Scust Ish Bleak
Roman Reigns once declared that he is not a good guy, nor a bad guy. He is simply
the guy. Well, today I can tell you that Justice League is not a good movie, and it's not a bad movie. Unfortunately, it's also not
the movie. I have seen a bunch of predictable posters do more retconning than a DC Crisis event these past few days to make it appear as if The Avengers was a bad movie. But The Avengers, even as it played out like a marginally better looking tv-movie for its first half, understood the build-up and importance of putting a group of famous characters together on screen for the first time. It felt like an actual
event, and it's that feeling that Justice League is sorely lacking. It feels as an accumulation of nothing, perhaps because we're now at a point that superhero cross-overs are very common, but most certainly because the movie lacks gravitas.
Let's start with a few things. I thought Steppenwolf had an awful design, almost as shytty as Ares in Wonder Woman, but anyone saying he's a shytty villain is talking out of their ass. Yes, his motivation is abysmal, but he feels like an actual threat the entire time. I honestly think there's not a moment when he's on screen where you don't feel like he will just trash everyone in it. He feels actually powerful and not in some forced way where he only gets strong due to some kind of power-up at the end for the big climactic battle. He's a powerhouse from the moment he first appears.
But about that, the boom tubes fukking suck. I am honestly truly fukking disgusted at how lame they made them look, like some generic portal. Like Steppenwolf's shytty design, one thing they got completely wrong here is that they completely fail to embrace Jack Kirby's creations in all of his glory. Kirby as a writer and an artist knew the power of extravagance and how it could make anything feel huge, but everything feels so downplayed and generic here. It's a stark contrast compared to Thor Ragnarok, a movie that went full Kirby and got all the more enjoyable because of it.
Furthermore, some of the writing in this is absolutely atrocious. There's tons of clumsy dialogue, especially in the early parts, with an abundance of pointless side characters (glorified extras really) to deliver on-the-nose exposition of the worst kind, in the absolute worst way. Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon are the credited writers on this, but in those early parts especially it feels like Whedon's writing and Snyder's direction are just a complete mismatch of styles. Add that you have baffling scenes like Batman calling Alfred by name in front of some lowely street thug (one of the aforementioned pointless side characters), Aquaman and Bruce openly discussing him being Batman in front of an entire village of people and Lois calling Superman Clark in front of a bunch of policemen, and it's like they decided to completely not give a shyt about secret identities in this universe. The writing does get better as the movie progresses, probably as a result of the characters being together and there being less blatant exposition, but there's also some awkward quips that just fall completely flat.
In fact, the humor only really works well for Flash. Although nothing about this Barry Allen characterization makes any sense, Ezra Miller brings the right kind of charm to the character and his scenes with Ray Fisher especially are some of the comedic moments that actually work. Fisher does some good work here too, making the most out of a shytty character who ironically has the best character arc in the movie. Also, contrary to reports Billy Crudup is still in the movie as Henry Allen, providing a little background for Flash. On the other side of the equation I felt nothing about this Aquaman characterization. It's overly trying to play cool with way too many outdated
'Do you talk to fish?' jokes, and his scene with Mera is a complete mess. If you know nothing about Aquaman,everything they talk about sounds like complete fukking gibberish. The only Aquaman scene in the entire movie that I liked was where he was being honest, because it was the only moment where he actually felt a bit more like how Aquaman should be.
As far as the action go they really establish Diana's power a lot here, she carries the weight in most of the fights and in general they do a good job of making the Amazons look like strong warriors. Which makes it all the more awkward that there's a bunch of shameless ass shots of Gadot here. Batman is just there. You can definitely tell Affleck doesn't want to be there, everything about his performance feels tired, and for whatever reason this completely bleeds into the action as well. How visceral they made Batman seem in BvS, how slow and bloated are his action scenes here. Add that every Batmobile/plane/tank scene is just a bunch of muddy, undecipherable CGI and you got very little going there.
Of course, there's also Superman, and I can be straight forward about it. They finally fixed him. In fact, there's one scene entirely dedicated to him skipping out of a fight to prioritize saving citizens, so MoS apologists take the L again. But more importantly, he finally got some charm and it is the first time in three movies that Cavill plays him right. Outside of some clumsy lines I can honestly say that the Superman bits are my favorite in the movie, and that's something I never expected to say about this universe's Superman.
I feel like there's a whole bunch of shyt I'm forgetting but I just want to say something about the pacing. I've seen a lot of criticism about the length and how it should've taken more time. I strongly disagree, the pacing and length of the movie is fine, I only think that some of the time they had could've been utilized better.
In the end this follows Wonder Woman as a solid blockbuster. It has some genuinely good moments, but unfortunately the WB stigma of trying to make these movies as generic as possible hangs all over the flick. I'm sure in coming days a lot of people will start speculating about or flat-out pretending they know which scenes were Snyder's and which were Whedon's, but I honestly couldn't tell the difference outside of the few obviously reshot Superman scenes.
"DC fans send out more death threats per year than ISIS. "
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we called it from day fukkin one, but nikkas said we was just tlkn out our ass bein haters. cyborg design is trash!