Justice League (2017) Review

Director: Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon (post-production)

Story Writers: Chris Terrio and Zack Snyder

Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Jon Berg, and Geoff Johns

Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, and Jason Momoa

Composer: Danny Elfman

Cinematographer: Fabian Wagner

Editor: David Brenner, Richard Pearson, and Martin Walsh

Production Company: DC Films

Part I: Introduction

As tired as I was with the superhero genre, I was curious to see what Justice League would do for the genre and for the DCEU franchise. If you know me, I'm a bigger fan of DC comics than Marvel but I've been disappointed with their startup films. Wonder Woman was the first movie I considered not to be terrible. Does this film live up to that positive momentum that Wonder Woman started? Unfortunately, it doesn't. 

Part II: Plot Synopsis

Set some time shortly after the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince set out to form a team of superheroes to stop the impending doom and invasion of Steppenwolf and an army of Parademons. 

Part III: Direction & Style

Direction
I'm aware that Joss Whedon was the director for most of the post production and directed some scenes, but Zack Snyder is the main director for this film. I'm not going to go into much detail with that, but from what I've seen, the overall direction here is pretty much the same I feel with a lot of Zack Synder's work, a lot of time, they're style over substance. The same way it's with this film. Though where I will give some praise is that I didn't notice any difference in direction from Whedon's or Snyder's. It did feel more consistent than expected, coming from a movie that had more than one person directing it. 

Style
Like I said earlier, a minor issue I had with the film is that a lot of its style is very flashy. That's usually how Zack Snyder is but the problem with that is that with those flashy CGI effects, there's not weight to that style. Again, I feel it's a style over substance type thing. This movie is more light-toned than previous DC movies except for Wonder Woman. At least it doesn't throw around jokes every 20 seconds like Marvel movies but it does feel a little more light than other DC movies put out in the past.

Part IV: Visual Presentation

Cinematography & Framing
Visually, this film doesn't look anything special. It doesn't really do anything interesting or to make it stand out besides the color palette. Speaking of the color palette, I really don't like their color palette. It makes their films look really bland. Wonder Woman stopped using that bland-looking color palette and look how that turned out. On top of that, it feels odd how they're aiming for a lighter tone but they have this bland color palette that suggests a darker tone than what it actually is.


Acting
The acting here isn't bad. I actually liked all of the cast that played their roles. If they had gotten a little bit better material, I would have liked their characters a bit better. Ezra Miller plays the Flash and he's supposed to be comic relief character. I didn't really feel his character was all that funny. I get that Flash was always the comic relief character in the lore in the comics. That's fine. And they changed Aquaman's character a little bit. I like a bit of this change. But again, the material that the actors were given and that fleshes out the characters is really bad. And that's not really the fault of the actors/actresses. I kinda feel a bit sorry for them. I genuinely feel that if they were given proper material, they would totally pull off compelling performances, but unfortunately, they were given a shallow script.

Visual Effects
I'm sorry but the visual effects in my opinion are god awful. I don't know where they put that $300 million to, but very little of it clearly went to the special effects department. That or their special effects team is really bad. A lot of the CGI effects look really bad coming from a big, AAA high-budget $300 million film, especially Stepphenwolf. And it's not just some scenes that look bad. A lot of the CGI looks either really mediocre or straight-up terrible.

Part V: Screenwriting & Character Composition

Script & Screenwriting

The script is absolutely terrible. Before I start trashing on the script, I will admit that that movie did have a few fun scenes. Mostly, the banter between the heroes was decent. I liked that. But, for the most part, the technical storytelling is atrocious. It takes the film forever to explain what is happening. And when it finally starts to pick up, things going on in the plot is poorly explained or doesn't make sense. Another major problem with the script is that it glosses over a lot of things. The plot is embarrassingly thin for a 2 hour movie. 

Character Composition

Even worse than the script, this movie literally has no character composition, one of the most idiotic decisions I've ever seen when it comes to storytelling is to gloss over introductory material for Cyborg, Aquaman, and Flash. At least for Marvel, even though most of their films aren't brilliant, at least Marvel was smart enough to make solo movies for the whole cast (except for Hawkeye and Black Widow) before coming out with the Avengers. Then when the Avengers finally came out, you knew who those characters were by then. I can't say the same for Justice League. Well, I know who these people are because I'm a DC fan, but if I wasn't, I probably would still not have much of a clue as to who Cyborg, Aquaman, and Flash are. You know you messed up in the character composition when at the end of the movie, people still ask "So, what is Cyborg supposed to be?" And people legitimately walked out of the theater and started asking those questions. People are not supposed to be asking those questions. That's a fundamental question that should have been addressed either in the movie or they should have just made a solo film for every character before Justice League. 

Pacing

The pacing is also really bad. The way the film is structured is so bad. It's just scenes that don't really go much anywhere other than setting up maybe a future film because it's so concerned about developing the DCEU rather than focusing on its own story. It feels like characters are just taking turns with scenes. For example, one scene you have Batman doing something. Then, it's Wonder Woman's turn. Then it's Cyborg's. Then it's Aquaman's. Then it's Flash's turn. Then they occasionally jump to Stepphenwolf doing something for his evil plan. Plot progression is also very bad. 

Part VI: Verdict & Conclusion

Look, I really didn't want to hate this movie. I'm a big DC fan. The movie has a lot of technical issues, namely its storytelling and visual effects. This movie is admittedly still better than BvS, but I'm still a bit disappointed how the movie continues some of the same things that made BvS such a bad film. It doesn't even feel like a film. It feels like an elongated trailer of other DC films they're going to put out in the future.

Score: C-