Justice League is a 2017 action/adventure film directed by Zack Snyder, and is the fifth installment in the DC Extended Universe. The film stars Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen and J. K. Simmons. The Justice League follows Batman after the events of Batman v Superman and the death of Superman. Fearing a potential threat from an unknown enemy, Batman assembles a league of heroes to unite for when that threat comes to Earth.
So.. yeah.. Kinda sad when Thor: Ragnarok, a character associated with the “worst” trilogy of Marvel movies out grosses and out performs the Justice League. The freaking Justice League! Anyways I have a lot of gripes about this film, not so much in the sense of how the film was executed, but more along the lines of the effects of the departure of director Zack Snyder and the studio’s involvement after said leave. This film was by no means better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s Ultimate Edition, and still did not even touch the gem that Wonder Woman gave us a couple months prior. So what went wrong? Why are so many critics hating on this film? Well, lets get into it.
So firstly I would like to talk about what happened with the direction of this film on the studio side of things. This film has been in production hell for decades, no joke. Straight after Batman v Superman, Zack Snyder started working on the film, and after his daughter’s untimely suicide in early May, Snyder stepped down during post-production and handed the mantle over to Avengers director Joss Whedon. During Whedon’s tenure, he scheduled a number of questionable reshoots, fired Batman v Superman composer Junkie XL, and dropped the final cut down from a 170 minute runtime to something around 110 minutes. Because of that it seemed like Snyder’s original vision of the film had been mutilated in a sense, paving the way for a discombobulated mess that is now known as the Justice League.
Speaking of Snyder, everyone gave him a bunch of crap for Batman v Superman, but in reality his cut of the film was fantastic and the theatrical cut was something done by Warner Bros. I honestly think that Whedon’s involvement with the film was a horrible choice due to the joking nature of Whedon’s style of directing. He’s a very different director than Snyder and that can easily be seen throughout the tone of his past films. Unfortunately the Batman v Superman‘s dark and realistic tone was replaced by unfitting jokes, and questionable pacing. Had Whedon been apart of the DCEU since the inception of it in Man of Steel, maybe this would have been more understandable, but its polar tone and writing leaves this film feeling nothing like its previous installments from the same universe.
But what was really great about this film, and what the film did correctly was its characters. Although the Justice League is a mess without an author, Snyder’s characters are as realistic as they get. Although I’ll speak about pacing later in the review, the film did a really good job giving each character enough time to interact with the audience and leave an impact. Of course the Flash, Ezra Miller’s character, was the stand out of the film, and Ben Affleck as Batman is as iconic as it gets. Although the character’s are executed pretty well, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Jason Mamoa’s Aquaman felt very underused and somewhat generic. Other actors in the film did a great job with what they had, and although the Justice League is a mess at times, its characters are what keeps this film together.
As for the film’s pacing it’s either is too slow, too fast, or too choppy. It was honestly all over the place. The league assembles in less than half the runtime without any issues, which just feels too unrealistic. Although I’ve been trashing Whedon this entire time, he did do a fantastic job with The Avengers in the sense that it was a group of very different people coming together to fight in very different ways. Because of that personalities clash, so show us those issues, those fights, show us all of that! It makes for great story telling, and character depth. The film’s first half (although a little choppy) felt a ton better than the second half’s fast paced “Lets get this over with” mentality. In the long run I really hope they end up releasing a Snyder cut of the film. This movie deserves a longer runtime.
Continuing on, this film’s story is pretty damn mediocre at best. Although the pacing had a lot to do with the story’s issues, the one dimensional villain and boring climax just really didn’t add anything to the film. Both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman had great villains (minus Doomsday), and although it was “end of the world” type scenarios for both films, they incorporated a villain that meant a lot more than what meets the eye. Steppenwolf on the other hand had no depth to him, and was wasted potential from the start. He never once seemed menacing like Zod in Man of Steel, and his CGI was never once convincing. When I mention that the film really has no weight, it is definitely seen throughout Steppenwolf’s fight. You see humans bashed against concrete walls and walk away without a scratch. Although Marvel tends to do this as well with their films, it never really felt like these heroes were sacrificing anything. They all basically walked away without any issues. Come on guys, Rogue One did it no problem, and look where it got it. Final thing for this graph is that if Steppenwolf never came to Earth.. the Justice League still would have assembled. Sure Steppenwolf paves the way for Darkseid, but the team was going to assemble eventually after the events of Batman v Superman anyways, so what’s the point.
Another major issue with this film was its use of CGI.. on everything. Like holy cow I have not been so off put by computer graphics like this in a long time. If you wanna go into this film completely blind skip over this graph, but my god Superman’s CGI removal of his Mission Impossible mustache was so bad. It wasn’t like, “Oh yeah you can kind of see it,” nope. It was very apparent throughout the entire film. The other issue was with Superman in general as a lot of the scenes that he was in just felt very unrealistic. There’s a scene towards the end of the film that almost looked like his entire body was ripped out of a 2007 video game. It was honestly that bad. As I mentioned above, Steppenwolf’s facial moves were awful, and when you have something so off putting like that it will always take you out of the film. Anyways, a lot of the sets never felt practical, and when they were it was just overshadowed by the times it wasn’t.
But what really angered me about this film was the score. Elfman’s score is awful. I’m not joking, this is probably one of the worst scores I have ever heard, and the issues within its continuity absolutely enrage me. I’ll be honest, Man of Steel is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, and the fact that Elfman went out of his way to not put in Zimmer’s Superman theme from Man of Steel and Batman’s theme from Batman v Superman is beyond me. So incredibly disrespectful. Not only did Elfman not use Zimmer’s Batman theme, but he also put in his shitty 1989 theme instead. What the hell! Sure that was Batman’s theme back in 89, but it’s 2017, come on! The DCEU had some of the best scores in the business, and to see that Junkie XL had been fired and replaced with Danny Elfman is an insult. If the DCEU ever wants to recover from this mess, they better not hire Elfman ever again. Such a disgrace.
And finally before closing it off, I just wanted to touch upon something that really bothered me about this series. I know I have been referencing Marvel a lot, but that’s just what’s going to eventually happen. Do I like Marvel better? Eh, I don’t know. I think Marvel executes their films a lot better, but I also love the realism that the DCEU brings to the table. But what I’m trying to go about saying is that the MCU is (at the time of writing this) 17 films in. The DCEU only at 5. By the time The Avengers came out, we had 4 origin stories while the DCEU has only 2. While both these films (The Avengers and the Justice League) were executed very differently from each other, there’s no denying that the DCEU is playing catch up right now. Because of that we have zero backstory from Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg, and the Flash. These characters have an entire history that hasn’t been expanded on, and for those doing the math that’s two thirds of the Justice League that have no real backstory. Sure they’re getting their own standalone films soon, but a lot of people have no idea where these characters came from. Sure we didn’t need to see another Spider-Man origin story in Homecoming, but that was because we have already seen two iterations of the character in the past two decades. Not everyone knows where the Flash came from, or how Cyborg became a robot, so expand upon that before diving right in! In my honest opinion this film should have never come out when it did. We should of had Man of Steel, The Batman, Wonder Woman, then Batman v Superman, and then Flashpoint, Cyborg, and Aquaman, before even getting into the Justice League. I’m telling you, that would have made this film a lot better with a lot more weight, and it would have made for a much better story than what we ended up with.
So to wrap things up, the Justice League was a film full of many flaws. Its pacing was all over the place, story was bland, villain was one dimensional, CGI was bad, and score was horrific. But what the Justice League did capture was a film for comic book fans with one of the best casts in the business. Although many might disagree with me on this, I think Snyder’s departure hurt this film more than most would expect, and Joss Whedon was tonally the wrong choice to step in during post. Although I enjoyed this film more than I did Batman v Superman‘s theatrical cut, it is by no means better than Snyder’s Ultimate Edition either, or the promise that was Wonder Woman. So in the end I decided to give Justice League an “Alright” on theVade Review Bar. It honestly saddens me to rate this film that low, but its issues outweigh its heart, and in a time where Marvel is making great films based off of no-name superheros, it’s really getting harder and harder for Superman and the DCEU to even get off the ground.
