Justice League

Ultimately, Justice League was a movie that needed to happen. We can get single movies for better or worse like Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. We can go as low as Suicide Squad, trying something new but also something that could fail and have no bearing on the overarching storyline. We can go as high as we can with Wonder Woman, making really great characters and storylines separate from the DCEU chronology and franchise timeline. But ultimately, there needed to be a movie to follow up the mess that was Batman v Superman, and Justice League was that movie...

Just a disclaimer, I enjoyed this movie. I enjoyed all of 70% of the movie. Instead of just having potential like Batman v Superman did and failing to realize that potential, Justice League really did encapsulate what I wanted out of a Justice League film. I went in with low expectations and had a lot of fun with it. It was that last 30% and mainly the last act I had the biggest issue with. And I will probably go straight into the spoilers review after writing this non-spoilers review because that is where I can talk specifics and exactly what bothered me about this film. But I will say, overall, I chalk this up as a win for DC. Not a Home Run, but at least a base hit to keep the game going, and let's be fair, that's really what they needed right now.

Justice League takes place not long after Batman v Superman and Bruce Wayne (played by Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince (played by Gal Gadot) are trying to gather warriors or meta-humans to form a team to fight back the dangerous world conquering force of Steppenwolf (played by Ciaran Hinds).

Right off the bat, Steppenwolf is not that great of a villain. Like a lot of things in this film, he felt very much like a Marvel-style villain where he was just the strong dangerous villain but didn't have much explanation of who he is or what his deal is. He just wants to conquer Earth.

Oh and he looks ridiculously cartoonish the entire movie. I think the crowning jewel of things that sucked in this movie was the CGI. Not just for Steppenwolf but a lot of things. The way the characters move, the scenery, it looked really fake. I'm usually not too bothered by CGI. I know that a being from space isn't actually there. But a lot of the film felt like I was watching a cutscene from Injustice. Granted that did give it a little bit more of a comic book feel which I will talk about more later, but it looked really fake.

The way he tries to conquer the world is by attempting to collect 3 mother boxes on Earth that give him incredible power. The entire movie is based around Steppenwolf trying to retrieve those boxes and the fledgling Justice League trying their damnedest to assure the safety of the human race and keep that unlimited power out of the hands of this alien from outer space.

Like the team making superhero films like the Avengers before it, the first act of this film is mainly meant to establish the team and who is being brought in to defeat Steppenwolf. Something that I did like about the set up of the Justice League was how they managed to establish each member's world in a way that didn't take too much time, but also didn't feel horrible rushed.

We see Batman and Wonder Woman taking down bad guys in their respective cities, but we also see them planning to get the team together.

We're introduced to Barry Allen (played by Ezra Miller) and we see his relationship with his father Henry (played by Billy Crudup) who is in prison for a crime Barry believes he didn't commit.

We're introduced to Aquaman/Arthur Curry (played by Jason Momoa). We see him saving people out in the Ocean and we eventually see Atlantis and Mera (played by Amber Heard) his eventual wife? Maybe? We can see there is a tense relationship between him and the Atlantians so I don't think that they're married yet.

Then we're introduced to Victor Stone/Cyborg (played by Ray Fisher) who was brought back to life by Star Labs and their use of a mother box. We meet his father (played by Joe Morton) and we get the understanding that Victor is still figuring out his abilities as a Cyborg and it's bound to create some drama in his future standalone films.

I have to give Zach Synder and Joss Whedon credit. They touch on every character's backstory, place of crime saving, and future conflicts very briefly in order to introduce them effectively and seemlessly get us excited for future films with them.

Overall, the team aspect of this film is the best part. I like all of these characters and I want to see them again. I really hope that's the aspect of the film that saves it because there are a lot of missteps with this film.

I thought the casting for this film was really well done. For the most part everyone had something to do in this film and even if characters were only there for a quick cameo, because of the calamity of the threat of Steppenwolf, those cameos didn't feel too forced or like they were promoting future films.

The one character I think they could have done without was Lois Lane.

I hate saying that because I love Amy Adams and I think she's a great Lois Lane but for some reason I don't think Zach Snyder or anybody at DC really knows what to do with her. This happened in Batman v Superman where she was ultimately kind of pointless in the film and unfortunately it kind of happens again.

If there is going to be another Justice League film, maybe just say Lois Lane went on a trip out of town or something.

I will talk about this more in my spoilers review but I did want to address it very briefly here because it is actually something that brought the film down for me quite a bit. Due to the trailers we know that Superman is in the film. Henry Cavill is in the opening credits. It is not a spoiler to say Superman is in this film in one capacity or another. The only thing I will say right here is, they did it wrong. That's all I'll say. They did it wrong. I will talking about that a lot in my spoilers review.

The other big issue I had with this film was the tone.

Now tone has always been an issue with DC films. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were said to be too dark and dower. Suicide Squad was said to have a mixed bag of dark and goofy, something that didn't work. I think the only DC movie that the tone right was Wonder Woman and they got it right on the money. Now Wonder Woman came out while Justice League was in the middle of production so I imagine they were too far gone to really make it like that, but there is definitely a tone change in this film and I think they went too far to light and goofy.

This is most apparent in Wonder Woman, but every DC film, whether they've been good or not has felt different than Marvel films. Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman had jokes, but not too many and definitely not at the moments we were supposed to feel other emotions like sadness, tension, etc. They never resorted to Marvel bathos where a serious or sad moment is happening and it's undercut by a joke.

That happened multiple times and it pissed me off so much. Not only do I hate that ploy so much. But I never thought of that as DC's style. I don't know how much of it was Joss Whedon's doing, but it felt like halfway through the production of the film Marvel took over and had their take on the Justice League.

I like Joss Whedon, I'm sure he did a lot of good things for this film after the tragedy that befell Zach Snyder's family forcing him to leave the project, but a part of me wants to blame him for the campiness and jokes that were funny, but at the wrong moments. I'm probably giving him too much credit but there just seemed to be Whedon fingerprints all over some of the moments and it made me angry.

This movie felt like a comic book. And while you'd think that would be a good thing I don't think it worked in the world that Zach Snyder and DC set up with the previous 4 movies. The DC movies always had a cool blend of comic book movie and Christopher Nolan Batman movies that I actually really enjoyed. They were wild enough to feel like superheroes were on screen, but still a little bit grounded to feel like something important was happening.

Justice League feels like a lot of fluff.

It felt like it was trying to hit all the familiar notes a successful comic book movie should hit  but not really digging in too much.

And to be fair, it's a team up movie. It's getting the band together so they can play awesome music later down the road. There's a lot to be entertained by in this movie. It's a fun movie. I don't think anybody would say this movie is boring.

But it's all pretty surface level and it's trying to hit a reset button from the mess left by Batman v Superman. Overall, the film is a very serviceable superhero film. I think we give too much credit to 2012's The Avengers because it blew everyones socks off to see our favorite heroes gather to fight evil all together on the big screen for the first time. Because The Avengers had such a great set up, it's seen as a great film when in reality the story is kind of weak and the individual character development isn't really there. The same goes for Justice League. In fact I give them a lot of credit for what little crappy set up they had going for them.

I do recommend going out and seeing this film. I mentioned that it was a base hit for DC and it might just be enough to keep the franchise going. I hope that's true. The box office for this film has been pretty weak especially considering how expensive this movie was but I really hope we see these characters more. If you take anything from this movie, it will be that these are well made characters and we could see greatness come from them, we just need to do it right.

But those are my thoughts on Justice League. Like I said, I'm jumping straight into my spoilers review because that is where I will talk more specifics. But what did you think? Do you think the DC cinematic universe is in trouble? Did Justice League give us a base hit or did it strike out DC? I have used a lot of baseball metaphors in this review. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. I of course am probably going to be in the DC mood after watching this movie so I'll probably end up playing more Injustice. In case you haven't watched the Injustice cutscenes movie, here it is. Enjoy!