Review: “Justice League”

“Justice League” was a production nightmare to maintain the incredible success of the summer blockbuster, “Wonder Woman.” The movie was directed by Zack Snyder, the man who brought viewers the terrible “Batman v Superman,” but after Snyder experienced a family tragedy, Joss Whedon, who made the much better Avengers movies, stepped in as the director. The fact that DC decided not to do a solo movie for all of the main heroes of “Justice League” hurt the movie a lot. This caused some characters to come across as extremely dull or useless. On top of this, the plot lacks depth and does not cause any tension, features the worst movie villain of all time and overuses computer generated imagery (CGI). Thankfully for “Justice League,” there are a few great characters and enough action to make this an enjoyable movie.

Much like its DC extended universe (DCEU) counterpart “Suicide Squad,” “Justice League” has a major identity crisis. Almost every scene in this movie has some sort of dark background or lighting to try and set a dark tone. There is not a blue sky in sight. This was Zack Snyder’s vision for the movie: a serious, dark-toned movie with no laughs at all. On the other hand, Joss Whedon wanted to take a lighter, funnier approach to the movie. While Whedon’s style clashed with Snyder’s, it is what saves this movie from being a boring disaster.

The biggest strength of “Justice League” is its cast of characters. By far the best characters in this movie are Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Ezra Miller as The Flash. The Flash is the only character without a solo movie in the DCEU that is entertaining and still important to the plot. Other newcomers, such as Aquaman and Cyborg are polar opposites. Aquaman is an entertaining character and has some very funny moments, but the writers decided to completely shed his backstory to make the movie no more than two hours. Aquaman also has no importance to the plot other than to jump around, kill some bad guys and provide some comedic relief. Cyborg, however, has a lot of time spent trying to flesh out his character and is made important to the plot. Sadly, though, he is extremely dull, boring and is a victim of this film’s poor CGI. All Of the characters the audience has already been introduced to, Wonder Woman remains fantastic as usual. Henry Cavill had his best performance as Superman yet, and aside from one funny line, Ben Affleck is the most mediocre Batman ever put in a DC movie. The films main antagonist is Steppenwolf. If his name was not already an indication of how bad he is, then watch the movie and viewers will find out. Steppenwolf is the most generic and awful villain in any movie ever. He is boring, poorly voice acted, does not ever feel like a threat and is almost as ugly as Cyborg. Thankfully, all of the heroes put together are just enough to keep viewers entertained and invested in the movie.

The only thing that can compete with Steppenwolf for worst part of this movie is the CGI. It is everywhere. The villain, the fight scenes, Cyborg and even Superman’s chin is computer generated. One scene that commits this crime against cinema is back at Superman’s farm house. Instead of actually going and filming the scene in a field, the directors used CGI grass. The overuse of CGI is not enough to make “Justice League” a bad movie, but it is really annoying because it is very obvious what is real and what is not. Most of it is the latter.

Overall, “Justice League” is an enjoyable movie but is brought down with of sizeable flaws. The villain, CGI, plot and the handling of a few other characters bring this movie down. But thankfully, there are great characters like Wonder Woman and The Flash to bring the movie back up. “Justice League” had some great action scenes, and even with the CGI, they flowed pretty nicely. So, people that do not like superhero movies will not be very impressed with this movies. But “Justice League” is a must-see for viewers who do like superhero movies or just enjoy a good action flick. Just do not expect it to be like any Marvel movie or “Wonder Woman.”