Justice League review (NO SPOILERS)

 

I got to see Justice League yesterday at a special early screening at my local cinema. The screen there is huge, Dolby Atmos sound system, and overall top notch quality movie-going experience.

Disclaimer / Foreword

As the title says - I will not disclose any spoilers in this review. By that, I mean that I will not talk about any of the specifics aside from what has been revealed in the trailers.

I am not a Marvel/DC fanboy or hater. I like both franchises for what they are. I am simply happy to live in a time where these heroes appear on the big screens, let alone see them band together in an all-star team-up blockbuster.

I had heard about some of the production challenges this movie faced. I went into this with minor concerns about two of them:

1) The WB mandate that the film may not exceed 2 hours

2) Having another director take over the project for the remaining 15%-20% of the production. Namely, Josh Whedon coming over from the light-hearted Marvel Cinematic Universe into the DC Extended Universe. Which is good for the majority of the fans who have been overall displeased with the tone of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, one of the bigger gripe being that it was too dark. Talking about a story where the *Dark* Knight decides to deal with an alien with Godlike powers due to seeing it as a potential danger to the humanity, I am not sure how this particular story would work as a fun bro-flick about settling their differences in fisticuffs. But hey, that's just me. Onto the movie at hand.

Review

Superman is dead! And while it's been months since humanity's beacon of hope was taken, Batman has not been sitting in his cave mourning. He has been doing what the world's greatest detective ought to do - investigating the imminent threat coming to our world.

Together with Wonderwoman, they recruit people with special abilities in order to deal with the said threat. And so, we get Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash.

Seeing these superheroes team up on the big screen for the first time ever, I was just hoping that the characters would be well-written and the actors would do justice to these heroes by not only doing a solid work in their respective roles, but also having a good chemistry when interacting with one another. And boy, did they deliver.

Starting off with the already established heroes from the previous DC Extended Universe movies - Ben Affleck's Batman and Gal Gadot's Wonderwoman were just as enjoyable to watch as before, and it was fun to see these characters develop further while being total badasses.

What about the newcomers?

Aquaman - visually somewhat overhauled for the purposes of stylistic cohesion for this particular universe, Jason Momoa plays a solid dude who has his moments beyond what we've seen in the trailers. No need to worry about his lines being limited to "Oh yeah! Alright! My man!" (I was pleasantly surprised that those oneliners actually worked well in the final product). 

Cyborg - even though we get only half a face of the actor Ray Fisher, he still gets the job done both as an actor and as the character. There is emotion, there the classic Man vs Machine conflict within, and I didn't mind the CGI on him at all.

The Flash - this one is closest to my heart due to being a fan of the CW TV show, so I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to switch away from the character that has been running around for more than 3 years in my life. Ezra Miller got me hooked in a flash. His Barry Allen is spot on. He is witty, he is relatable and most important - dang it, the boy is fast! The colour of the Speedforce lightning effects didn't bother me at all, unlike when I first saw the trailer footage of him running. Bring me the Flash movie, please! P.S. Not a fan of the Power Rangers-type costume, but I will get used to it once they actually tell the backstory of the suit.

BUT!

As cool as they were, we don't get nearly enough of them. Sure, they do their fair share of action. But the introduction of these characters was lackluster. If I hadn't known anything about them from modern pop-culture, I'm pretty sure I would feel rather indifferent towards them. Which I kind of did, actually. Their origins are mostly just alluded to or maybe mentioned in some dialogues, but that's about it. The movie failed to establish these awesome heroes to a level where the audience would care and root for them. Unfortunatelly, 2 hours is simply not enough to introduce 3 huge new characters while also setting up the actual plot of the story, present the heroes with a challenge and have them deal with it. There is just not enough time for all of it to be fleshed out. And so, the best thing about the whole movie gets to suffer from the time limitations set up by Warner Bros.

The CGI villain was... OK, I guess. A powerful big guy with a fiery (war)axe. Sure, I'll take it. He kind of has his motivation to be there. He is kind of scary. He is kind of stronger than each hero separately, so they kind of need to band together to stop him. Some of the reviewers I follow, called him uninspiring. I did not mind him, not too much, at least. Maybe the problem for me with the villain is that I didn't know anything about this particular character from before. The heroes definitelly suffer from the same problem and are most likely less enjoyable for people who know nothing about them outside of this movie.

I had some problems with the CGI in general, but not where most people would assume those problems to be noticed. Not going to go into details, but there are some things that I was surprised to see in such a high budget feature, so let's leave it at that.

I honestly was hyped for this movie. Maybe not on the level of Star Wars hyped, but I was looking forward to what essentially was DCs' attempt at Avengers.

It is an entertaining movie with awesome action sequences in various parts of the film. It gave me some good chuckles and even laughs. I will admit that I also shed a tear or two, but that one would only apply for the more emotional people like myself.

It suffers from being cut short. Now that I've seen it, I am just as hyped for the Director's Cut or Extended edition as I was for the cinema release, because I know that underneath this cut-up cinematic product lies an awesome 2 and a half or even a 3 hour movie that does Justice not only to the characters, the story and the respective comics, but also to the hard work that was put into making this long-awaited movie.

Give us more!