Review of Justice League (2017) by Khyber Z — 10 Apr 2018

Justice League is a fun, non risky, movie with linear and easy to follow story.

The story goes as follows, an ancient alien conqueror called Steppenwolf visited earth a long long time ago to, well, conquer it with the help of his army of parademons and his three teraforming devices called motherboxes but was defeated by the alliance of men, atlantians and amazons. Each tribe took one of the boxes for safe guarding. Now after the death of Superman, Steppenwolf has returned to recover his boxes and finish the job.

First let's talk about the pros of the movie. Most of the cinematography is great to watch, especially when the awfully bad CGI reshoots are absent. The heroes have a fluent enough chemistry, for a first team up, and they were all portrayed adequately by their casting choices ( except for Batman and Superman, because sometimes they felt like completely different characters to BvS). The fights were very good with some good choreography when it came to wonder Woman. Flash's use of the speed force was top notch and gave his powers a certain feel we've long wanted for our scarlet speedster. Superman's resurrection was handled pretty well and his fights with and against the team were amazing. Cyborg acted both as a heroe and a plot device for the movie and his role I think was the most important next to the trinity. His CGI, contrary to common opinion, was fantastic as well as his weaponry. And finally the backstory of Steppenwolf was shown excellently and on point, considering it was his first appearance ever on screen, and covered everything a non fan needed to know to follow the movie. His strikes when he was fighting felt powerful and you could feel how threatening he was. Especially when he was threatening and killing civilians and Amazons.

Now about the cons. First of all, the reshoots and the CGI in them where horribly noticeable and drew you away from the consistency of the film. Speaking of consistency, the whole feel of the movie made like it wasn't a continuation of the previous instalments in the DCEU which ruined most of the backstory, in a way. Another problem of the movie was the overused humour. I know superhero movies are supposed to be fun but not necessarily funny, and certainly not when it comes to the end of the world and extinction of the human kind. Also, humour is not suitable for some characters like batman, who are sacrastic and cocky at best. Batman in BvS was an old, broken down Bruce Wayne, adrift from his moral code, all around a brutal murdering machine. But in this movie his throwing jokes, enjoys the return of superman like they were old pals and can't keep up in a fight with ONE parademon. It was disappointing at best. Aquaman on the other hand, while he was badass, he felt a bit underused. With his powers being limited only to super strength in action. His trident was used only once and in order to stop a flood( pretty basic if you ask me). The Flash was a bit irritating at times but I could get by that considering he is just a kid figuring out his powers. Steppenwolf, when his design is taken into account, I think was pretty lame. Wearing some kind of medieval armour, yeeeah what an alien look(Sarcasm).

Overall, Justice League was a mediocre super hero movie and not as terrible as some will tell you it was. It's definitely worth watching as it is fun and fast paced in its combat sequences. What makes it feel bad for some people is the constant comparison with its elseworld counterpart, The Avengers, which was set up in a lot of previous films, so we were familiar with the characters and the villain's full backstory. Try viewing Justice League with an open mind and you'll have a fun time for sure.