Justice League - My Least Favorite Superhero Movie?

Justice League

By: Noah Newcomb

        Earlier I was creating a list on Letterboxd, Ranking Every Theatrically Released Superhero Film (that I’ve Seen) From Best to Worst. I was shocked when this was at the bottom of the list. Out of sixty! I had to look back over my list just to be sure and it was! Now I am going to have to cut some slack to this film. There are really two directors of this film. There's Zack Snyder who has been overseeing the DCEU and Joss Whedon who made the first two Avenger films. You can feel the tonal shifts between the two directors. Joss Whedon usually does more upbeat films, just look at Avengers for an example. Then there's Zack Snyder who's, well, Zack Snyder. Now I need to express my condolences to Snyder. It truly is sad, what happened to his daughter. My feelings on him as a director aside, I feel truly sorry for him. Now, this is the first film from the DCEU I have reviewed so I should probably state my feelings on DC's cinematic universe. With the massive success of the MCU, Warner Bros. wanted in. The biggest problem I think with this universe Warner Bros. have created is that they aren't patient. Four movies in, and they're already making the big team movie. Wonder Woman and maybe Man of Steel were the only movies that the majority of people liked. No one really wanted this. Only two of the characters had gotten their own stand-alone film also. There were many problems in the build-up to this film. In the end, this was a flop and even Warner Bros. said this was a failure. This wasn't the success they were hoping for. It only grossed two times what it cost to make which isn't a success for WB, but let's look at the many problems of the Justice League. Now you can go to Letterboxd and see my rating of this film which is two stars. Looking through this film I tried to find something I strongly liked about it and I can't really find something. There are things that I think are ok, but not things I really liked. I thought about Wonder Woman, and while she gets a cool opening action scene, I can't say I really like her in this film. I mainly like her because of how much I like Wonder Woman. You can feel how her character changes with the change of directors. The character is far more sexualized in this movie than she was in her solo film. Flash falls on top of her, his face in her breasts, her butt is more focused on, and to be honest, she comes off less tough. It really is disappointing. I really liked Wonder Woman last time, it's a bummer I don't her as much in Justice League. I don't like Batfleck as much who I like a lot in BvS, but I'll get to him later. I don't have anything I strongly like in this film so I should be giving it a half-star right? I think the reason I'm not is being this movie doesn't just universally suck. It's just really bland, with some bad stuff throughout, but let's get to the characters. I already talked about Wonder Woman so I'll skip over her. I also brought up Batman, so let's talk about him. I thought Ben Affleck was the best part about Batman vs. Superman he had some of the best action out of any Batman, he was the most muscular Batman, and he gave a really good performance also. I enjoyed the darker, and brutal Batman that reminded me of the Frank Miller Batman Returns comic, which is one of my favorite comics of all time. Here, however, I don't like Affleck as much. He's given bad jokes (though I did like how he said his superpower was being rich) and I don't think Affleck is giving as strong of a performance. Once again, I don't dislike Batfleck in this film, but I don't like him either. Then we have Henry Cavill's Superman. I thought Cavill gave an excellent performance as Superman in Man of Steel, but kind of went through the motions in BvS. I did not like Superman in Batman vs. Superman at all. Part of it was because of the script and a bit to Cavill himself, who feels stone-cold in that film. I can't talk about this film without bringing up Cavill's CGI-covered mustache that he didn't shave due to his part in Mission Impossible: Fallout. I think Cavill made the right decision, Mission Impossible Fallout is the better film. The CGI in this film is overall terrible including the CGI-covered mustache. Everything was overly glossy and nothing looked overly finished. Cavill does a better job as Superman in this film, but the script gets even worse making him more dislikeable and come off as cocky. We also have three brand new characters introduced in this movie and I'll start off with Flash. I think Ezra Miller gives a fairly solid performance as the Flash but isn't really aided by the script. He can come off annoying at times and a little too quirky. Then there's Aquaman. I think Jason Momoa does an excellent job of playing this character who was really, a joke at the time. I think we owe it to Momoa for rescuing this character form being a gag. Aquaman doesn't really do anything in this movie to make us like him that much. It's up to Momoa for you to like him. Then there's Cyborg who's really just there. Cyborg is a non-entity in this film. The actor, Ray Fisher, comes off wooden. The CGI is on him is unfinished. I do see potential in this character, but this movie doesn't access it very well. I've mentioned that the CGI isn't very good and it's not. I think the main problem with it is that it doesn't look finished. The CGI has the potential to be good but it just doesn't look good in this movie and that is one of the many problems. Then there's the villain who is probably one of the worst superhero villains since the elves who wanted to turn off the lights in Thor The Dark World. Steppenwolf has no good motivation, he's undefined, and his abilities aren't anything special. The CGI doesn't do him any favors either. Another problem is how lame this movie is. Now let me expand on that. It does nothing to subvert expectations or make stand out from all the other superhero films. You can see where it is going to go, five steps before it actually gets there. People are always talking about superhero fatigue, and I think that has to do with superhero movies feeling all the same. This is a movie that would give someone superhero fatigue. I'm not going to go into spoiler territory because everyone will see where this film is going before it gets there like I mentioned earlier, but before I go into my Final Thoughts I need to give some advice to the people who are thinking about watching Justice League. This isn't the Avengers, it just doesn't hold a candle to it. When Avengers came out Joss Wheddon seemed to make that film effortlessly. In Avengers: Age of Ultron we saw Wheddon sweat quite a bit when making that film, but he had a lot more to handle. In Justice League, it's fully realized how hard it is to make the perfect team movie like Avengers. To even get close to enjoying this film, you can't compare it to Avengers, Justice League isn't nearly as good as that movie.

Final Thoughts

        Since this movie, Warner Bros seems to be doing more successfully with the DC properties with Aquaman, Shazam, and Joker. I'm not going to include the Harley Quinn movie because that movie seems to be a much more mixed film. Maybe this was the movie that finally set WB straight. I think we owe this film that much. This movie is trash, however. There isn't any reason for me to recommend Justice League to you. This is a strong, strong not recommend. 

Justice League Official Trailer