Part 3 of the Superman Trilogy

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2017)

Warning! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. So if you haven't seen the movie already, come back and read this later.
When I got home from the theater, my (adult) daughter who was visiting said, "So, you went to see Wonder Woman And Her Boring Friends?" That's one way to look at it (and she's not entirely wrong), but really folks, I thought JL was pretty good and my vote of 7/10 reflects a good-but-not-great assessment. Top rank for superhero-teamup movies in my book still goes to the first Avengers and possibly the second X-Men for their quality of characters and story.
JL (the movie) doesn't quite live up to the expectations generated by its huge publicity and multiple-trailer campaign, but there are a lot of good things, and a few not-so-good, that are worth saying about it.
(1) A workable approach to it is -- don't overthink it. On one level, it's just fun to see all these popular characters together fighting one of DC Comics' top villains. Sort of like going to see a Star Trek movie where we get to watch the familiar gang on another adventure. The plot moves along quickly with not much time given to character-driven sidelights or extensive dialog (but see below - that's both a strength and a weakness). Not overstuffed with material like BvS was. Leave it to films like Logan and Wonder Woman to achieve such quality that they leak over into the mainstream-movie world of critical acclaim -- just go and enjoy it.
(2) It turns out to be pretty even-handed about giving screen time to each major player: Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, and the long-awaited (!) Superman. As expected, they each get to do their particular things in the various fight/action scenes. And riding on the runaway success of WW's own movie this past summer, even her top fans won't have too much to complain about -- she's in a whole lot of scenes and they move her character development forward a bit more. Makes you wonder what they'll do for her 2019 sequel (if indeed it's supposed to be put into the gap between World War I and the present time), but Patty Jenkins is brilliant and will pull something off.
(3) Now that it's out, we can finally see JL as the real Part Three of a Superman Trilogy. Big Blue is the one common factor linking Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman (2016), and now Justice League, and frankly it's great to see him back -- personally there's a limit to how much grim-and-gritty dystopianism I'm willing to watch. I'm a traditionalist, I like to see the good guys win, and I like to see a good guy who's just flat-out stronger than the bad guys. So now he's saved the world from super-aliens three times! The movies need Superman and his idealism connected with power in troubling times just as much as in happy times. This 3-film sequence also pretty easily fits a semi-Christian god-mythos interpretation: in Man of Steel we get his birth and life, in BvS his trial and (suitably heroic and sacrificial) death, and in JL his resurrection. Director Zack Snyder drove this in a bit more by framing him sitting in front of stained-glass windows, hanging in the sky with flying cape and outstretched arms, and so forth. But I'm not complaining. After the ending of MoS and BvS I wondered (along with other viewers) why the heck he hated Superman so much, but now I'm happy to back off a bit and give Snyder more credit for the longer view.
(4) For my money The Flash worked out the least well. His various one-liner quips fell flat and much of the time he was just an awkward presence. If they're going to go forward with him, the character needs rethinking. At times, the dialog wasn't any better than a decent TV show. Maybe this is an unfortunate byproduct of the patchwork way that JL had to be put together (with Zack Snyder forced to leave early because of family tragedy, and Joss Whedon coming in as a late substitute with his very different tonal style). But there's no substitute for good scriptwriting.
(5) The main problem with this film is that it's too short. An epic with this level of publicity buildup should have more in it. But don't stuff in more action -- what's there is plenty. Instead, what I wanted was more character interaction and especially giving more to the supporting roles (Lois, Martha, Commissioner Gordon, Silas Stone, Mera, Hippolyta, and above all the wonderful Alfred. Think about how many scenes each of them got and how brief they were!) The actors playing these roles are all first-rate, and giving them more screen time would have lifted this movie to a new level. And PS -- the Amazons once again are great!
(6) The several different trailers teased a LOT of scenes and dialog (as many as 10, according to Flickering Myth) that never actually appeared in the movie itself. ???!? Something's wrong here. This is the first case of misdirection-by-trailer-overload that I've experienced and I hope Warner Brothers don't do this again.
(7) Superman, just to drive it in, is really powerful! One scene shows him holding all the others at once to a standstill, and when he finally got the chance to nail Steppenwolf, you could just feel his punches landing like sledgehammers. If all I had were superhero films with Superman and Wonder Woman, I'd be just fine.