Justice League (’17 review)

4 outta 5

After much fretting, box office, “Martha!”, and lines in the sand between Marvel’s Avengers and DC’s heroes, the eventual result is DC’s Justice League. Happily, this is a sturdy and entertaining superhero ensemble movie.   The DC movies have been a bit mixed.  Man of Steel has a great hook as a space alien invasion movie that happens to have Superman in it.  The opening of Batman v Superman plays off that invasion…. then the rest of the movie happens.  Suicide Squad skates by on being a collection of oddballs acting odd and Wonder Woman has heart and period piece flair.  Justice League is in the superheroic mode like Wonder Woman and without the gloom that permeated Batman V Superman and Man of Steel.   Justice League is a blatant tonal reset but it clicks.

Superman (Henry Cavill) is dead and the world is descending into chaos.  Batman (Ben Affleck) is dealing with crime and flying creatures called Parademons.  For help, he reaches out to other powered metahumans like Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), the speedster the Flash (Ezra Miller), the exiled underwater king Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and the technologically enhanced but reclusive Cyborg (Ray Fisher).  They have to stop the evil alien Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) who controls the Parademons and is in search of the ancient, powerful technology known as Mother Boxes to reshape Earth.   And the only way to stop Steppenwolf is to bring back Superman from beyond the grave.

Justice League pulls off distinct personalities and looks for each of the superheroes.  Batman is the team leader but not everyone respects him which puts him in an interesting position.   Wonder Woman gets to be the muscle which lets Gadot excel at being cool.  Aquaman is the bruiser and Momoa has some very funny moments like when he’s accidentally holding Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth.  Fisher’s Cyborg has some cool powers although his character is sort of dull as he spends most of the movie moping.   A standout is The Flash and one of the movie’s best bits is when Batman tells Flash to save just one person and after that he’ll know what to do.  Cavill’s Superman bounces back more like a classic hero.  His initial return goes nicely sideways as Justice League tries to reason with him and by the finale he’s the ultimate, unstoppable icon.

Zack Synder has directed three DC superhero movies, Man of Steel, Batman V Superman and Justice League and this is the shortest and zippiest.  There’s definitely stuff done better in this movie compared to Synder’s last two outings; the opening scene in Justice League of kids interviewing Superman on their cellphone has more emotional resonance than any of the Superman’s death and funeral in Batman V Superman. 

Synder had a writing and reshoot assist from Joss Whedon (who also wrote and directed two Avengers movies for Marvel) so it feels like Avengers.  Although in Justice League the characters just start quipping like in Avengers which is a bit jarring coming off some very serious films.  Flash especially is consistently funny as he may be the Fastest Man Alive but battling actual super-powered people is way out of his league. Hilariously, in a movie full of quips the funniest thing in Justice League involves silent eye contact between Flash and Superman.  Justice League gets the Big Super Personalities Clashing aspect right, which is very important to getting a superhero team up movie to work.  

There is a bit of a stumble where Batman’s post-apocalyptic, evil Superman nightmare and Flash randomly appearing and hollering “Did I come back too soon?” from Batman V Superman isn’t paid off. Flash doesn’t jump back in time here which is annoying as it’s not a particular mystery that needs to be stretched out over multiple movies. Evil Superman isn’t touched upon aside from Superman being initially somewhat testy when he is resurrected.

A big problem with Justice League is the villain is pretty lame.  Steppenwolf is a sort of convincing CGI character who wants to take over the world with his CGI Army of Parademons.  It doesn’t help his grand scheme to terraform the Earth into his home planet is exactly the same grand scheme as Zod in Man of Steel. Steppenwolf is basically there for the Justice League to punch although Hinds puts in some good line deliveries as when a victim says they have a family and Steppenwolf confusedly asks “Why do people telling me that?” A somewhat lesser problem is there is a bunch of superhero lore and backstory in this film with first time appearances by many big DC characters.  Comic geeks will go along for the ride easily however League could be entirely incomprehensible to newbies.  There’s also a few pointless things like Cyborg brooding or Aquaman’s brief excursion to his home of Atlantis that doesn’t amount to much.

The action in the movie is really great featuring some of the biggest stuff in the series with a lot of fun beats.  While Justice League may show some seams as it was stitched together from Synder to Whedon it does hold together.   It took a while for DC to realize being superheroes can actually be fun and the DC Extended Universe is much better for it.