Justice League, while certainly never approaching the creative nadir that was the DC movie Suicide Squad, is really just not a good movie. Its silly-but-not-in-a-good-way, its nonsensical, its sort of inexplicably chaotic. Its exciting, then, that well eventually be able to compare Joss Whedons Justice League to the Snyder Cut next year and maybe get a better understanding of what went on here. But while we wait for that day, lets reflect on the pure madness of the theatrical version.

The Atlantis fight

James Wan, who is one of the best filmmakers working today, absolutely knocked all that underwater stuff out of the park in his standalone Aquaman. But the Atlantis fight in Justice League, on the other hand, was an absolute trash fire that looked just incredibly awful. Whatever Warner Bros. spent on this sequence, it was too much. Woof.

Steppenwolf repeatedly talking to mother

Justice League does a pretty poor job of explaining Steppenwolfs powerful artifacts, the Mother Boxes, which fans of the comics know are actually supercomputers with consciousness. Its even weirder when Steppenwolf occasionally talks out loud to Mother, telling her (?) hell be feeding her soon and dropping some other weird lines. The movie never explains that the boxes are actually alive and bond with their owners so strongly that they will self-destruct if the person to whom theyre linked are killed.

Anyway, presumably hes talking to the box(es). Maybe Justice League is actually about a guy with a computer pet whos just trying to be a good friend and get it some snacks.

Also Read: Every DC Comics Movie Ranked From Worst to Best, Including 'Justice League'

For Darkseid!

Fans who know something about Steppenwolf know that hes actually a lieutenant of Darkseid, a supervillain arch-nemesis of the Justice League whos bent on conquering the universe. For everyone else, Steppenwolf is a pretty obscure character, so his single off-handed mention of the fact hes doing evil stuff for Darkseid is easy to miss and fairly confusing particularly if you dont know who Darkseid is and thought he said Dark Side. One assumes Justice League was, at one point, setting up for Darkseids eventual arrival. The movie as it exists is not, aside from that single line.

Since Darkseid figured majorly into Zack Snyders plans for Justice League and its sequel that didnt end up happening, we should at least finally get some context for this line in the Snyder Cut.

#Supermouth

Paramount wouldnt let Henry Cavill shave his Mission: Impossible Fallout mustache during Justice League reshoots, so Warner Bros. decided theyd just try to digitally remove it in post-production. And it is absolutely horrifying. Its worse than CGI Peter Cushing in Rogue One a cartoon-looking mouth on an otherwise human face will always look more upsetting than that entire cartoon-looking face. Our brains just cant even fathom this thing.

If, for whatever reason, youd like to bask in the horror that is Supermans CGI mouth, check out our gallery of the most terrifying shots of that cartoon monstrosity.

Also Read: The 10 Most Terrifying Shots of Superman's CGI Mouth in 'Justice League' (Photos)

That opening Superman scene

This weird little home video segment of a kid talking to Supes is a double whammy of existential pain. First, you have the whole CGI mouth thing, which is extremely obvious throughout. Then you have Superman refusing to answer the kids question about what his favorite thing about living on Earth is. Theres no thematic payoff to the scene later in the movie, and so it plays like the movie is just trying to dunk on itself.

Clark and Lois hanging out in a CGI cornfield

If youre going to do an extended green screen scene, maybe its best not to throw an extremely colorful, eye-catching background behind your characters. Nobody told Justice League this, though, and so theres a touching scene between Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Superman standing in a cornfield in Kansas that is extremely, obviously not real. The culprit is probably that glaring gorgeous sunset that makes the outline of the characters a little too obvious. The emotional reunion of Lois and Clark gets seriously undercut by the fact that nobody can stop thinking about how theyre standing on a soundstage. Throw in Supermans gross CGI smile in for good measure and the whole thing turns into a very dry comedy sketch.

Also Read: 'Justice League': What The Hell Is the Deal With Steppenwolf's Mother Boxes?

Nobody really cared about Superman returning

Justice League makes a big deal about Superman being dead. Its such a blow to the world that crime and terrorism are on the rise thanks to the simple lack of hope he embodied. So resurrecting Superman mid-movie seems like it ought to be a pretty big deal, especially as it is witnessed by at least a few civilians and results and in a big public fight with at least one somewhat-publicly known hero. But almost no acknowledgment is made of Supermans return, and while his effect on the world is part of the movies setup, its not at all part of the rest of the plot. Theres no celebration, no montage of racists not being racist anymore to call back to the opening credits. Hes just back, and the movie itself seems to care about that about as much as those ancient humans cared about the security of their Mother Box. Plus Clark Kent was dead too. Is Superman just going to skip the alter-ego thing from now on or what?

Using the were gonna do a thing that will bring the bad guy down on us trope but no one having any clue that theyre doing it

When the Justice League decides to use a Mother Box to resurrect Superman, it seems pretty obvious that doing so will attract the attention of the villain who has spent the whole movie trying to round up all the Mother Boxes. Well, its obvious to us, anyway, because weve all seen a hundred movies, TV shows and video games with that specific trope you know, the OK, so we have to flip this switch in order to do something important but its definitely going to attract the bad guys to us and cause a big fight trope. Its not so obvious to the characters in the movie, though, because they never mention the possibility that Steppenwolf will show up and seem weirdly surprised when he pops in to steal the box right under everyones noses. I guess they forgot to make this scene make sense when they rejiggered the plot during reshoots.

Also Read: 'Justice League' Post-Credits Scene Explained

Cyborg is extremely not stealthy

Cyborg (Ray Fisher) wears a hoodie when he goes out, but it does almost nothing to contain the fact that he has extremely obvious glowing lights in his face and chest. He also makes a lot of very ominous whirring sounds just by being alive. So it was pretty tough to buy that he was stealthily spying on Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne to suss out their deal before joining the nascent Justice League, as he was only about 25 feet away and making a lot of loud weird robot sounds. At least Diana said she was fully aware of him watching just one scene later. But still, youd think his computer brain would have been slightly smarter.

Cyborgs nonsensical origin recap

Introducing Cyborg in a team-up movie was never a great idea, but it takes quite a while for Justice League to explain what his deal even is. Injured in an explosion, Vic Stones cool superpowers are the result of interference by one of Steppenwolfs weirdo Mother Boxes. The apparently sentient supercomputer of incredible power actually reshaped state-of-the-art cyborg enhancements his father Silas gave him in order to save his life after an accident. The result is that Cyborg doesnt even know what his abilities are and, also, that nobody explains who he is or why hes a spiffy alien robot man until about halfway through the movie. The rest of the time, the audience has to sit there, confused.

Cyborg cant control his defense system

The good guys resurrect Superman, who immediately gets mad and makes threatening faces and stuff. And in a moment that is completely out of step with the rest of the movie, Cyborgs cyborg parts start doing their own thing without his input. There had been no hint before then that that could happen, and it doesnt happen again even though Cyborg doesnt appear to take any measures to prevent that situation from arising a second time. Nobody even has the, Yo, man, is this gonna be a problem? conversation with him.

Also Read: 'Justice League' Fans React to Henry Cavill's Mustache Removal: 'This Is F-king Real?!'

The ancient people who buried a Mother Box in a 3-foot deep hole next to a river

The first time Steppenwolf tried to take over Earth way back when, he was defeated by an alliance of the Old Gods, the Amazons, the Atlantians and the humans, who took his Mother Boxes entrusted to each of the civilizations to keep them safe. The Atlantians put theirs in the ocean; the Amazonians built a giant stone vault; and the humans dug a 3-foot hole next to a river and tossed their box in it. This is not the best way to hide, like, anything. Its probably not a coincidence that this Mother Box is the only one that didnt stay where it was for the next 5,000 years. A dog probably dug it up the next day.

The Russian family the movie keeps cutting to

Superhero movies will often throw a few random civilians in harms way in order to show the stakes of the situation. Justice League spends several scenes hanging around with a random Russian family who lives unfortunately close to Steppenwolfs apocalyptic base, hoping to set up a last-second rescue much, much later in the movie. In the meantime, though, this family is stuck in their house hiding from monsters for, like, a week. They never get any characterization or do anything and none of the several scenes about them do anything to push the story forward. This is extremely not how to get the audience to care about regular people in the middle of supervillain danger.

Also Read: Will the 'Justice League' Snyder Cut Actually Deliver What Fans Asked For?

Superman showing up and being easily capable of winning the fight at any moment

The Justice Leagues final fight with Steppenwolf doesnt exactly go poorly but, as weve seen demonstrated multiple times in the movie before, hes seemingly a match for any of the super-strong members of the team, and maybe even for all of them put together. Enter Superman, who dodges Steppenwolfs attacks, pummels him about the face, and is generally capable of putting the supervillain down without a lot of help. But thats not especially dramatic so Superman bails mid-fight to go save a building full of civilians. Having a guy on the team who can handle basically any problem on his own kind of undercuts the need for a team, and it sure feels like Justice League is looking for a way to get Superman out of there as soon as he shows up. Poor planning for your climax, that.

Diana doing The Flash thing and then forgetting she can do that for the rest of the movie

Wonder Womans (Gal Gadot) introductory scene in Justice League is actually pretty cool. A terrorist group takes over a bank intent on exploding a bomb that will wipe out several city blocks, apparently because they think that will help push society back to the Dark Ages, which is a good thing for some reason. Whatever Diana beating people up is what matters, and that goes pretty well. Until, that is, terrorist leader Roose Bolton levels a machine gun on the hostages. Rather than take him out, Wonder Woman moves super-fast to block all of the dozens of bullets he fires with her gauntlet (and casually move one guy out of the way). We know Wonder Woman is extremely super, but apparently racing bullets is now in her repertoire. Kind of makes The Flash (Ezra Miller) obsolete. Then again, she doesnt use this ability for the rest of the film, even when it would have been super useful in the various fights with Steppenwolf.

What does that smell like? Fear

While it was a little frustrating that Superman could have obviously ended the battle with Steppenwolf whenever he felt like, it was just plain goofy what finally brought him down in the end. An earlier, easily missed line in Justice League pointed out that his henchmen, parademons, feed on or otherwise are attracted to fear. So when Superman et al. started really giving it to Steppenwolf in a way that suggested he might not win, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa) took a second to point out that he was afraid. The exchange itself was weird Aquaman asking, What does that smell like? and Batman responding, Fear but then Steppenwolf was overwhelmed as his own troopers suddenly decided to turn on him. This was a guy that was batting away Amazons like they were actually insects earlier in the movie, mind you, so his ultimate defeat at the hands of his own not-especially smart bugmen felt pretty forced. LOL.

(Spoilers ahead for "Justice League")Given that the Joss Whedon-helmed reshoots on "Justice League" went on significantly longer than planned, it's not really a surprise that some scenes from the marketing didn't make the final cut. But it's still fun to take a look at what was meant to be and compare it to what we actually got. So let's do that right now.(Note: This post was originally published on Nov. 18, 2017)

This hero shot of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) didn't make the movie -- and neither did whatever location they're standing in.

This location appears to be a different version of the cross-shaped platform at the center of the abandoned nuclear reactor Steppenwolf works from in the movie, but it never ends up looking so thoroughly thoroughly alien in the finished film. This old version of that space may have been somewhere else -- like inside Steppenwolf's spaceship that he keeps teleporting down to Earth from but which we never actually see in the movie.

There were two trailer shots that showed Victor Stone in his pre-Cyborg state, but none were in the movie.

Here's Victor Stone playing football, another pre-Cyborg bit for him that didn't make it in.

There is a big cornfield scene between Clark (Henry Cavill) and Lois (Amy Adams) in the finished film but either it's different from this one one -- in which Clark says that he'll take her wearing his engagement ring from "Batman v Superman" as a yes to his proposal -- from the trailer or this was a part of that scene that didn't make it in. The cornfield scene in the finished product, notably, is one of those where Henry Cavill has his "Mission: Impossible" mustache being covered up by CGI, and that is very obviously not happening in this shot here.

Though the "Justice League" opening credits did feature a montage of people being terrible without the moral compass of Superman to guide them, this bit with the "WORLD WITHOUT HOPE" newspaper headline was not among those shots.

There's a scene in which Alfred (Jeremy Irons) is talking to someone offscreen (it's implied that it's Superman) in the batcave. Based on the dialogue we'd guess that Superman visited Alfred to find out where the other Justice League pals had gone to fight the final battle -- Superman, as you'll recall, simply shows up midway through that fight.

There was a bit in one of the trailers where Cyborg saves a man from being nailed by an exploding tank, but there were no tanks at all in the finished film so it's tough to guess where this fits in.

Aquaman did spear a lot of bug people in the finished movie, but this bit where he spears two at the same time didn't make the cut

This trailer shot shows Cyborg sporting a helmet.

The trailer implies this shot is of Cyborg flying above the clouds, and while we do see him fly around a few times we never got this particular bit.

The Flash breaking a window while using his super speed was a cool visual that was nowhere to be found in the finished movie

Here we see the Flash (Ezra Miller) fighting an evil soldier. Curiously, that entire type of baddie was cut from the movie -- all of Steppenwolf's forces had wings but this guy looks more like a regular human, a la the soldiers in Bruce Wayne's nightmare in "Batman v Superman."

Not sure what this shot is, honestly.

This part, in which Wonder Woman knocks a couple bug guys off the Batmobile, actually is in the movie -- but the color pallette is dramatically different in the finished film, sporting a bright red hue instead.

Weve got a pretty solid amount of cut content to sift through here

(Spoilers ahead for "Justice League")Given that the Joss Whedon-helmed reshoots on "Justice League" went on significantly longer than planned, it's not really a surprise that some scenes from the marketing didn't make the final cut. But it's still fun to take a look at what was meant to be and compare it to what we actually got. So let's do that right now.(Note: This post was originally published on Nov. 18, 2017)

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The Worst Parts of Justice League Theatrical Cut, From Supermans CGI Mouth to That Underwater Battle - TheWrap