The Team of Heroes Deserves a Better Villain

Rating: 3/10 (26 February 2018)

If there were a real fight between Marvel and DC superhero movies, the referee would have stopped it a long time ago. Alas, this is not a one vs. one bout-both can continue to win. DC movies continue to make money (somehow). So once again we watch another dreary Zack Snyder landscape in a movie that looks inappropriately gloomy for one that includes people who fly.
Mercifully, Justice League is better than a few recent DC movie disasters, such as Suicide Squad and Batman vs. Superman. It still falls far short of the exceptional Wonderwoman, but in relative DC terms it feels like a win.
Part of that comes from actual genuine efforts to have fun. This movie has jokes. Sure, not all of them are funny, but at least one of the filmmakers (likely Joss Whedon) is trying to sprinkle in some joy.
Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller) shoots his shot. He may truly be funny. It's just hard to tell because so many of his lines are not. He delivers them earnestly and with proper comic timing, but he's not quite a comedy giant who can will subpar material to hilarious levels by sheer force of charisma. That's not a knock against him. Few actors ever have possessed such talents.
I only wish his co-stars on screen put in half his effort. Gal Gadot was fine, not sparkling like she was in Wonderwoman but fine. To the other superhero stars-I'm not at all impressed. You can do better.
Perhaps they lost their energy after reading the script, which is littered with hacky dialogue and boring, predictable plot points. Something happens at some point, but it doesn't go well so the team seeks help from someone to calm down the other someone (that's my anti-spoiler phrasing). This entire sequence of something could be considered a surprise but only if you have never seen another movie before. If that is the case, welcome to movies. Many of them are much better than this one.
The greatest flaw in the movie-and I know I'm burying the lead here-is that the villain is awful. Steppenwolf is the least complicated, least interesting villain in recent memory. He wants to acquire power because he wants to be powerful. There's nothing deeper or more complicated than that. The most interesting thing about him-he's tall. Cool.
That is essentially his only defining trait. No, wait. I forgot that he also carries an axe. That may be interesting to someone. The point is that he's about as deep as a raindrop, and an entire team of superheroes deserves a more compelling adversary.
Stay with me, just two more nitpicks.
One, I cannot stand seeing Amy Adams this tragically underutilized. She's a treasure, and this movie pays her a tremendous disservice. Two, this is second recent DC movie to blatantly exploit the most attractive female character's butt. For real, there are so many butt shots of Gal Gadot in this movie that it almost seems like certain scenes were filmed by a horny teenager.
If you're a DC diehard or pathological fan of superhero movies (my group meets every other Thursday), you can see this movie and not completely hate it. Otherwise, I recommend giving this a hard pass. Instead, go see Black Panther. It's 1000x times better.