Film Review - Justice League (2017)

Justice League is the newest entry of the DC Cinematic Universe and concerns Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) having to pull together an alliance of warriors consisting of The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) as Bruce fears that the end of the world is near following the death of Superman (Henry Cavill) but the world can’t be saved alone and with no Lanterns and no Kryptonians this world will fall, like all the others.

I was very excited to see this movie mainly because not only did I love Wonder Woman from earlier this year but the previews for this film got better and better showing not only the promise of a good villain steeped in the DC lore (Superman the Animated Series deals with this well if you want to find somewhere to catch up) but also the combination of director Zack Snyder’s visuals with Joss Whedon’s script writing flare what could possibly go wrong?

Well actually not much as I loved and I mean Loved this movie for these reasons:

- First off I want to start off with Ciaran Hinds as Steppenwolf I had read some criticism of him as a villain before seeing this movie but I enjoyed him in this movie mainly because he felt like someone that could tear through worlds much like Apokolips and the slaves of Darkseid and seeing him take on the Amazons from Wonder Woman was a real thrill and then to see him mock Diana because of it was just as thrilling as was his battles with the overall league.

- Secondly if you know your DC lore as I do having watched the animated Superman series as well as the first two seasons of the animated Justice League show I visibly gleed in my seat and had my mouth wide open at what I was seeing here not just the references to Apokolips and the New Gods but also Boom Tubes, Mother Boxes and Para Demons who serve a better purpose than the Chi-Tauri did in the first Avengers film and they tie into the main storyline very well I thought.

- And lastly I want to talk about the League overall and the films action sequences the League is very well realised with all the members getting good amounts of screen time and action beats and all of the members particularly the Flash are well developed Miller is a lot of fun as the Flash and he brings a real quirky energy to the role Momoa and Fisher are fine and Gadot and Affleck serve well as the 2 anchors of the team in terms of the leadership.

The action scenes here are terrific with a lot of high energy editing, huge battles and great dialogue throughout the fights in the past and with Steppenwolf in the present in particular were quite good and had me smiling in a big way.

However this film has one major problem and that is it doesn’t do enough to really setup the history that’s being portrayed in the movie in terms of Steppenwolf and the Mother Boxes and how it all ties to the various locations of the Universe there’s a little bit of it but those sequences really needed to be fleshed out more I wonder if Whedon and Snyder had a cut that was 140-150 minutes that did all that but then when Warner Brothers decreed that it must be 2 hours as has been reported recently all of that had to be cut back but there’s always Warner Home Video to do a longer version right.

And lastly the 3D is terrible I saw it in 2D and 3D and the 3D adds nothing its dark and murky and it looked really bad, the 2D however looked picture perfect.

And so that was Justice League and as someone who loves the DC world and the Animated Universe this was a real treat and while this phase of DC experimentation is over the trinity of Whedon, Snyder and Patty Jenkins is a strong one that this franchise needs to keep together going forward as what lies ahead is going to be very exciting, 4 out of 5.