Justice League

In 2012, The Avengers arrived following 4 years of hype. In 2017, Justice League arrived following the same length of time. You'll never guess which turned out for the better.

The Partially Educated Review

It must be warm and re-assuring for a filmmaker when their franchise reaches its ultimate goal and fan anticipation falls somewhere between disdain and disinterest. Most of the DCEU (or whatever the hell they're calling it nowadays) has managed to make the Dark Knight trilogy look like Elf on the cheerful scale. So maybe the disinterest was justified, but the automatic assumptions that it would be rubbish bothered me slightly. With Wonder Woman coming earlier this year, it felt like they'd acknowledged the things that were putting fans off and were working hard to rectify these. For the most part, they were successful. Wonder Woman may not have strayed from the formula too much with its narrative, but it still provided a lot of fun within that. So, if that acknowledgement of fan feedback was there, surely they'd know to carry that over to Justice League?

While Justice League does attempt to bring about a lighter mood to proceedings than Batman V Superman, it seems pretty apparent that this is the result of unfortunate circumstances. Director Zack Snyder left the process following a real-life family tragedy, meaning that Joss Whedon (credited only as writer) picked up the reigns for apparently fairly extensive re-shoots. The problem here is that Snyder and Whedon both have their own distinct styles and the two simply don't gel. When the two styles combine, scenes become incredibly easy to tell apart based on who directed them, leaving the overall tone to become messier than a norovirus addled 2 year-old.

Character development is also found wanting. Where most of the Avengers got their own film to establish themselves prior to the big coming together, here 50% of our heroes got (at a maximum) 2 minutes of screen-time in BvS. In a film that needs to introduce so many different characters, the new additions just don't get the necessary time for us to develop much of an attachment. Ezra Miller's Flash becomes the one-liner guy and gets a little annoying at times. Ray Fisher's Cyborg is the serious straight-man, seemingly going for a Morpheus-style performance, but showing the personality of a broken radiator. Jason Momoa's Aquaman fares a little better, as they're willing to let the character show some different facets, but it's still not quite enough to get you properly pumped for his upcoming solo film. Momoa is fairly solid in the role though which, if you've seen Conan The Barbarian, will be deeply refreshing to hear.

The real let-down though is chief baddie Steppenwolf. This should be one of the best villains going and also one of the most devastating. He does feel threatening, but he ain't half generic. He arrives, he kicks ass, he promises to destroy everything, he leaves. Nothing he says feels overly different to any other villain you've seen and when looking to find an impact that will last over the franchise, you'll come up wanting. With an actor as good as Ciaran Hinds in the role, that becomes the film's biggest waste. As for his quest to find the Cubes of Cubery, or whatever it is they're calling those things... it all seems a little familiar.

We're not in complete dud territory with Justice League. Gal Gadot still makes for a fantastic Wonder Woman and (tonal problems aside) Whedon's touches do make for more than a handful of humorous moments. They're not enough to overshadow the problems though and it's all outweighed by a disappointing sense of failing to learn from past mistakes. Even things that previously worked no longer do. Ben Affleck, for example, seems bored in the role, as if he's still not got over the fact that more people wanted to talk about Batman than Live By Night. It's your own bloody fault for making a boring film, mate!

In the long run, it seems that Justice League will be remembered in a similar vein to its box office figures. There have been bigger disasters, but it still stings a fair bit.

FOUR out of 10

P.S. I know I didn't mention Henry Cavill's Superman, but after three films of blandness, it's becoming difficult to give a shit.