Apokolips War and Counterproductive Nihilism in DC Animation

Over the last six years, I have become fully engrossed in the DC animated universe after being revived by Batman: The Animated Series during my overworked college depression haze. I recently decided to watch the final film in the New 52 DC Animated saga, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020), with my friend over text (in quarantine fashion). Since I loved the first Justice League Dark, a predecessor that follows a new team of dark specialists led by anti-hero Constantine and Justice League member Zatanna — and because I had been waiting for this release for months — I had high hopes. It was meant to be the comfort film during a time of perpetual discomfort. Instead, the entirety of watching the film, my friend and I were texting our shocked and outright angry reactions to what we were witnessing: all of our favorite heroes getting absolutely obliterated without a sliver of remorse. 

The film is set up to be another Darkseid attempt at taking over Earth, and while we’ve seen this before in Justice League: War (2014), The Death of Superman (2018), and The Reign of Superman (2019), this time he actually manages to really fuck shit up. As the Justice League travels to Apokolips, the Teen Titans stay on Earth to protect it and nothing works out in anyone’s favor. Batman warns Superman from the start that this would happen, but Superman’s determination and faith is painted in a way that is almost a mockery, as if to say, the Earth is doomed and nothing can save it anymore. At no point in the film do we ever feel like Superman is Superman. He is instead insecure, distraught, and powerless. 

The film spends much of its runtime violently annihilating every character we know and love. In a span of 10 minutes, I witness Zatanna die, a sword ripped through Nightwing, and other heroes’ limbs gruesomely torn apart. The heroes who do not die are turned into Darkseid’s slaves, and some are left without body parts or mental autonomy. Not only does this feel morbid, but it also feels unbelievable. A formula that I have been so used to was broken; intentionally, of course, but it felt like a violation.  

This feeling was reminiscent of watching The Killing Joke (2016) in a crowded movie theater, and witnessing Batman have sex with a young Batgirl, and the sadistic depiction of Barbara Gordon’s traumatizing paralyzation that left her naked and helpless. It made me question the integrity of this universe that I’ve somehow become fully reliant on for my joy. Even more so, it made me question the people who made these films and stories as successful as they are: the fans who demanded more dark and violent stories, who simultaneously celebrated oppressive content in the process. 

Why was The Killing Joke such a successful run? Alan Moore himself has admitted that the book only perpetuates The Joker’s psychotic, brooding tendencies that have been repeatedly glorified and mass produced for shock value. Apokolips War ends with Constantine explaining to Flash that his saving his mother from dying in another timeline (in The Flashpoint Paradox) disrupted the entire Earth’s survival in this timeline, after they just “saved” the Earth from Darkseid’s dictatorship. Why is it that fans enjoyed the film so much despite its outright matter-of-fact hopelessness? 

While I understand that perhaps there was an intention to reflect the “reality” of war and human error, releasing a film about the end of Earth, the slaughtering, and enslaving of the only people who symbolize “hope” in 2020 drives people into an already deeper hole of disillusionment. This is counterproductive at a time when we need to be practicing hope and fighting against nihilist thinking.  

The purpose of comic books has always been to provide people with escapism, to help people feel like there is such a thing as saviorship or heroism. We know this — is written in the DNA of heroes like Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman themselves. That isn’t to say that when I look at moments in DC comic book history that experimented with nihilism, I am angry — I am actually thrilled to see the ways characters and storylines can evolve from classic tropes and superhero stereotypes. In an interview with Apokolips War screenwriter Mairghread Scott, she address this: 

“My feeling as a writer is that violence without a message is pornographic because then the violence in it of itself becomes the enjoyment,” she says. “If you’re going to be writing a really violent, dark story, the point of the really violent, dark story is to show there’s light in that darkness and to show that it’s really hard to do the right thing even if things had gone to Hell in a handbasket.”

And I wanted to say to her, Yes, I totally agree, but you did not accomplish that. Too much of the film was spent on showing heroes suffering and facing the end of life itself without a payoff or a lesson. Later in the interview, she says, “I felt like you really got to see who these characters were when their backs were up entirely against the wall. And that’s really the point, to show that these characters aren’t just heroes when they’re winning but that they’re still heroes when they’ve lost everything.” So while I agree with her intention, the problem is that when heroes have lost everything in an anticipated animated film that is released within the current political and social climate, how can people still believe in the possibility of justice? 

I am questioning the utter defeatism of Apokolips War and whether that is the direction DC intends to take in the future of DC animation. When I watch superhero films, I want to trust that I will be taken to a place that feels somewhat safe at the end — this film not only left me gutted, but it also left me unsteady and afraid. I even dreamt about it that night, imagining a world where nothing was sacred anymore, where not even my favorite fictional characters could exist as moments of release for me. In a real world that is littered with perpetual hopelessness, grief, and violence, if we don’t have stories that strive to make a better fictional world, then what will motivate us to fight for a better real world?

There is a way to showcase “dark” without completely destroying all sense of belief and possibility of a bright future. When I think of DC animation that perfectly finds that balance, I think of a particular episode of Justice League Unlimited. In episode 15, “The Ties that Bind,” one of DC’s most creepy and uncomfortable villains, Granny Goodness, is speaking with a young Scott Free, the only orphan under her control who escaped her tyranny. Their conversation looked like this:

And with that, Scott escapes Granny’s control. It is a powerful moment that instantaneously embodies a sense of hope in a universe that ultimately feels inescapable. Watching this reminded me of the moments in DC animation that reinvigorated my devotion to justice, care, and community. It was these moments that in my sunken places, I knew I could count on the dedication of my favorite fictional characters to overcome suffering yet again, which was the opposite of what Apokolips War presented to its viewers. Instead, it left us with a sort of emptiness that resembled 2020’s bleakness. It hurt in ways I wasn’t expecting it to — and it wasn’t just because I wanted toxic positivity or sugar-coated optimism. I just wanted something to grasp onto, laugh with, and feel for at a time that desperately needed the shine of heroism to bring us out of what feels like Apokolips itself. 

This approach is being accomplished through many of the recent animated TV shows and films, which show classic DC heroes and villains using irony and humor to level out the dark storylines. Young Justice confronts death, despair and hopelessness but they also always make sure to find a way out of it. Harley Quinn is a meta-narrative that mocks DC content and its creators while maintaining a sense of purity through Harley’s friendship with her crew in the same breath. Batman vs. Robin (2015) showed the tension between an emotionally unavailable Batman and his traumatized son Damien, but built a relationship between the two nonetheless. It doesn’t always have to follow the same formula, but I do believe there should be a message that says, we must make meaning of our suffering. That is what makes fiction so powerful and healing for both creators and consumers — we can still explore trauma, dark themes and existentialist philosophy, because we have the ability to think outside of endless suffering as the only answer, exit route or conflict in the worlds we build.

Perhaps it is not healthy to view fictional heroes as icons or models of perfection, but I do think there is merit in striving to create a universe that we can imagine might one day reflect the world we are building toward. Perhaps that is the true nature of what I always wanted superheroes to embody — and maybe it is the believer in me, but I’d like to hope that is what we all want, too.