Bloated and Poorly Executed...so an Improvement

Rating: 6/10 (15 November 2017)

If Batman V Superman is the oozing, puss-filled, body wound to the DCEU than Justice League is the haphazardly applied bandage that's currently dressing it. It works at least as far as mitigating the damage, stopping the bleeding and keeping this ugly-looking spectacle alive, but it's not exactly the miracle cure for the mountains of ills currently plaguing the DCEU that fans were hoping for. What exactly does that make Suicide Squad; I don't know, probably the gangrene?
Seemingly only a couple of weeks since the death of Superman, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince aka Batman and Wonder Woman preemptively team-up to protect the world from external threat. To help them, they recruit young upstarts Barry Allen and Victor Stone aka The Flash and Cyborg; as well as marine demigod Arthur Curry aka Aquaman. This is so they can face down the eventual threat of the sinister Steppenwolf and his army of fear-fueled creatures from places unknown aka some inter-dimensional/space traveling hypno-beam (the film is not clear on this point).
Starting with the good, the films as-of-yet introduced superheroes are interesting enough characters handled with the best of care by their actors. Miller especially does an excellent job keeping the mirth coming while staying true to the spirit and tone of The Flash and movie respectively. Momoa straight up shows up as Momoa sans the dreads but the rock star bravado he's known for works and works well all things considered. Fisher pulls double duty as a near constant fountain of exposition as well as a living breathing character worth investing in. It doesn't always work given the paragraphs worth of beans he needs to spill but at least no one is calling him the professor yet.
The brightest star however is Gadot whose stunning beauty and otherworldly accent perfectly encapsulates every superficial thing we love about Wonder Woman. On a deeper level, Diana's naivetÃ© from the fondly revered Wonder Woman movie is gone, but what's still there is an inner strength that both serves to ground this movie, while being an understandable progression of a character now centuries old.
The fact that Wonder Woman is the only character worth not just caring for but believing in should be an indication of what's the biggest problem with this movie. Even with the Batman in the mix, the stitched-together cadre feels less like the world's mightiest heroes and more like a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. They're given just enough time to go over their skill set and motivations but its all bullet points and untrimmed fat that at times derails the film's pacing. Take a scene transition early on where Bruce Wayne is buttering up Aquaman. This scene is then set against Wonder Woman's action-packed introduction, an edit that arguably works on a narrative level but feels jammed in there like a Janis Joplin tune played just after a cover of "Come Together".
What's worse, Justice League always seems to be in a rush to get somewhere guaranteeing moments of depth and exposition stick out harshly against the action. Bruce Wayne jets here and there, Steppenwolf picks a fight with the Amazons and the Atlantians, Wonder Woman comes swooping through a terrorist plot etc. It's all action-packed in its own bruising, unremarkable way, but none of it is good at conveying information, establishing stakes or forwarding the plot.
Luckily the plot is so simple as to ensure the slow bits are over quickly. Evil-because-he's-evil Steppenwolf wants all the shiny cubes and our protagonists are doing everything in their power to stop him. That's basically it, a first draft good versus evil macguffin hunt that seems to be avoiding themes from the other films until a certain subplot makes it impossible. It doesn't add anything to the genre that they're fighting the third DC villain in five movies with a horned helmet on some power trip about world destruction but at least it makes sense this time around.
And before you go huffing and puffing about how the complex mythology behind Superman, Darkseid and the infinite Earth crisis is justification for the repetitiveness; you need to first read the forthcoming sentence aloud and slowly. Movies do not require homework! Knowing the larger purpose and machinations of a motherbox is no more an indication of this movies quality than reading The Dark Knight Returns retroactively makes BvS not a pile of garbage. Enough makes sense this time around but it's still repetitive.
And can we take a moment to talk about Batfleck again? I was very loudly not a fan of his older, reactionary Batman in BvS but since that movie was such a dumpster fire, I was willing to give everyone involved a mulligan so long as this one was at least passable. It is, but the poor man still looks like a bewildered stepfather who won the part in a raffle and continues wearing the cowl because his stepson finally thinks he's cool. It's just not a good use of your Affleck. Affleck is good for two things: being an a**hole and being a quiet blank slate a la his character in Argo. Batman is neither of those things but thanks to Affleck he comes across as both. Not something you want for the founder of the Justice League.
A reported $25 million worth of reshoots, the unexpected absence of director Zack Snyder due to personal reasons and a shaky foundation built upon the most hated franchise movie to come out since Batman & Robin; it's actually kind of impressive this thing didn't turn out worse. It's not up to the level of another team-up movie that shall remain nameless but at least with Justice League, DC and Warner Bros. prove they're slowly learning from their mistakes. I admire this movie, I really do, but to the extent that I'd admire a fat guy running a marathon. It's trying; it's just too ill-prepared and bloated to do the job efficiently.