Review of Justice League (2017) by Mikhail O — 17 Nov 2017

As Justice League premieres in theater, both comic books fans and regular audiences are expecting something in the movie knowing that after the success of the Wonder Woman movie, DC may have learned its lesson on how to make a good superhero movie.

But the results were the opposite. The plot was thin, cliché, and mediocre. After the event of Superman's death and leaving the Earth vulnerable to stronger forces who tries to conquer it, the flow of the story follows a typical superhero movie formula. The insertion of a villain that suddenly appeared because of a shallow motivation of gathering Motherboxes and combine them and cause annihilation to Earth seems very a bad timing for Steppenwolf to show up as the villain of Justice League. There was even no point where his cause in doing such things makes sense to call him an intimidating foe. He was just a regular villain thrown up just to make the story run.

There's been some inconsistencies to the character developments. Such as Batman's willpower to assemble special-powered people to go against a stronger force. He seemed like the Nick Fury in this movie and his abilities are a little turned down to make him equal among other heroes. Basing his skillsets and wits in Batman v. Superman movie and we saw him weaken Superman (which in fact is stronger than Steppenwolf) by using his intellect and strategies, in the Justice League movie, he became a primary sponsor for the resources of the team and motivation but couldn't use his full capabilities to turn down Steppenwolf at his best. The other is Wonder Woman which is a Godkiller in her own solo movie. In the movie, although her action scenes in the introduction were good, but she had the hard time to defeat a brute who only carries a single weapon and possess a strength that is less compared to her past enemies like Ares and Doomsday. The cause of making the team members equal with each other so that there would be no bias between powers may have been the reason for this mistake. But knowing what they can do in their debut in the previous DCEU movies, this was a wrong move.

The thorough introduction of Victor Stone (Cyborg), Barry Allen (The Flash), and Arthur Curry (Aquaman) gave a certain interest to the movie. Their inducement made a significant impact to their individual character arc. Which I consider that they played the most part in saving the mediocrity of the movie.

There may have been a few changes as to how the film was directed especially when Joss Whedon stepped in the line to finish what Zack Snyder has started in which there were scenes that were obvious whether it was the reshoot scenes of Whedon's or Snyder's. The tone got brighter and several comic relief was added to add certain color to the grittiness, serious, and comic book-ish side of Snyder's vision of a superhero movie. One of the main problem with the movie cinematography is the cheap CGI backgrounds and it depended on much computer-generated visual effects that there's no feel of reality in most scenes.

The Justice League movie didn't live up to it's title at all. The word "justice" doesn't seem significant to what they are doing and what they're trying to achieve in this film. Even the cool slow motion and comic book panel-adapted scenes, and the return of Superman being an out of place member of the entire team can't save the hope that the fans expect on how the story will be delivered. And instead, the movie settled for an action-driven, too much artificial settings, and flat storyline. If you're a solid comic book fan and you can get most of the fan service and references illustrated and mentioned in the movie, then this film is right for you. But being a regular audience isn't enough to appreciate such bland plot to satisfy the expectations of a "should've been-engaging" superhero team movie.