Justice League - Spoiler Free Review

Rating: 7/10 (14 September 2018)

Man of Steel was awful, Batman v Superman wanted to make me give up watching movies and now I have seen Justice League...this movie wasn't bad, don't get me wrong, there was still a lot wrong with this movie, but at the very least I can say that this is a very entertaining film, not only that, but it did fix most the things that were wrong with the previous installments. The trailers made this movie look as if it was going to follow the Marvel route of action/comedy and it doesn't, this is still a rather dark movie; what they have done though is give sense of humours to the characters, giving them more likeability and making them much easier to route for than before. Ben Affleck, of course, returns as Batman/Bruce Wayne and although I was in the minority who thoroughly disliked his portrayal in the previous film, I actually didn't mind him here. Not only did they give his character a sense of humour, but they also made him a lot more human; in this film, Bruce Wayne knows that he is just a normal person with human limitations; he acknowledges this, bringing a vulnerability to his character and making him a lot more identifiable. Gal Gadot again fits perfectly into the role of Wonder Woman, her action scenes are great and her character is sexy as hell, more than that though, from the get-go she is an intricate part of the team; Black Widow has always been part of The Avengers, but her character has always been interchangeable, eye candy that could basically be killed off at any second without any major repercussions to the plot: that is definitely not the case here. The new characters are of course Barry Allen/The Flash, Arthur Curry/Aquaman and Victor Stone/Cyborg; Barry Allen is the comic relief character in this movie, and for the most part, it works fine; most his lines are jokes, sure, but that's how his character is written and it fits fine, even during the battle scenes, when he does throw a comical one-liner, it never takes you out of the scene, because you can actually believe that that is something that character would say in that situation. Then looking at Aquaman: Jason Mamoa is awesome! This is probably the best role I've ever seen him in, his character is likeable, tough as hell and Jason Mamoa just seems to be having the time of his career; I could maybe have done with a few less "yo bro" or other slang terms that got increasingly more as his character progressed, but that's a nitpick. Then we get to Cyborg...I, unfortunately, did not like Cyborg. Not only is this character a wet blanket, but his character has zero likeability, zero personality and every line he speaks is basically just him explaining the plot, another character I REALLY hated was the villain, Steppenwolf; this character is what kept this movie from being good, everything is wrong with him: the CGI is awful, every line he has is cliched supervillain talk, his motives have nothing new...Ivan Ooze from the 1993 Power Rangers movie: better villain than this guy. Finally getting past the characters and looking at the movie itself though, I will say that even though we spend the majority of the first act being introduced to new characters, this movie was still a lot more focused than the previous installments, and therefore was able to hold my attention for the whole of its two hour running time. The action scenes are brilliantly choreographed, easy to follow and fun to watch; the heart of this movie is the team though; I will go so far as to say, even though this was DC's first official team-up movie, there is already a stronger feeling of unity between the team than Marvel has been able to create since starting the MCU; every character has his place, every character has a purpose and what's more is they work together as a team, there are no power struggles, sure there are inner conflicts, but never do they let that cloud their judgement from what their joint goal is...these are superheroes actng the way superheroes should act, putting the needs of the many before their own. Final thoughts, as I said in the beginning, there are still problems with this film, the villain was a huge letdown, some of the CGI is really bad, some line delivery is rather cringe-worthy...but even with that taken into account, I still fully recommend you see this movie, because I get a feeling that there are actually great things yet to come from the DCU after all...watch your back, Marvel.