Review of Justice League (2017) by Isaiah C — 14 Mar 2018

Justice League or part 3 of the new Superman movies wasn't bad. Critics gave it 40% which is just wrong. Granted, all these superhero movies and television shows are getting a little long in the tooth even for me a longtime fan of the genre. Thanks to George Lucas and the advances at ILM with CGI we can finally recreate all the comic books of our youth in stunning visuals. However we must remember what George warned us about, "CGI is great but you can't forget the story." Paraphrasing there.

Back to the numbers, how is it that Wonder Woman got a 92% while Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice only got a 27%? Ok BVS wasn't a great story and it had many flaws in the telling. I would even go so far as to say that only by watching the director's cut can you even follow the story at all. Justice League has a very simple story line not unlike all the latest Marvel movies that critics keep fawning over. 75% for Avengers Age of Ultron? It's the same story!! Something is wrong here. Critics these days are far too politically correct. Wonder Woman was good but it wasn't so much better than Justice League and again a 92%. Why? Because it's a woman superhero? I have been a fan of Wonder Woman since the old TV show with Linda Carter but I can still look at it objectively. Yes it was a good movie but it had its flaws and the story was not great. It makes me wonder if Disney is paying critics under the table and because Warner Brothers can't afford the extortion payments they get dinged for their movies.

So let me discuss the overall story line here as one movie leads to the next.

Man of Steel:

First movie in the series where we get a fresh take on the superman back story. The back story where they were still on Krypton was the best part of the movie and added something fresh. Ultimately Superman grows up and then helps destroy the city where Batman lives in an attempt to rid the world of his fellow Kryptonions who have come to earth to take him away so they can use his DNA to rebuild their race. Not sure why they didn't just go off and start a new family with the people on their ship and save themselves the trouble. Superman kills!!!!! Oh well.

Batman Vs Superman:

Is the continuation and shows how Bruce Wane is going to kill Superman for destroying the city but before he can do that the evil and crazy Lex Luther decides that he is going to create a monster to destroy everybody. Batman and Superman, (Now friends because they both have a mother named Martha) team up to kill the monster. Wonder Woman also arrives out of nowhere to help fight. Sadly Superman dies in the last moments of the battle and the movie ends with dirt vibrating on the coffin.

Justice League:

I really liked the intro of this Movie where Batman is on the roof defending his beloved Gotham. Batman is by far my favorite DC hero. He is human with lots of money and some detective skills who dresses like a bat and beats up the bad guys. What's not to like for an 8 year old kid? For this rendition, Ben Affleck dons the cowl and in my opinion is one of the better Batmans of my lifetime. He does a good job of playing the older worn out man who is still trying to save his city, one bad guy at a time. One critic mentioned that he looked as if he didn't care or didn't want to be there but I didn't see that at all. There was just enough humor and action to make me believe. The batman story was far better in Justice League than it was in Batman Vs superman.

Overall the story goes like this. 3 large square boxes that hold great power. (Anybody else thinking Tesseract here?) are hidden throughout the world. The moment Superman dies the mother stones begin to call out to the evil Stephen Wolf who has been away from earth for thousands of years. He is the apocalyptic destroyer of worlds whose last attempt to destroy earth failed. However now that Superman is dead he will easily get his revenge. He has come to reunite the three boxes giving him the power he needs to send out huge purple worms to destroy the earth. (Anybody thinking Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy2?).

With the world at risk it's time to gather the team. Bruce Wayne begins by running off to the frozen north to find Aquaman. Best version of Aqaman I have ever seen by the way. Not sure I understand his out of the water abilities and he can't talk to fish but good to know we have another strong arm on the team with a trident of power in his hands.

Flash is next with a quick back story thrown in to tell you that his dad is in prison for killing his mother and he is trying to prove his father's innocence? I think I would have rather had this all be a mystery and had the flash be a little less nerdy. The Flash in the cartoon version of the Justice League is a much cooler version than this one and if you can't do the back story justice why try?

Wonder Woman. Ok she is the best part of the movie. Still hot and powerful and because we had the Wonder Woman story we have some good background about what she can do.

Cyborg: The back Story on Cyborg was the weakest part of the movie. We got a glimpse of him in the Batman vs Superman movie but other than that they do a very poor job of explaining how one of the boxes gave him his abilities and what those abilities are. Does he have limits? He is a lot like the Iron Man of the group.

Not having enough power yet to take on Stephen Wolf, Batman comes up with a plan to bring Superman back to life by using one of the boxes of power. It's a good thing that the Flash can control lightning to charge the box enough to open it so that some can come out and fall into the water of( ok I got confused here.) Anyway Superman is blow back to life and is a zombie and after SuperZombie almost kills Batman Alfred rides in with Lois Lane to save the day. SuperZombie will be ok now that Lois is here. But Superman flys away with her and we aren't sure if he is ever coming back. As if.

Well we can't wait for Superman because Stephen Wolf just stole the last box and he is flying away to Russia to end the world.

Ok so the movie is over at this point. Without proper build up which we never got, we never believe that Stephen Wolf even has a chance. We are just waiting for Superman to wake up and join the fight.

Oh and it turns out that Cyborg has so many abilities that just keep changing he will be able to save the day by plugging into the Mother stones, talk to them and somehow break them apart. Nope he needs the help of Superman to do it.

Overall the movie was entertaining. I was able to stay awake which is saying something these days.

My previous points about back story is one of the biggest problems with Justice League and many stories these days. The only real back stories we have for these versions of these heroes are Wonder Woman and Superman. We have nothing for Aqaman, Flash or Cyborg and very little for this Batman so it doesn't matter how cool they are we don't know them and ultimately don't care about them. They could have pulled a giant magic rabbit out of their costumes and destroyed Stephen Wolf with it and we would have had the same reaction to the ending of this movie that we did but it may have been funnier. If you haven't been following the comics sadly you have no idea what these heroes are capable of. Can they even be hurt when flash falls down does he bleed?

We knew from the start of the movie that there was no way that Stephen Wolf was going to destroy the world so you have to make the story good enough that you wonder if he might.

In this case the final battle was just the end of the movie rather than a big build up. We are glad to say that the purple worm only got a few miles away from home base before it turned into pretty flowers.

I waited for this movie to come out on Blue Ray because the reviews were so bad. Sad that I let the critics influence me so much but these days it's hard to guess. Perhaps the movie was better at home because I didn't have to listen to the crowd laughing at the sometimes stupid humor and that added some needed seriousness to it but overall the story wasn't any worse than so many other hero movies but the timing was wrong. They should have done a flash movie a batman movie a cyborg movie and an Aquaman movie before bringing them together. Then we would have had a great back story for everybody and this story would have had a lot more to it.

Good overall acting except for Superman's CGI lips that needed to go back in for some more acting lessons.

Honestly I think we are just starting to grow tired of all these super hero movies with the same story being told over and over again. Where is the real conflict that perhaps doesn't get resolved in 2 hours? How many times can we watch one guy or Woman, pounding on another guy and not get tired of it?

When I was 8 It could have gone on for a long time but I am not 8 and I need better.