November 29th, 2017
After the rather clunky and disappointing experience that was “Batman v. Superman”, IMO “Justice League” was enjoyable overall and did a good job in restoring some cred to the DC Comics movie franchise.
Ok, so on to some of the things I liked. The visuals and effects were great, and I thought as a 3D movie it did a good job incorporating the 3D element without being either lackluster or totally going overboard. I rather liked Ezra Miller as “The Flash”, who I thought had by far the most interesting character and pulled it off nicely. I never read the Flash comics so I don’t know how true to the comics the character was (I suspect not very much), but regardless his character gave the movie a nice touch. I also have to give Jason Momoa (as “Aquaman”) and the writers a small tip of the hat for making that character a little more interesting than it otherwise would have been. And lastly there is Gal Godot; sure she is doing a respectable job as Wonder Woman, but I just can’t get over how HOT she is. 😉
Now to the negatives. There were two things that I thought held the movie back. The first was that the story itself; it seemed to lack that little something special, and in certain parts just didn’t feel all that convincing. On one hand I think the some of the story elements did a great job in tying this movie with the previous films in the franchise, but some of the rest felt like a rather typical ‘epic saving the entire world’ superhero movie plot (strange to think such stories have become so ‘routine’, right?). The second is that the villain, Steppenwolf, just didn’t seem all that interesting or frightening for a villain that can supposedly threaten the world. I’m willing to entertain that these two things might be because the comic storylines and characters the movie is based off of are so old and a bit cliche’ these days, or maybe just because the Marvel franchise has been doing the ‘saving the world’ bit so much recently that it’s getting a little repetetive. The movie was still enjoyable to be sure, but for me it just felt somewhat incomplete in those areas.
My final rating for the film: “Is There a Matinee?”. Part of me wants to give it the next higher rating, but for me it fell just a little bit short of that. Perhaps I would have liked it even more if I were a DC fanboy and appreciated all of the comic references. Perhaps. I’ve heard that the extended director’s cut version of Batman v Superman is a lot better than the one played in theaters, so perhaps this time around the director and screenwriters were less constrained by the Hollywood machine this time. Whatever it is, I’m liking the improvement and hope it’s the start of as a positive trend for the DC franchise.
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