Justice League
Dir: Zack Snyder
2017
**
I didn't like it. I really wanted to, but I just didn't like it. Man of Steel was mediocre, Batman vs Superman was underdeveloped and Wonder Woman, while being the best from DC so far, was overrated. I had no expectations from Justice League, however, as ever, I went into it with an open mind. The big problem I've had throughout the DC movies so far has been the casting. Apart from Gal Gadot, who is brilliant as Wonder Women, and Ben Affleck in Batman vs Superman, I haven't agreed with any of the casting decisions, and I still stand by that. Unfortunately, in Justice League Gal Gadot isn't given as much to work with and Ben Affleck already looks as if he has tired of the role. I have no emotional investment in any of these characters, and when you don't care, you don't enjoy. The action scenes were samey and uninventive, the interaction between each character was lazy and non-eventful and the story was lame. I really don't want to compare any of the DC films to the Marvel ones, but Justice League really does feel like a cheap copy. The infinity stones seems to have been replaced by three boxes, Thanos is replaced by Steppenwolf - who looks like a poor mans version of Skeletor and the whole thing just seemed like a hurried Avengers Assemble. Anyone who has even the most vague knowledge of comics will know that Marvel and DC have been in competition with each other for many decades and would often compete with different versions of what were essentially the same characters and situations. I wouldn't have cared in the slightest if DC had gone for a total carbon copy of what Marvel had done, I don't think anyone would, but instead they've tried to compete, copy and rush things, and it really has been detrimental to the characters and the story. Watching Justice League is like watching a story with no ending, a film with so many rewrites that it doesn't know what it is, only that it had to be released on a certain day. There is no character development whatsoever. Wonder Woman has had her own film but Batman, Aquaman, The Flash and Cyborg haven't. I can't say I have any interest in an Aquaman, Cyborg or a Flash film either after their inclusion in Justice League. This is a colour-by-numbers superhero film, with nothing of interest or originality. Steppenwolf is possibly the least scary/impressive bad guy DC have ever produced and he could have wiped the floor with the Justice League and I wouldn't have cared less. I don't feel the film was made with much confidence either. They needed to take a risk, inject something of their own, but instead they produced the most predictable film they could have ever come up with. The only scene I liked came half-way through but even that was a huge wasted opportunity. This was meant to be an event, instead it looked like a sad cosplay party. The one thing the film should have pointed out was, that following the death of Superman, the combined efforts of the Justice League could take on all evils without him, but they couldn't. Batman has spent ages putting the team together, only for them to fail without supes. Literally, the only exciting moment of the film was the post-credits hint at what is to come next. How ridiculous. Maybe they just wanted to get it out of the way, do the whole team up thing and get on with new and exciting stories, but so far they've barely managed to get anything right and even then I feel that they got lucky. Okay, so both versions of Quicksilver have made The Flash a tricky character to make original, but I would argue that Flash comics are so much better than Quicksilver ones. DC needs to have a bit of confidence and also to pull their finger out. There are some great stories within their archive, they just need to steer away from the more successful ones, because as popular as Doomsday/Death of Superman etc were, they are by far the most overrated. The seriousness doesn't work, the attempts at comedy really don't work but most importantly, nothing seems to gel together. The special effects are also pretty horrible. The last big action scene sees civilians being chased down a road by what appears to be a purple worm that looks like it could have come from an episode of cult 90s sci-fi show LEXX. That said, LEXX was far more interesting, was way more inventive and had better characters. I'm not having a go at DC because I'm a Marvel fan either, I base my opinions on merit, I want to be a fan of both, and classically I have always been a DC reader. I love my Superman and I love Batman and Wonder Woman but I just don't see this incarnation of Justice League as authentic. The story is basic and old, nothing held my attention, there was no suspense or intrigue and, apart from the Marc McClure cameo, there was nothing that impressed me. It feels like the DC films are being made by people who have little passion for DC characters, or who have totally lost focus on what they should be doing, what they could achieve and see the films as more of a race against Marvel then anything else. They are the ones making us compare them to Marvel, when really they should be making us do the exact opposite. At this point I'm not even disappointed, I'm just perplexed about how wrong they got it - again.