Justice League: Heroes Trailer

Justice League and The Last Jedi are the two movies I have been anticipating the most in 2017 and while I’m excited for these movies to come out, if 2016 taught me anything it is that highly anticipated movies can turn out to be just down right awful. I just don’t want to be hurt again. DC has the real potential to hurt me again. While DC has not totally botched this year with the hit that was Wonder Woman, Justice League is still a wild card that could be really good or really bad.

And of course, a new trailer for Justice League just dropped yesterday.

I have a lot of thoughts on this trailer. In some areas it has a lot of potential and signs of being a good movie. But if you look at it another way, it has the potential to be another Batman v Superman. And since past trailers, while pretty epic, have not calmed my nerves about this film I thought this one might have a chance of doing that. And again, in some ways it did, and in other ways it made them worse.

Let’s talk about the good things first.

We get to see Superman and he looks good.

So there’s a dream sequence at the beginning that shows Henry Cavill as Superman in the first 15 seconds of the trailer. At first I was nervous about this because it wasn’t a subtle introduction of Superman at all. In my opinion, if Superman was going to show up in these trailers (which I hoped he wouldn’t but knew he would have to), it had to be in a super epic way. And while this isn’t the super epic way I thought it was going to be, I really liked this approach.

This allowed for people to know that Superman is in the film without totally giving away to the casual viewer that he’s coming back from the dead. I’m almost certain he is, but the truth is, we still don’t know in what capacity Superman is coming back. Maybe he just comes back in dreams, maybe he comes back as a villain, we still don’t know and I love that.

Here’s the reality, Batman v Superman botched Superman and Justice League needs to pull something brilliant out of their ass to redeem themselves and they’re not going to do that in the trailer. So this was a good choice by DC.

The other part that I really liked about this is that it kind of points towards an attempt to rebrand Superman in this movie. In this dream, he looks happy, he looks hopeful. The music harkens back to Man of Steel and we get that feeling of hope with Superman. The past trailers have been pointing towards the fact that everyone saw Superman as a symbol of hope. While that may not have been as evident in Batman v Superman as I think people hoped, Justice League can be used to rebrand Superman as that symbol of hope so when he obviously eventually comes back, he can be that symbol moving forward and we can have the hopeful, not murderous Superman we’ve had in the past.  

And that transitions well into the other parts of this trailer I liked and that was that everyone had a hopeful and triumphant look and feel about them. While it did feel an odd change of pace to have the David Bowie Heroes song playing when the other trailers have really been banking on that Come Together Remix, the new song did give a sense of epicness to these individuals coming together. This is the team up people have been waiting years for, it’s about time we call it what it is, epic.

And that’s the other thing I liked about the trailer I liked. It’s one thing to show these characters standing next to one another and looking cool, it’s another thing to see them working together and I think I saw a lot of that in this trailer. We get a slight taste of how awesome it is going to be to see these guys fighting parademons together and the chemistry between them.

The big moment of course is Cyborg grabbing Aquaman out of the air and throwing him back into the fight. Other moments like Wonder Woman tackling parademons off the Batmobile and giving that amazing Gal Gadot smile while the Flash zooms by. There’s was just something epic and celebratory of the formation of this league and I really enjoyed that about this trailer.

Now… all that said, there are a couple things about this trailer that worry me.

The big story surrounding Justice League this year was the fact that Zac Snyder stepped down due to tragic circumstances and Joss Whedon picked up the reigns to finish it up. Whedon is expected to get a writing credit not a full director credit. But regardless of whether or not it’s Whedon’s influence or just not so great feedback from criticism about the tone, this trailer is quite a departure from the first trailer. This worries me because the same thing happened with Suicide Squad. I just hope that this movie didn’t start as one thing and then sloppily evolve to a point where it is obvious in the final product.

Now I have faith in Joss Whedon, and even Zach Snyder and DC that they learned their lesson from 2016, but we won’t know until the movie actually comes out.

The reality is, this movie is going to decide the future of the DC cinematic universe. There’s a lot of talk about DC abandoning the whole shared universe concept and even creating standalone films that don’t connect at all to the DC cinematic universe like the Joker standalone film and maybe even a new Batman film.

The critical and commercial success of Justice League will send a clear message to DC whether or not audiences are interested and care about this universe that is still very young.

The other aspect that is important about this film is that it can’t be The Avengers.

I might get some flak for saying this but the truth is, the first Avengers movie, as an individual movie is not structured very well and in reality probably  technically isn’t that great of a film. But I like most of you loved The Avengers so how can it not be a good film? Well it’s all about context. The Avengers came after 5 generally well received Marvel films. While I wouldn’t say they’re particularly great films, they were all generally well received by audiences. People enjoyed going to those films and they enjoyed the characters. So when those beloved characters came together in a team up (for the first time in comic book history mind you), it didn’t matter what they were doing, that movie had a very low chance of not being well received.

So besides DC wanting their team up movie to feel different than Marvel’s, we are entering a team up movie under totally different circumstances. Instead of a 5 movie introduction, we have 4. One of the central characters of one of those movie is starting off this film dead, the other is Wonder Woman. The other two films centered on a group that won’t even appear in the film, and the other was a bad film. We are honestly learning more about Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg from these trailers than we did from Batman v Superman. More is at stake in this film than just an opportunity to see these individuals come together.  We’re creating iconic characters. We’re creating an iconic team. All of this ontop of an iconic villain like Steppenwolf and what seems like a high stakes invasion.

So yeah, while there is a lot to love about this trailer and what I’ve seen so far of the film, I am still super anxious about Justice League and so should you. Yeah this trailer looks great but I have to keep my skepticism high and my expectations low. There’s nothing to disprove the statement that Wonder Woman was a fluke. I hope it’s not true but a lot is riding on this movie and the David Bowie cover is not strong enough to subdue my fear.

But those are my thoughts on the new Justice League trailer. This movie is coming up quick. Before we know it, it’s going to be November and this movie is going to be upon us. Who’s excited? What are your thoughts? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films you’d like to see me review on the blog. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out soon.

I'll leave you with this. With this new trailer I really want to get Wonder Woman on Digital. I'm a little surprised I haven't done it already. Enjoy!