"You lunatics better know what you're doing."

Rating: 7/10 (17 April 2018)

I waited to catch this movie on DVD because I'm kind of tired being disappointed by DC super-hero films in the theater. If one considers this story as a sequel to 'Dawn of Justice', then it works well enough to bring Superman (Henry Cavill) back from the dead, but that's about it. The plot is oh, so familiar, in that we have three missing 'mother boxes' that need to be reunited to form the 'Unity', an apocalyptic power that can destroy worlds and transform them into primordial hell-scapes. How many times have we been exposed to that kind of scenario? The master villain this time is a character with the not so original name of Steppenwolf, and for folks like myself who've been around a while, that only brings back memories of a Magic Carpet Ride.
This might actually be the most comic-bookish movie I've yet seen, as most of the action sequences looked like the panels of a comic strip. Most notable as an example would be any of those featuring Barry Allen's Flash whenever he got up to warp speed. Speaking of which, I thought Ezra Miller was too young to be portraying a DC hero along side such stalwarts as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. These were my Silver Age icons back in the Fifties and early Sixties, so I couldn't relate to his character here as part of the Justice League. Jason Momoa brought an unexpected regal bearing to the person of Aquaman/Arthur Curry, while Cyborg (Ray Fisher) I couldn't relate to at any level as he wasn't part of my comic book past. So my biggest question about establishing this first installment of the super hero club was 'Where's Green Lantern'? I thought that was a big mistake and a major unforced error.
But of course, the finale sets us up for the sequel with Batman (Ben Affleck), or I should say, Bruce Wayne, using his wealth to buy a huge building for the Justice League headquarters. There was a hint of new members, so it would have been cool if the after-credits scenes offered a glimpse of additional super-heroes, but the most we got was the tease of a Superman/Flash race and a potential team up between Luthor and Deathstroke. What I'd really like to see in future DC based stories is some of the humor that the Marvel folks manage to incorporate into their pictures, most notably the recent "Thor: Ragnarok". I think the DC heroes would be better served by not having the writers take things so seriously.