Matt Reviews: Justice League

WARNING: SPOILERS

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Joss Whedon works on a movie where a group of heroes come together to stop a horned alien from obtaining a cube to invade Earth…

Following the death of Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) put together a team of metahumans to take his place. They recruit Aquaman (Jason Mamoa), the Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) into their group as the alien general Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) sets out to find the three Mother Boxes that will help him conquer the Earth.

There is a lot of stuff in here that is better than previous entries in the DC Extended Universe (excluding Wonder Woman). The characters are, for the most part, better. Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot both still put in good performances as Batman and Wonder Woman, though this movie still continues to make Batman an occasional dick for no good reason. The Flash is a lot of fun, and provides most of the comic relief of the movie. Sometimes they try to hard with his bits, but overall, I found him to be the most likeable out of the bunch.  Aquaman gets a lot of good comedic moments in the film, and I enjoyed the bombastic “frat bro” personality they gave him that evoked his portrayal in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. With Wonder Woman basically being the stand-in for Thor, it was a relief that they didn’t also make Aquaman the (no pun intended) fish-out-of-water royalty from a different world.

Cyborg was a concern going into this movie, since the trailers didn’t show off his personality like with the Flash and Aquaman. But in the movie, he’s fine for the most part. He’s got some interesting drama going for him, though they do lay on the angst a little too hard in some places. He also gets some good scenes of team chemistry with the Flash and Superman, so there’s reason for me to want to see more of him. Though I kind of feel like the frat bro personality may have fit better with Cyborg than Aquaman, but that’s a nitpick.

Also, in his brief role, J.K. Simmons looks like he's gonna be a good Commissioner Gordon. 

Superman returns in this movie and, unfortunately, he’s still pretty dull. Most of his early scenes involve him and Lois, so we have to slog through that same boring, chemistry-devoid romance they’ve been trying to force-feed us since Man of Steel. But to this film’s credit, they are trying to create a different Superman here, and it’s to their benefit. Superman in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman was mopey and depressing, clashing with his stance of being a beacon of hope. Here, they make him more of the boy scout we’re used to, with him cracking jokes, smiling more, and even challenging the Flash to a friendly race in a post-credit scene. He’s still not a well-written or interesting character, but this is definitely an improvement and a stepping-stone to hopefully better things.

Ares called. He wants his helmet back.

Speaking of boring characters, Steppenwolf is one of the blandest, most forgettable villains I’ve seen in a superhero movie. He’s got a boring, uninspired design with that same Zack Snyder grey-on-grey color scheme, and his performance is so generic that he could have been played by any deep-voiced British actor. His plan is the boring, generic “I need to build this thing so that I can take over/destroy the world”, which results in yet another climax filled with confusing and boring CGI effects. He has no personality except for “occasionally talks to the Mother Boxes like they’re his mother", which is never explained and is just weird rather than interesting. As much as I detested Batman V Superman’s version of Lex Luthor (and he’s still pretty annoying in the brief time we see him in a post-credit scene), at least he was memorable and had some sort of personality. It was an annoying personality that betrayed the character he was supposed to play, but at least he didn’t feel like a hand-me-down from Thor: The Dark World.

The plot isn’t great either. The pacing is weird, and it doesn’t really explain a whole lot in places. It touches on bits of the new heroes’ backstories, but they all feel like there was supposed to be a solo movie for each hero before this to set everything up. But the only things that were set up previously are the stuff with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, so everything else just feels rushed and confusing, even to be people who have seen the other movies. Unlike The Avengers, it doesn’t feel as satisfying when the heroes come together since we barely know most of them. 

There are a lot of moments where the heroes aren’t sure something will work, they don’t have a lot of evidence that it will work, and then it works anyway without a hitch. A prime example is when the heroes plan to resurrect Superman. Batman wants to use the spaceship goop that created Doomsday combined with a Mother Box, he has no evidence that it will work except for some vaguely defined science fiction BS, and then miraculously, Superman is resurrected. The heroes don’t face any real challenges getting there (except for Superman going crazy, which comes after the resurrection), so it all feels too easy, like the film just handed them the solution to move things along. I feel like it would have been better for the story if the resurrection failed at first, making the Justice League realize they can't rely on Superman to fix their problems and have to come together despite that. Then, when Steppenwolf is kicking their asses, Superman shows up in their darkest hour, and the theater goes nuts. It would have been a much more impactful way to bring him back, and would have sidestepped the incredibly forced fight between the League and Supes.

Also, for the love of God, can these movies stop treating Superman like he’s Jesus? I feel like a third of the lines in this movie talk about how “great” Superman was and how his death made the entire world a worse place somehow. It’s even a plot point that Superman’s death somehow allowed Steppenwolf to invade Earth, since the fear caused by the Man of Steel’s death fueled his Parademons (because they apparently feed on fear, which is never really explained or elaborated upon). Also, didn’t half the world hate him in the previous movie? He couldn’t have been that much of a beacon of hope if Batman was willing to kill him until he said his mother’s name.

OH GOD THEY RESURRECTED HIM WRONG! PUT HIM BACK IN THE GROUND!

The effects are pretty bad. Steppenwolf is entirely CGI, and he looks like he stepped out of a God of War cutscene. Cyborg’s robotic half is pretty unconvincing, and I’m just not a fan of his design overall. Due to commitments with filming Mission Impossible 6, Henry Cavill wasn’t allowed to shave his thick mustache when it came to the Justice League reshoots. They had to – no joke – edit out his mustache with CGI, and it’s painfully obvious which scenes with him are reshoots since the CGI warps his face into some weird mouth-thing (see above). The sets all look fake too, and I’ll bet that most of this movie was shot on a green screen. At least the Dark Knight movies and the MCU use real locations to ground their fantastic settings into some sort of reality. Here, nothing feels real. To this film’s credit, I do actually like the design of Gotham City, and how it looks reminisce of the Batman: Arkham games. It’s too bad that the CGI looks like it came from the Arkham games, too.

The film had two directors due to the tragic suicide of Zack Snyder’s daughter forcing him to step down from production, leaving Joss Whedon to take over during reshoots. As much as I love Whedon’s quippy writing style – which worked well in the Avengers movies – it doesn’t always mesh well here. It’s not as jarring as it should have been – what with the film mixing two near polar opposite directing styles – but a lot of the time, the humor in this movie isn’t really integrated naturally.

Justice League is not a great movie. However, it was not as bad as it could have been. I went into this movie with lowered expectations given what had come before, so naturally, I wasn’t as disappointed as I could have been. It’s definitely better than Man of Steel, Batman V Superman, and Suicide Squad, but no where as good as Wonder Woman. Then again, I’m convinced Wonder Woman was a weird fluke and today’s DC will never reach that high again.

Justice League is a lot brighter and more hopeful than previous DCEU entries, with more likable heroes and some neat action scenes. It’s not great. It’s not terrible. It’s just okay. But given how angry I got over Batman V Superman, “just okay” is a major improvement. I’ll take “just okay” over “Jesse Eisenluthor peeing in a mason jar” any day.

Remember when this franchise's tagline was "Unite the Seven"?

Final verdict: 5/10.

So can we all agree that Suicide Squad definitely feels like it belongs in a separate cinematic universe? Even with the gradual shift to a lighter tone in the universe, it still feels weirdly out of place.