Isn’t it ironic that I was both listening to Ironic today (because I could hear my neighbour singing it really out of tune) and that my last film review over a year ago was for Wonder Woman. Which was by no means a perfect film, but which was so much better than Justice League.
Now I’m aware that Justice League had issues from the start. Director Zack Snyder having to abandon the production for personal reasons and Joss Whedon taking over. Production that massively overran due to said unforeseen issues. And then extensive reshoots as if the production schedule wasn’t long enough.
All of these are evident in the film, not least because of Henry Cavill’s face having been very badly CGI’d in almost EVERY scene he’s in. I mean he basically had to reshoot all of his scenes bar one it seems. That’s excessive even for a film with this many problems.
Of course I don’t need to talk about my feelings towards Zack Snyder or Joss Whedon as I think my reviews of both Man Of Steel and Avengers: Age of Ultron speak for themselves on that front. But I do feel I have to address the elephant in the room, which is that this is basically Avengers but in the DC universe? Alien army invasion, team of heroes need to be brought together to fight the army, they don’t get on, but then (spoiler alert) they come together anyway to save mankind. There’s even a line in the movie about the team’s billionaire Tony Sta... sorry, Bruce Wayne “finally playing well with others”. Mmm where have I heard that before?
I know it was written by the same man who wrote Avengers but come ON. That’s no excuse for him seemingly having only one idea and re-working it for a different group of heroes.
But the main reason it didn’t work for me is the complete lack of care I felt for the characters. Not wishing to sound like a stuck record (because I’m pretty sure I said that I didn’t care about Clark/Superman in my lengthy Man of Steel review), but one of the reasons Avengers Assemble works is that you have already established most of the heroes in their own movie (not bitter about Hawkeye AT ALL). Even Black Widow, who might not have had a stand alone film, had a huge role in Iron Man 2, establishing her character straight off the bat.
With Justice League we’ve had a Superman movie that turned the beloved character of Clark Kent into an afterthought, Batman V Superman in which the only likeable character was Wonder Woman, and a Wonder Woman movie that was basically a female version of Captain America: The First Avenger. Hardly a basis for getting to know the team before they become a team.
In Justice League they try (and fail) to cram three other characters back stories into about half an hour of screen time (woo 10 mins each!), then the big bad shows up, Bruce tries to rally the troops but Superman is dead and everyone else apart from Barry (whom I love) hates him, then they somehow overcome their obstacles really quickly and form the team, but then the end still manages to drag on for another hour.
They waste the Thimyscirans, they objectify Diana far too much, they underdevelop every single character, so you just don’t care what happens. At the end of the film if the world had blown up I would have just rolled my glazed over eyes and turned off the TV.
To sum up, I definitely won’t be switching allegiance any time soon. And I certainly won’t be adding Justice League to my DVD collection.
Also, the poster is ugly AF.
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