s comedy in that necessarily, trying to work with other people and people trying to accomplish goals together is the root of all great comedy in my view. So there’s definitely, hopefully some fun in it. But it’s not unrecognizably these characters or these stories. It’s not turning it upside down.”
From the sounds of it, Justice League's going to include some amusing shenanigans during the titular team's formation. It's not an impossible task to marry together the darkness of a scenario with a touch of comedy relief. That's something director Zack Snyder also promises, revealing that his plan all along was to craft three distinct movies (Man of Steel, BvS and Justice League): "I really wanted the tone of the three movies to be different chapters and not be the same note that you strike like, ‘Okay, there’s this again.’ "
"Not to give anything away or say anything that would be too telling of where we’re headed with the movie, but death is darker than, say, resurrection or team-building," he adds, confirming what's outlined in the recently-revealed official synopsis. "It’s just a darker concept, like when you’re dealing with Dark Knight Returns or Death of Superman, those kinds of ideas. As opposed to, ‘Oh, let’s build a team and fight the bad guy!’ It’s a different energy.”
Directed by Zack Snyder and starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, J.K. Simmons, Amber Heard, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, and Jesse Eisenberg, Justice League: Part 1 is currently scheduled for a November 17, 2017 release.
Images: Warner Bros/DC
