Good, but not quite good enough to stop that immersion-breaking "God, I'm a grown man watching a superhero show" feeling.

Rating: 6/10 (24 November 2017)

I was worried this movie would suck. Not because of the movie's different directors, not because of the negativity surrounding BvS, not because of the sinful feelings I have when I see Wonder Woman's wondrous wonderbra: it's because this is a superhero movie and I'm not 12 anymore. I've got loans, man. I'm so busy with work I get guilty if I don't use what precious free time I have reading up on the news or doing one-handed pushups (or something. That's something adults do, right? Pushups?). I'm an adult, with a beard and everything: so, can I really watch a superhero movie and *not* get the guilties?
Answer, no, definitely not: especially with the Marvel movies. They've become virtue signaling romps, like that last Spiderman Homeburning or whatever it was it was called, where the only white people were racist, ignorant teachers or, uh: THE VULTURE. (BTW Marvel is owned by Disney, who also owns Star Wars (yikes) and Fox (double yikes). The latest Star Wars game, Battlefront II, has just come out, and you basically have to buy the game only to pay *real money* while *playing* the game to win. Disney's too big, man. Maybe one day they'll own DC, too: and if you have to "pay to win" then think of what other crap they'll pull in the future (or even now) and the Marvel superheroes start to look like tyrants, or at best colourful distractions.
But hey, I guess distractions are the name of the game. I have had a mad couple of weeks and I haven't been to the cinema since October, or whenever it was that Stephen King's IT came out ("IT" being, of course, Stephen King's disappointment to us all). Seeing a movie helps switch your brain off and, oh baby: I was overdue. When you're overburdened and up to your eyeballs in work, you gotta switch off: pay nine dollars to go to the movies on cheap nite and watch explosions and car crashes for 90 minutes. So, come on Justice League, I'm an adult, but let's see what you've got.
Parts of Justice League are genuinely funny. There are good quips back and forth and the story and dialogue doesn't take itself too seriously, a sin the Dark Knight and BvS movies committed. The movie's filled with action (yay), the CG is all cool to look at, and I really liked Steppenwolf, especially when they were explaining his backstory. His end is somewhat anticlimactic and this is a movie setting up future movies, but it's not as in-your-face about it as BvS was. (Or any Marvel movie. Yet another Infinity Stone? Great.)
But there are still those immersion-breaking moments that stop you from really getting into it, really enjoying it, really making you forget you're a grown man who's got a job that keeps him in the public eye (kinda). Batman's suit has limited head movement, so he's got to do that Michael Keaton thing where he turns his whole body around (or at least at the hips) to see who's standing juuuust to the left of him. The suit isn't as good as the Dark Knight versions and not having Christian Bale in the role hurts the whole universe thing via broken consistency. And, when Batman wears his armour batsuit without the mask it makes his head seem, God, how to say this delicately: comically small. That's a lot of this movie: people wearing big shiny armour suits (the Flash's is too red, looks like one of those (S&M? No, M&M) suits). Wonder Woman's costume is the most natural looking because it's the simplest, so it's the least distracting.
And, to reiterate a negative point: Steppenwolf was pretty darn cool, but his exit was unceremonious. And if Barry Allen's going to announce that he's Jewish, can Batman be a Rastafarian?
Anyway. Does Justice League suck? Pleasantly, no, it doesn't suck: but it's not great, either. It's somewhere between "just okay" and "pretty good." It's your bog standard baked potato, with a small splash of sexy, sour cream.
But I'll tell you, I enjoyed it much more than any of the Marvel movies I've seen in the last half a decade.