Justice LeagueSave

Opening sequence. A grainy iPhone-shot interview with Superman — Henry Cavill in cape, smiling, addressing camera — recorded by a New York street kid days before Superman's death in Batman v Superman (2016). "What does the Superman symbol on your chest stand for?" asks the boy. "Hope." The phone footage is shaky and Cavill is digitally de-mustached (because Cavill was contracted for Mission Impossible: Fallout during reshoots and Warner Bros. couldn't grow back his mustache in time; the digital removal is notoriously, almost comically, poorly executed throughout the film). The opening titles play out over Sigrid's mournful "Everybody Knows" cover. Six months have passed since Superman's funeral. The world is darker without him. Crime in Metropolis and Gotham is up. Foreign superpowered threats are emerging.

Themyscira. The hidden Amazon island where Wonder Woman was born. Hippolyta — Connie Nielsen as the queen — is conducting a Royal Guard ceremony around an ancient stone chamber holding one of three Mother Boxes (sentient Apokoliptan computer-weapons buried on Earth thousands of years ago and divided among the three guardian kingdoms — Atlanteans, Amazons, and Mankind — to keep them from ever being reunited). Steppenwolf — Ciaran Hinds, motion-captured, ten feet tall with battle-axe, an Apokoliptan general loyal to Darkseid — drops out of a Boom Tube portal onto Themyscira with hundreds of Parademons. The Amazons fight valiantly but Steppenwolf overpowers Antiope's daughter Philippus, kills several Amazon warriors, and seizes the Mother Box. Hippolyta lights an ancestral fire signaling Diana in London — the Themyscira beacon, a Bronze Age warning never lit in 5,000 years. Diana sees the smoke from a London office window.

Gotham. Bruce Wayne — Ben Affleck, looking exactly as exhausted as he did in BvS — has been hunting Steppenwolf-scout-Parademons in Gotham's industrial waterfront. He's been preparing his metahuman recruitment campaign since the end of BvS. He's been tracking a young man named Arthur Curry — half-Atlantean, half-human, the future Aquaman — to a small Icelandic fishing village on the coast. Bruce flies to Iceland, walks into the village's drinking bar, and tries to convince Arthur (Jason Momoa) to join his Justice League. Arthur, in faded jeans and a wool sweater, listens patiently and then walks out of the bar. "Strong man. Loner. I'm not interested." Bruce, undeterred, leaves Arthur a Wayne Enterprises business card. He flies home.

Wonder Woman tries to recruit Cyborg. Victor Stone (Ray Fisher) is a former Gotham City University football star who was nearly killed in an explosion at Star Labs (where his father Silas Stone worked). Silas, to save his son's life, fused Victor's nervous system to one of the recovered Mother Boxes from Earth-mankind's vault — turning Victor into Cyborg, a half-organic, half-Apokoliptan-circuitry being with technopathic abilities, flight, sonic blasters, and access to every connected computer network on Earth. Victor has been hiding in the university's wifi infrastructure, ghost-haunting his old apartment, traumatized by what he's become. Diana approaches him on a rainy night and offers him membership in the League. He declines initially. "My father wants me to fight. I'm not ready."

Flash recruitment. Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is in his early twenties living in a converted-warehouse Central City apartment that he has filled with seventeen monitors, an empty pet hamster cage, and stacks of unread mail. He's been a forensic-science college student. He's been operating as a vigilante known as the Flash for about eighteen months — super-speed, lightning-blue costume, electric arc. He's never met another superhero. He hasn't told anyone. Bruce shows up in his apartment unannounced one evening while Barry is mid-rerun of a Rick and Morty episode. Bruce hands him a Wayne Industries gold credit card. "I'm putting together a team of people with special abilities." Barry stares. "WAIT. ARE YOU. ARE YOU BATMAN? IT IS. THAT'S NUTS." Bruce: "I need to know if you can do what you do. Test of speed." Barry: "How fast can you run?" Bruce: "Fast." Barry: "That's amazing." Two minutes later Barry is in Wonder Woman's company.

Atlantis. Steppenwolf and his Parademons attack the Atlantean kingdom-undersea fortress where Atlanna stored the second Mother Box for safe-keeping after Atlanna escaped Atlantis in Aquaman (2018)'s prequel-timeline. Vulko (Willem Dafoe), the Atlantean tactical advisor, tries to defend the Box but Steppenwolf cuts through the underwater defenders and retrieves it. Atlantis is left in ruin. Arthur Curry — angered now that his mother's kingdom has been attacked — surfaces in Iceland and travels to Gotham to join the League. Bruce welcomes him.

Cyborg defects. Diana and Bruce continue working on Victor Stone. After Steppenwolf's attack on Atlantis, Victor's nervous system — fused to the Earth Mother Box his father Silas Stone gave him — starts receiving warning signals about the next attack. The third Mother Box is buried in a Star Labs vault under Gotham, but Steppenwolf has been tracking it via a heat-signature flare. Victor reluctantly joins the team to defend his father's lab. The team — Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg — assembles at the Batcave for the first time. They're five. They need a sixth.

Resurrection plan. Diana, Bruce, and Cyborg propose using the Mother Box from Silas's lab — combined with the Kryptonian Genesis Chamber technology in Zod's downed scout ship — to resurrect Superman. The Mother Box can convert mortal flesh into immortal Krypton-biology if applied to a recently-deceased Kryptonian. Superman has been dead for six months. The team disinters Superman's coffin from Smallville cemetery, transports the body to the Kryptonian ship's amniotic pool in Metropolis, and immerses Superman's corpse in a Mother Box-activated bath of regenerative fluid. The chamber's energy lights up Metropolis like the Aurora Borealis.

Superman wakes up. Henry Cavill, in the resurrection chamber, opens his eyes and immediately blasts the Mother Box with heat vision. He doesn't recognize his teammates. He attacks Diana, Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg in succession across the Metropolis street outside the LexCorp tower. Batman flies in on the Bat-Wing and gets thrown into a building. Steppenwolf is also incoming because the Mother Box activation has alerted him. Lois Lane arrives in a black sedan. Bruce had Alfred bring her. "Clark." Superman freezes. He looks at her. He recognizes her. He flies them both back to Smallville for a private reunion. He's confused but alive.

Steppenwolf steals the third Mother Box. While the team is busy resurrecting Superman in Metropolis, Steppenwolf walks into Silas Stone's underground lab and takes the third Mother Box. Silas Stone (Joe Morton) is killed in the attack. Steppenwolf now has all three Mother Boxes. He warps to a forgotten village in northern Russia where a Soviet-era nuclear power plant sits abandoned. He places the three Boxes in a triangular formation. They begin synchronizing into the Unity — an atmospheric-conversion device that will terraform Earth into an Apokoliptan colony for Darkseid within forty-eight hours. The first stage is converting Earth's atmosphere into ash-fall radiation.

Russian village climactic battle. The Justice League — now six, with Superman fully aware and ready — converges on the Russian power plant. The village has been evacuated. Steppenwolf's Parademon army (numbering in the thousands) has hatched in larvae form. The team fights through Parademons in the village center while Cyborg uses his Mother Box-integrated nervous system to identify the Unity's vulnerability — the three Boxes can be desynchronized if Cyborg accesses one of them individually. Cyborg crash-lands on the Unity structure and uses his technopathic powers to separate the Boxes. The Unity-tower goes inert. Steppenwolf, in personal combat with the full team, loses against the combined assault — Wonder Woman lassos his weapon, Aquaman impales him with a trident, Flash phases his battle-axe out of his hand, Batman lays a Kryptonite charge, Superman delivers the final blow with heat vision. Steppenwolf's body is dragged into a Boom Tube portal by his own Parademon army (the comics version of cosmic-shame).

Aftermath. The villagers return to their evacuated homes. The Unity is destroyed. The team has saved Earth from Steppenwolf's invasion. The League survives intact. Bruce, in his civilian clothes, has bought Wayne Manor back from the bank (he sold it in BvS) and is converting it into a permanent Justice League headquarters. Aquaman returns to Atlantis to become its king. Cyborg starts working with his father's old lab to control his powers. Barry Allen gets a job at the Central City Crime Lab. Wonder Woman steps fully out of her decades of hiding and is photographed openly as a hero. The Daily Planet runs a front-page photograph of Superman saving a family in Metropolis. The hopeful Superman of Smallville is back.

Mid-credits. Superman and Flash, on a Smallville dirt road, decide to race each other across America in a private test of speed. They take off at sunset. Cut to credits.

Post-credits. Arkham Asylum. Lex Luthor — Jesse Eisenberg, his head shaved but now elegantly suited, his sanity questionable — has been moved from solitary confinement to a private island yacht. He's apparently escaped Arkham (Bruce Wayne paid the ferry captain a million dollars; Lex paid the captain $2M to look the other way; details are murky in the theatrical cut). Slade Wilson — Joe Manganiello, in tactical eyepatch, the mercenary known as Deathstroke — boards the yacht with a private security entourage. Lex pours them both champagne. "Mr. Wilson. We should have a league of our own. Don't you think?" Cut to credits. The Legion of Doom is being assembled. None of this would ever happen on screen because the Snyderverse was canceled in 2021.