How Warner Bros. Should Have Made Justice League

DC Comics fans had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity to see their favourite superheroes unite on the big screen, and that moment finally came to pass when Justice League hit cinemas this month.

Standards might have been low enough for the movie they got to be considered passable - if Wonder Woman hadn't raised the bar for the DC Extended Universe (or whatever it ends up being called). If Justice League is anything to go by, however, Wonder Woman was instead a false beacon of hope for the franchise as a whole.

Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were tonal misfires and joyless exercises in hero deconstruction, but at least there was a vision behind them. The team-up project they fed into is a generic mess, being pulled in two different directions by conflicting ideologies in virtually every scene.

Director Zack Snyder was forced off the project by a family tragedy late in the day, leaving it to Joss Whedon to head up extensive reshoots, tonal fine-tuning and hefty cuts, and the stitches from his post-production surgery were left showing.

This isn't the only reason Justice League failed to deliver. There are countless others, but rather than simply list them, it would be more productive to explore how the movie should have been made instead.

In all fairness to Justice League, it got most of its main heroes right. Aquaman could have been a walking fish joke, but came with attitude and badassery, while Cyborg and The Flash brought some heart and youthful energy to the equation.

The only problem is, there was nowhere near enough of this stuff. In an ideal world, the trio of newcomers would have been given solo outings ahead of the main event, but since DC and Warner wanted an Avengers killer yesterday, there was no time for minor details like character development and motivation.

Handing full, satisfactory debuts to so many new characters alongside DC's holy trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman was a tall order for a two-hour film, so extra runtime was needed to flesh out every arc.

Cyborg's life before his near-fatal accident and his relationship with his father should have been explored in greater detail. Aquaman's origins and Atlantean lore were barely touched upon, and more of The Flash's quick wit wouldn't have gone amiss.

The way these characters were realised wasn't the problem. There simply wasn't enough runtime to do them justice without solo films to feed into the team-up.