Justice League - Review
This post contains minimum spoilers for Justice League.
We all know the DCEU, a series of projects with acclaim from many fans but bashed by critics and many others. Justice League looks to continue moving this franchise in the right direction after a master step in Wonder Woman, but there is a lot of weight on it’s shoulders.
Justice League moves extremely quickly, going from exposition to rising arc in what feels like minutes but really isn’t, the story just requires that pacing and doesn't necessarily affect the film. For me, one telling point of an enjoyable movie is how a movie feels long or short in your head when you’re in the theater and with the story moving briskly I can say that is a positive for me as the time flew by in the theater.
Secondly, characters: the Justice League is fantastic, every single one of the members of the league that is advertised is fantastic. Every portrayal is nailed with specific pointers towards Victor Stone (even though the CGI still was a bit rough), and Barry Allen. The one character that did fall flat for me is the villain, I really believe he needed more exposition. They tried to give him a backstory but it really was just a "destroy the world" concept that we’ve seen so often.
Visually, the film looks great, it has a bit more of the brighter tones from Wonder Woman, but still has the BvS darker influence. This is something I'm sure Warner Bros went back and forth on so many times, deciding how they wanted to make this movie. Do you take the idea of Snyder who wanted to continue the darker tone, or do you go for what was positive and gave good results in Wonder Woman (is it even a question?). The fight scenes in particular look extremely well done as to be expected and as has been shown in these films. The largest negative is something shown right away: Henry Cavill's mustache CGI. The beginning of the movie cuts to an "unseen" video from a child speaking to him, and it's just awful.
When looking at the story of Justice League the real story was about the unifying of the league itself, not the villain Steppenwolf. He doesn't really have an arc as stated above, and seems to just be a means to bring the league together. The unification of the league is great, they don't lean into the tropes of not trusting each other for long, and the majority of the film deals with them learning to work together against their larger than life foe.
With questions moving forward about where the DCEU goes from here, I believe Warner Brothers put forth a great first step into a brighter future for their franchise. With movies like Aquaman on the horizon I can only hope they continue to move in the right direction and recognize what was good in Justice League, the league itself. I believe this movie is worth seeing for any comic book fan, and go in without that same thought of DC sucks and their movies are terrible go see it for the league and have fun doing it because otherwise you’ll just be looking for the flaws which simply isn’t fun. I enjoyed it a lot and while it wasn’t my favorite movie in this genre ever, it definitely is one to check it.
