Justice League Review

So this movie was getting some very bad reviews right from the start, but I had already made plans with friends to see it before that happened. I didn't back out because sometimes I disagree with the critics, like when I saw Akira (fuck that movie).

This, was not one of those times. This movie didn't strike me as terrible, but that's just because I'm not prone to hating things. This movie is average, painfully average. For the most part that's about it. Nothing really stuck out to me about the fight scenes or story.

Okay that's a lie. When things did stick out regarding the story, it showed me that the making of this movie was a mess. Wonder Woman states that beings killed by Steppenwolf's ax are turned into Parademons. This is never brought up again and Steppenwolf never kills somebody with his ax in the story proper. We see a Parademon flying around Gotham, which doesn't make sense given that for most of the film these things are with Steppenwolf as he looks for the Mother Boxes. Our first scene with Steppenwolf has him making comments about how the Amazons will love him when he finishes the Unity, which implies to me that the Unity was in the earlier scripts was supposed to be some mass mind control instead of terraforming Earth into a new Apokolips. Speaking of which, after the Unity is stopped we see a lush flourishing plant life growing on the land it effected, WHAT?! This is was technology meant to turn a planet into a new Apokolips, an industrialized wasteland so lifeless that in a crossover with Marvel, Galactus found there was no life for him to feed on, and earlier we saw it turning the ground blood red. And the biggest one; our heroes are trying to escape from a flood, we see Cyborg fly away like he's ditching them or getting help, then next seen, they've escaped with no explanation.

Does this movie do anything right? Yes actually. It does understand not go full grimdark, and while it's not in the same league as the MCU's comedy, it did get some laughs out of me. My personal favorite is when we had Aquaman giving a big speech about his life that felt incredibly forced, and then he seemed to realize and it turned out he was sitting on Wonder Woman's lasso. The movie's ending with a feel of optimism was a good idea at least after the bittersweet ending to Wonder Woman.

Speaking of Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot is still awesome, and if nothing else the movie shows that the writers haven't lost their touch with her. It's confusing how she's coming out of hiding now, but the movie tries to give the hint that she sees some danger and rises to action, then goes back into hiding, explaining why she stayed out of World War II because she wouldn't have been able to go back into hiding there.

Wonder Woman caries most of the team interactions in this movie. That being said, she needs to because we don't get a lot of the other characters interacting with each other. Flash mostly talks with Cyborg, and we have some screen time with Flash and Batman and it looks like we had the makings of a good student mentor dynamic, but Flash doesn't much with Batman for the rest of the film and his only meaningful scene is talking with Cyborg.

I will grant that Cyborg's angst over what he is seems understandable if he has a body that is changing all the time, so he's afraid of what it might do. I can believe he was on poor terms with his father but still didn't want to leave him to die, but we don't really get a scene of them making amends. It's just implied.

The Flash, oh dammit. Any film version of the Flash would have the misfortune of being compared to the CW series Flash, and this one doesn't hold a candle to that show. The movie wanted to use the Flash as the young and inexperienced hero who had never been in real danger before. Fine. But it did not need to make the Flash into a knockoff of the awkward nerdy MCU Spiderman. Frankly I found him kinda of annoying. His one good standout moment is when he's afraid to save a bunch of people captured by Steppenwolf, and Batman recommends he just saves one person. The Flash does that, and then keep running back in and saving more people because he can't leave them alone with a supervillain or his man eating soldiers.

Much like the Superfriends, Aquaman got the worst of this movie. Okay that's an exaggeration, this Aquaman is nowhere nearly as bad as the Superfriends depiction, but that isn't saying much given that cartoon was made in the Dark Age of Animation where badass comic characters like him weren't allowed to hit people. However he's still not very impressive since his biggest contributions to the action scenes are getting his ass kicked by Steppenwolf and Superman. The film shows that he's not weak, his exploits with the sea sounded pretty badass, but in the film proper he only comes off as strong next to Batman, the man who was used a benchmark to show how dangerous an individual Parademon was. Also he lose a fight to Steppenwolf while underwater. Aquaman, in the film meant to first show him off to the audience before his own movie, lost a fight in his own element.

Superman's revival was thankfully less stupid than in the comics, but even if he wasn't himself when revived, why does he suddenly hate Batman? Batman tried to kill him, but he also saved Superman's mother and helped against Doomsday. This feels like a rather forced attempt to make Batman gets some comeuppance for Batman V Superman, and well I have to concede it was fun to see Superman grab Batman by the face and throw that "Do you bleed?" line back in his face. Also for all the praise Superman gets as the man needed to hold the team together, his only role is appearing to help in the climax. Frankly Wonder Woman felt like she should have been the glue holding the team together. Instead of helping the team he feels like he is rendering the team pointless with how he's stronger than the rest of them combined, and yet he was also a hindrance since they only needed him in the climax because their revival of him allowed Steppenwolf to find the last Mother Box.

Apart from somehow knowing where the climax is, I can't say this much that stood out to me about Superman in this film. Even though the film showed him to be the strongest hero, none of the action in his fights stood out to me any more than the rest of the fighting in this film. On top of this; Superman gets the whole film singing his praises like this was the beloved Superman of the comics, despite all the fear and distrust from Batman V Superman, which is just swept under the rug. This goes to show that the DCEU does not have a clue what it is doing when in response to criticism for their depiction of Superman they have written him as a completely different character.

Batman's killing sprees also appear to swept under the rug. I will give the film credit that he does at least regret trying to kill Superman and was willing to let Superman kill him if meant Superman would be around to save the world. Aside from that, there just wasn't much to him aside from some funny bits with Alfred and the Flash that stood out. I don't see him killing a big deal in this film since it's all alien monsters that will try to eat anybody they sense fear from. Also I don't care that he uses a gun. It's less cool than his gadgets but I don't want sticking to his proverbial guns when the fate of the world is at stake, though given the character's tradition dislike of guns the movie should have made a bigger deal out of it.

Steppenwolf was a forgettable villain. I was holding out hope despite the backlash against him being the film's villain since less interesting characters from comics have been made better in adaptations, like Zod in Superman II, Mister Freeze in the Batman Animated Series and Vulture in Spider Man: Homecoming. This was not one of those times. New God who comes to Earth, wants to terraform Earth into a new Apokolips, and has army of Parademons. Not a bad premise starting with a minion of Darkseid, but this film fails to set up it's universe Darkseid like the Avengers did with Thanos. So our only villain is just a generic alien conqueror with obvious CGI.

That's another thing. The CGI in this film isn't terrible to my eyes, except on the villains. But I can clearly tell when something is CGI, which is all the damn time. Flash's running doesn't look much, if at all better than the CW series, and our villains don't nearly as convincing as the all CGI characters of the MCU like Yellow Jacket and the Hulk. The CG on him looks unfinished, probably because it was. Also we have more those slow motion effects, which work to show off a characters' super speed, but in other places like seeing a box of fruit get kicked over, I am not even kidding, it's unneeded. Also I can't help but think the slow motion effects with super speed was done in an attempt to imitate the famous scene slow motion scene with Quicksilver in Days of Future Past.

The movie's action is also forgettable apart from a few moments like when Wonder Woman stops this creepy bunch of terrorists. The DCEU is not the same league with action as the MCU. Man of Steel's fights while mostly mindless brawls showed the power of the Kryptonian characters. The fights in Batman V Superman were mostly the same titular battle is a generic brawl through a building a lesser scale to the fights in Man of Steel where Superman is an idiot falling Batman's obvious tricks because the plot mandates Batman win. The battle with Doomsday upped the scale but it was more of the same, not to mention soulless as Doomsday wasn't need for the film, with its only memorable parts being Doomsday's resilience and the team attack to take him down. And lets not get into the film reveling in seeing Batman going around murdering people despite him supposedly being in the wrong in the movie.

Wonder Woman brought some new material to the table with its use of the World War I setting and the fight with Ares, but that seemed to have been the only unique action ideas the DCEU has had. The fights with Steppenwolf are just more forgettable brawls that don't go anywhere as he and Wonder Woman fail to land any meaningful blows. While the Chitarui in Avengers didn't pose much of a threat, the battle with them managed to stand out because it was saved for the climax. With the Parademons featured throughout the movie we just have more attention drawn to how ineffective they are when almost all their screen time consists of being killed. This leads to a dull climax that mostly reuses action we had already seen in the film, even Superman's inclusion just add more to trying to show off how amazing he is and making the other heroes look pointless.

So in the end you are best staying away from this movie. It starts off way too slowly with how introduces our characters, the writing only stands out when it's horribly lazy, the action and effects are bland. We don't get any real interactions showing the whole team coming together like the Avengers did, and honestly I feel even Thor and Loki had better chemistry than most of this film's heroes. DC showed it could do an individual superhero film with Wonder Woman, but that did not translate into a team film. If you want a good film you can stick with the MCU. If you want to watch a bad movie, I believe this film is too generic for people who like to watch a trainwreck of a film.