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The box office continues its loading up process for the Thanksgiving Weekend mini-bonanza with the second of our big superhero team-ups for the month, though it's clearly the lesser of the bunch despite its pedigree.

Let us journey back to the sepia-toned days of, oh, 2006 and discuss things with DC comics fans. Superman Returns has just flopped, Batman Begins was solid but underperformed, Spider-Man has had two extremely successful movies, the X-Men have just wrapped up a trilogy (albeit on a bit of a down note), and Marvel has bold plans in the works for its remaining properties. But you can tell these folks, that, ”Hey, there's going to be a Justice League movie someday! And Batman (no, not that one) is going to be in it and Superman (no, not that one) is too, even though they pretend he isn't cause... well, you know why, and oh oh, Wonder Woman! They made a WONDER WOMAN movie and it kicked ass, and OK, they're running with Aquaman, and you don't know who the actor is but he's awesome, and the director is the guy that did that cool Dawn of the Dead remake -- and Joss Whedon has a hand in it, I know, I know the Buffy guy has lots of juice to get movies done...

"And no one's really looking forward to it.”

It's amazing that we've gotten here, but such as it is, the world for DC Films as it has attempted to duplicate the success of the Marvel Universe has gotten us to a very dismal place where this weekend's Justice League – which to be sure, will still make gobs and gobs of money – is basically one of those “well, we committed to the bit, so we've got to go through with it” things, thanks to the doom and gloom of Batman v. Superman.

We've got at least the germ of an idea here, with the Baffman putting together a Superhero team to take down an even larger foe than Doomsday – who DC is basically hiding from us since you're never really heard of him – rounding up the aforementioned Aquaman (Jason Momoa, playing him as a combination of a surfer and James Hetfield), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (newcomer Ray Fisher) and Wonder Woman, who it turns out is really the only justification for this film existing now. After Gal Gadot blew open the doors for female led superheros with $412 million domestic and close to a billion internationally, she's really DC's lead property, a development similar to how Iron Man suddenly became Marvel's go to character for a bit.

The problem comes in how DC and WB have handled all the non-Wonder Woman films to date, which have been unnecessarily grim and quite the slog, especially the lead in film to this, BvS. Humor has at least entered the picture, so that's something, but looking at the $103 million opening of Wonder Woman and the fact that it was a fairly leggy film, we may be faced with the idea that the non-Wonder Woman parts of this film are a net *subtraction* from what a Wonder Woman sequel would do.

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