A huge mess but with still some fun to be had.

Rating: 5/10 (9 December 2017)

At this point, 'Justice League' has already been torn to shreds by most critics and rightly so. It is a mess of epic proportions and features some outright bizarre creative and technical choices. However I still felt compelled to give my two cents on it in a sort of post-mortem if you will. In a way we should have all knew this movie was doomed when WB announced that they were switching directors three quarters of the way through production. Although this is not always an automatic nail in the coffin of a film, it rarely ever turns out for the good especially on a tent pole project. Also given the previous incompetency of the people running the DC Extended Universe division at WB, it comes as no surprise that they couldn't make the director switch a smooth transition. But then again they may have been dealing with an original version of the movie by Zack Snyder which was already mediocre and so they tried (and failed) to patch it up. So when they brought Joss Whedon on board, a director with a style completely different to Snyder's, it's a possibility they were trying to prevent a ship from sinking. However this is all speculation and the way they got to the finished product is rather irrelevant to a review of said product. So now to the reasons why the movie is mostly disappointing but with some enjoyment to be had with these iconic characters.
The structure and plot of the film is predictably generic and par for the course as far as team up superhero movies go. A superhero team comes together, superhero team fights big bad, superhero team eventually defeats big bad and saves the world. In this case the team consists of Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) who are, in continuation of 'Batman V Superman', looking to assemble a team of people with special abilities to combat a huge alien threat that had been alluded to by Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). The newcomers are Barry Allen/The Flash who has super speed, Victor Stone/Cyborg who is well... a cyborg and Arthur Curry/Aquaman who is a half man half Atlantean. And in this case the big bad is Steppenwolf (not the rock band) who is unfortunately just a walking CGI punching bag. But he does have a cool voice thanks to Ciaran Hinds who does his best to deliver some menacing monologues as the character. The baffling thing here is why they didn't just do motion capture instead of a full CGI character that looks like something out of a PSP Lord of the Rings game. But I digress, so essentially Steppenwolf comes to Earth to retrieve three items called mother boxes for reasons that are poorly explained. The movie flashes back to the first time Steppenwolf invaded and shows the forces of Themyscira and Atlantis fighting him off to prevent him from getting one of these mother boxes. He needs them in order to and I'm paraphrasing 'unify the realms of evil' or something or other but the reason ends up being pointless and completely inconsequential anyway. So we have a movie of the team assembling and trying to figure out how to defeat Steppenwolf and then eventually doing so with the help of a resurrected Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) . This is not a spoiler as is it virtually common knowledge at this point.
As far as the performances go everyone is fine and give serviceable turns particularly Aflleck and Gadot as the leads. Momoa is also very cool as a surfer dude type. Ray Fisher in his first big screen role impresses as a man who lost his limbs in an accident and had to be put back together by his father using bionics. Ezra Miller as talented as he is eventually becomes annoying and almost cringe worthy in his role as Barry Allen. However this isn't entirely his fault. In fact the writing of his character is the main culprit as most of his screen time is comprised of forced jokes and childish humor. There are some pluses to his portrayal in how he represents innocence and vulnerability as kind of the 'kid' of the group dynamic. Th main fun to be had with this flick is the interactions between the characters who all get their moments in either funny moments or downright awesome moments. However that leads me into another way the movie falters and that's focusing on moments rather scenes. Scenes are not allowed to breathe and develop, it just feels like you are constantly being told 'ok this happened' and it then cuts immediately to the next scene or moment more appropriately. This is the same problem that 'Batman V Superman' had and it really needs to stop if the film makers of this cinematic universe want to replicate the success they had with Wonder Woman. It is very apparent that this is what happened here when you realize the original cut was 165 minutes long and they managed to shave it down to 120 minutes. Clearly a lot of footage is missing from the finished product as one can deduce just by watching one of the trailers for this movie. It's also sad that this run time was a mandate set by the head of the studio. Apparently it was a response to audience criticisms that 'Batman V Superman' was too long but ironically in 'fixing' this issue they have arguably made a worse product.
In conclusion, if you can tolerate the scattershot comedy, the often distracting CGI especially Superman's top lip- They had to digitally remove Henry Cavill's mustache due to his role in Mission Impossible 6 which prevented him from shaving it- and the derivative plot and villain then you might some fun with this one if you are already a fan of these characters and the DC Extended Universe. Let's just hope 'Aquaman' is much, much better.