“Justice League” Serves A Fair Amount of Justice

After a steady procession of superhero movies, including Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok, 2017 has been rounded out with what was perhaps the most anticipated entry of them all: Justice League.

Set months after the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bruce Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) has been fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act. He enlists his newfound ally, Diana Prince (Wonder Woman), to face an even greater threat. Together, Bruce and Diana work quickly to recruit a team to stand against this newly-awakened enemy, named Steppenwolf. However, despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes– Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash– it may be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.

It’s a plot that sounded amazing on paper…yet, when I finally saw it, I was pretty disappointed to say that out of all the superhero films of the year, this was definitely my least favorite. Not that it wasn’t still an enjoyable watch and a fun film, but it really didn’t meet my expectations, especially after all the buzz.

I’ll start off with the negatives first– three, to be exact.

The first half of this film felt extremely rushed, jumping from one situation to another. I felt many of those scenes would have benefited from slowing down a little bit for the audience to really take in everything that was going on.

The villain, Steppenwolf, is probably the worst villain we’ve seen in the DCEU (DC Comics Extended Universe) so far. He’s bland, boring, and I could never fathom his motive for unleashing such mayhem. For the most part, the film’s CGI is really good, especially for the Cyborg character, but for Steppenwolf just looks like a character from an early 2000s Playstation game.  

Another thing I disliked, and never quite got the reason for, is that the final battle focuses a lot on a single family being attacked by the Parademons (Steppenwolf’s minions), when they should’ve focused on more civilians in danger too, so that was a little odd, and really took me out of the pretty great battle going on in the end.

So now, onto the positives. First thing I’ll say is that the chemistry between the Justice League is amazing. All the scenes focused on their interaction, their conversations and arguments, and their different personalities colliding with each other, were really intriguing, and just as great to watch as the battles portrayed in the film.  The casting was also great too, mainly newcomer to the series, Ezra Miller as the Flash. He brought a lot of comedy and light-hearted humor to this film, and definitely made this a much brighter film in the DCEU than the previous 4 films.

Ben Affleck totally nailed it again as, in my opinion, the best Batman we’ve ever had on screen, with his very tough, gritty, “take-no-nonsense” portrayal of the iconic character. Gal Gadot was just as astounding as Wonder Woman, bringing a sense of warmth, heroism, and inspiration to the screen. It was great seeing her character in two films in the same year, after the previous DCEU film to be released this year, Wonder Woman, which turned out to be a huge surprise, and my second favorite superhero film of this year (behind Logan). It was also really exciting to see Henry Cavill as Superman again, even more so since he has some of the best scenes in this film, and was one of the biggest positives I can say about it.

When the fighting goes down in this film, it’s as remarkable as you’d expect it to be, and it kept me on the edge of my seat every time. The cinematography was phenomenal and how much energy those scenes had was incredible.

Overall, with the negatives this film had, this should have much greater than it was, mainly because of, like I said, how large of a film this is. Also compared to Wonder Woman, this film doesn’t even come close to the enjoyment I had with that. But being a huge step up from 2 previous films in the DCEU, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, and with fantastic chemistry, exciting battles, and perfect casting, Justice League still manages to be a fun time at the movies.

Justice League gets 7.7 out of 10 servings of justice.