Finally, after many years of waiting, fans are getting their first live-action adaptation of the Justice League with some of their favorite characters. Superman (Henry Cavill) is dead and now the world is terrified at the prospect of an alien invasion ever since the end of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” With these fears mounting, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) search for other metahumans — superpowered beings — to help them protect the world from destruction. “Justice League” introduces a few characters to create a generic action film that tries to do too much at once by focusing on each character and not getting the team together soon enough.
Batman and Wonder Woman become aware of an army of parademons led by Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) that are preparing to destroy Earth with alien tools called mother boxes that look like floating boxes with random lines shining off them. Batman and Wonder Woman desperately try to recruit any metahumans they know of. Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) join the other two to stop Steppenwolf and save the world.
Like previous DC films, “Justice League” tries to build its universe up too much. The film involves the formal introductions of the metahumans Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman. A brief explanation of the mother boxes and their abilities is given to try and make the audience care about them. The only abilities of the mother boxes appear to be teleporting with them and putting them all together to release a large energy burst that can destroy worlds. The city of Atlantis and the island of Themyscira are also crammed in for small segments of the film and are never mentioned again. Some undercooked drama is also included between Cyborg and his father (Joe Morton) to establish part of the upcoming Cyborg movie and show how uncomfortable Cyborg is with his gifts.
The film’s plot doesn’t appear to try anything groundbreaking. Conveniency is used to keep the plot moving forward at a decent pace to reduce boredom, including Batman finding Aquaman in a desolate area where there just so happens to be a drawing of the mother boxes that he never knew about early in the film. Aquaman also turns down joining the league and then randomly comes up again just in time to save them. Although nothing new is done, this helps the film avoid the cramming seen in previous films. Even with two directors taking over at different times in the film’s process, there’s a tonal consistency that’s appreciated, along with an inability to distinguish any differences between their scenes. Zack Snyder stepped down after initial filming to deal with a family emergency, leaving Joss Whedon as the chosen replacement by studio executives to take over the extensive reshoots.
Although the movie promoted itself to be amazing, the action and plot never got exciting. For example, when the League fight Steppenwolf for the first time with his army, the parademons are dealt with easily but Steppenwolf just tosses them away and flees after a bit. It reaches levels of mediocrity but never managed to do anything spectacular that could differentiate itself from most other superhero films. Even when the league are together, each character is almost always doing their own thing and only cross each others’ paths to stop one or two parademons that would have attacked from behind. This feels like a lazy way of showing some half-baked “teamwork,” considering what a minor inconvenience the parademons were anyway. At times it looked like a parademon may have gotten a hit or two on Wonder Woman or Batman, but then Flash would zoom by and everything in the background would be gone. The action almost always devolves into a big mess of CGI explosions that distract and cover up what’s going on on the screen.
If the film embraced its campy nature that the ads gave off, the film would’ve stood out more beyond a few random jokes such as Aquaman making fun of Batman’s outfit. Along with the lightened tone the jokes brought, the color scheme also brightened up with a fight in the daytime and Flash’s bright outfit and effects. This helped the film by allowing the audience to see the characters, despite the dark backgrounds. When the league fight Steppenwolf for the first time, there are spotlights that allow for everyone to be seen without an explosion being necessary to illuminate the screen.
With a mediocre plot and generic action, “Justice League” does little to be different. Too much is brought into the film with little explanation, and the better parts of the film are the post-credit scenes. They lean heavily into interactions with the characters for a fun time with playful banter that the entire film attempted to strive towards. The film is clearly making steps toward improving the DC franchise by softening the tone and using teamwork and hope instead of distrust and hatred. Humor such as Flash’s quirkiness and the rest of the league’s ability to point out some flaws for a joke and the increase in colors used for the film’s palette give it some real character. With the improvements made, the film still turns out to be the most average film I’ve seen ever. There aren’t any great scenes to talk about, but there’s also a surprising lack of scenes to gripe about considering the track record of DC movies. With poor box office results, “Justice League” answers Batman’s question of “do you bleed?” with a resounding “yes, we are gushing with desperation to improve our films.”