Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, JK Simmons, Ciaran Hinds, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, Joe Morton, Billy Crudup and Amber Heard.Written by Chris Tessio & Joss Whedon.
Directed by Zack Snyder.
★★
Justice League was deep into pre-production when Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice opened. Zack Snyder had Dawn of Justice, Justice League, and Justice League 2 mapped out when he dove in. Darkseid was going to be DC's Thanos, the superpowerful villain who takes a few movies before he steps forward as the main villain. After the reviews of BvJ came out, Justice League plowed ahead as planned. After a personal tragedy, Zack Snyder had to bow out in the final weeks of shooting, leading to Joss Whedon stepping in and finishing the job, doing extensive rewrites and reshoots to try to save it. It shows.
The Frankenstein's monster of a movie that emerges is ultimately better than BvJ or Suicide Squad, but not by much. It's weaker than Man of Steel, and seeing Gal Gadot try to make this work after the far superior Wonder Woman dominated the summer is a little embarrassing.
Let me go into what I liked. I thought Flash (Ezra Miller) was hilarious. He was my favorite character, and he should get his own movie. Henry Cavill, who is billed second so you know Superman won't stay dead, has the best scene in the movie during those first few minutes after he's been resurrected. When he shows up, I thought to myself, "Yeah, Superman's been missed." I kinda liked Jason Momoa's Aquaman. The tiny tiny amount of work Jeremy Irons and JK Simmons were given as Alfred and Gordon respectively made me hope Matt Reeves keeps them when he makes his own Batman movie.
Now for what I didn't like. And this will take longer.
1. Steppenwolf. He is the main villain. He's a lesser DC entity, and as soon as he showed up, I was disappointed. You've got the great Ciaran Hinds playing him; why not use more than his voice? Steppenwolf had this generic CGI monster face complete with a double axehead for a helmet. Why not put Hinds in makeup? Or at least try to look like him a little? Plus he has those dragonfly zombie monsters from the dumb dream sequence in Batman v. Superman as his minions. As his CGI creatures that are easily killed by the dozens. Flying orcs, they.
2. The plot. Steppenwolf has three magic boxes, called mother boxes, that he must unite and it'll give him ultimate power. Feels like the same thing in Marvel with Thanos collecting infinity stones, right? Wonder Woman gives this expositional monologue about this space battle that brought Steppenwolf to power, and I remember thinking, "Did the women from Wonder Woman know all about space battles before this movie? Sure, they're goddesses, but they marveled at a WWI plane." They must have, because apparently they've been guarding one of the three mother boxes for thousands of years. Yeah yeah.
3. Cyborg. I don't know if he's the most poorly written character, or if Ray Fisher is just boring playing him. Probably a bit of both. He's definitely the Hawkeye of this bunch, where there's no desire to see him get his own stand-alone movie.
4. The direction. Snyder loves to do the slo-mo freeze frame speed-it-up-again shots in action sequences, and there are a lot of them. Plus once again, most of this movie takes place at night. Or in darkness, or shadow. Or maybe most days are cloudy. Brighten this world up already. I love Batman in darkness, but Superman? Wonder Woman? Flash? These are DAY characters!
The post-credits teaser is kinda cool, but I just hope the fruits of that teaser are allowed to breathe a little, grow more organically.
As a kid I always thought DC had overall cooler heroes and villains than Marvel. Marvel movies have blown DC out of the water lately, and I'd like DC to get back on track. Wonder Woman showed they can be just as good, now for the people in charge of the other characters to catch up and elevate their games.
