Tyler Krenzin
Lantern Staff
The lowest of expectations were all I expected for this movie. After the complete massacre of the Superman character in Man of Steel, and the shoddiness of a directing job done in Batman vs. Superman, I had to be honest with myself and go in knowing I would more than likely be disappointed. I described the film as “undoubtedly not awful” to my friend as we walked out of the theater. Never in a movie review would I use that description as a compliment. However, Justice League deserves to have this reservation.
Justice League has its quirks. The movie flows like water, if that water was in a stagnant puddle and frozen. This movie just continues to prove that the problem isn’t the material, it’s because the company making the movie isn’t Marvel. DC has been chasing the coat-tails of the Marvel Universe since the beginning. DC knows how far behind they are and are desperately trying to catch up. This in lies the problems that are set forth by the Justice League. The pressure from the movie studio to catch up with Marvel is clearly felt throughout the whole movie. Just like Batman vs. Superman, they shove the equivalent of four movies into one. A Flash movie would be so cool to have, and I know that it is planned to have one soon. They should have had these main character movies out way before this ensemble film. This would have allowed us to build a rapport with the characters. Instead the introduction to the Flash is something ripped straight from Captain America: Civil War.
Picture this: The main character of most of the series movies (Batman or Iron Man) is sitting in a room waiting for the Super Kid (Spider Man or Flash) to walk in unknowing that they are there. Both kids are willing to help no questions asked, and later they prove how they don’t have full control of their powers. To tell you the truth, I could make a comparison to any other superhero and find a scene that Justice League is basically stealing. The whole movie is shot in scenes almost exactly like the Quicksilver scenes in the X-Man movies. Stop me if you heard this before: A world ending threat with a lot of drones has placed its point of attack in a random Slavic place, and it takes a team of superheroes to stop him. Did you say Avengers: Age of Ultron? Well, you wouldn’t be wrong, but this also perfectly describes Justice League’s story to a T. Funny enough, one of the writers (Joss Whedon) from the Avengers: Age of Ultron also wrote part of the Justice League movie. It can only be assumed that the direction that he took for this movie mirrored his previous work.
I really have no complaint about the acting in Justice League. The stars that they dragged into this movie really tried their hardest to salvage a good performance through the terrible writing. Spoiler Alert: Superman (Henry Cavill) has absolutely no reason to be in this movie. I think that DC wanted to use one of the best comic arcs in its arsenal in “The Death of Superman.” However, they quickly realized the mistake that they made. This movie takes Superman’s death, something that could’ve been used for character development for several movies after, and erases it. The superhero team resurrect him to fight against the threat of Steppenwolf. It took 15 seconds for Superman to show up and make someone who had the ability to destroy an entire army of Amazonians look like a toddler. I mean Superman manhandled him. This story could’ve given these cast of characters some depth where they had to sacrifice a lot to stop Steppenwolf. However, the writers and the director decided it would be more fun to watch just how unstoppable Superman is. Think about it: Superman was still not fully recovered. He had been alive for maybe a day before he went to help stop Steppenwolf.
To describe this movie and what crowd it’s for, I only need four words: For crowds, not fans. Justice League was nothing more than a clone-mixture of Marvel and X-Men movies. This movie won’t be on the short list of best superhero movies of all time, but it won’t be on the list for the worst either. 6/10
