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YES, I AM STILL ALIVE. I understand it’s been a while since I wrote a proper blog post on here but I have a good reason people! I’m studying full-time for my bachelor degree in media. Doing weekly assignments on top of managing a media project, preparing a dissertation, and conducting a heap of presentations, group assignments, and strategizing a business plan does tend to take up a pretty large chunk of your life so yeah I’ve been a little busy. The last few months since I last blogged have been hectic (moving house, college, etc.) and I just haven’t had to time to write a blog post about, well, anything. I recently went to see Justice League with some friends so I thought I’d get off my lazy (well, quite damn busy actually) bum and write a movie review on it.
Okay, I’m not going to lie, but I was freakishly excited for this movie to come out. My first time watching the trailer had me ecstatic. Seeing Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash on the big screen together was something that excited not just me but every DC fan out there. As you probably know, my childhood was saturated in the DCAU (DC Animated Universe.) I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and of course the Justice League animated series on repeat. So the Justice League movie was obviously a big deal. However, I still had my doubts. Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad were both huge disappointments so I was a little worried.
I liked this movie but I didn’t love it. This was the same feeling I got when walking out of Batman V Superman but it wasn’t that super awful disappointing feeling you get when you finally see that movie you’ve been edging to see and then it ends up being a total let-down. Justice League didn’t disappoint me exactly. I was actually quite pleased with the movie in some aspects. Yes, it didn’t blow me away but it did certainly entertain me. Sure, it has issues concerning the characters and the villain but overall it’s not terrible. As many of you know, Justice League underwent an immensely difficult production process when director Zack Snyder’s daughter, Autumn Snyder, committed suicide earlier in the year which forced him to leave the movie. Joss Whedon was then asked to continue working on the movie and reshoots had to be made – some of which had to be done with a moustache-donning Henry Cavill who was filming Mission Impossible 6 at the time. Because Henry had to keep the moustache on account of Mission Impossible 6, his moustache had to be digitally removed in the Justice League reshoots.
The story of Justice League centers on Batman/Bruce Wayne rallying up a group of people with special powers – Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, Victor Stone/Cyborg, Arthur Curry/Aquaman, and Barry Allen/The Flash – to fight Steppenwolf, the movie’s main villain. Justice League begins in the wake of Superman’s death where the world is in mourning where Steppenwolf returns to Earth in search of the three mother boxes that are used to form “the unity” with each mother box hidden with the Amazonians, the Atlanteans, and on Earth. The Amazonians on Thermytira warn Diana of Steppenwolf’s arrival, and this pushes Bruce and Diana to form the Justice League to stop him. One of the things I heavily disliked about the movie was the introductions to the characters. Barry Allen and Victor Stone’s introductions were very rushed and I felt we didn’t get enough time to understand their backstories and actually feel for them. I think Barry’s story would have been more impactful if The Flash’s solo movie had been released before Justice League and the same goes for Cyborg too. I felt that because these two had to be introduced so quickly, we didn’t get to see much of a scope into how they became who they are.
The deleted scene from the trailer which showed us an emotional Victor Stone would have worked beautifully to create more of a contrast with Victor’s usual robotic personality in the movie. Another scene we saw showed Barry saving Iris West which was another major disappointment that I was really looking forward to seeing on screen. So many amazing scenes and footage were cut out and I do feel that if they were included, it would have given Justice League more depth and would’ve made a hell lot of more sense. YET ANOTHER SCENE THAT WAS CUT OUT was Lois Lane looking up at the sky in Metropolis which many fans speculated was Clark flying while passing through the city after being resurrected by the league. In the movie, Clark is looking around the city of Metropolis, confused and lost, and next thing we see Lois and Alfred suddenly showing up in a car with Lois making her way over to Clark. If that one scene with Lois hadn’t been deleted from the final cut, this scene would have made more sense. It just annoyed me how Lois and Alfred just appeared out of nowhere and knew where Clark was. ARRRRGH!
So many scenes in this movie irritated me. Most of which were written by Joss Whedon (obviously.) Many of these consisted of a large amount of sexism towards Diana’s character which really pissed me off and some scenes had questionable dialogue – should I dare mention the “thirty” scene between Lois and Martha? Much of the humour felt a little awkwardly forced and that jokes were just added in for the hell of it rather than actually relating to the story and what was going on. It just annoyed me how there was so much potential for this movie and it didn’t do it for me which is a shame. I will most definitely be watching Zack Snyder’s director’s cut whenever it is released. And I do understand that many DCEU fans loved Justice League as a movie and that’s great, it’s just I felt it could have been better. (My opinion of course.)
And so that concludes my Justice League movie review. I liked it but I sadly didn’t love it which is such a shame because I was very excited to see it. I do think Zack Snyder’s vision for this story seemed very interesting and loved what he did with some of the visuals for this particularly at the beginning of the movie where the world is seen to be heavily impacted by Superman’s passing. Some of the visual work there was very well done. And Joss Whedon, well, he did finish the movie but oh my god, some of the scenes he wrote in were just too much for me to handle. This has me quite scared for what he has in store for the Batgirl movie. Barbara Gordon is one of my favourite female characters in DC so I’m hoping the script he’s working on for that movie is nowhere near as horrendous as his 2006 Wonder Woman script or how he treated Wonder Woman in this movie. All we can do is hope for the best I suppose.
I know this review seemed very negative but I did enjoy the film for the most part and it did entertain me to a large extent. It just it didn’t leave me with that feeling of wanting to watch it again. The only thing that managed to excite me about the whole movie were that brief scene with Mera in Atlantis (because Mera is my ultimate Atlantean fave) and the psot-credit scene with Lex and Deathstroke (because OH MY GOD JOE MANGANIELLO AS SLADE WILSON IS TOO PERFECT!!!!) Thank you all for reading this review. Hopefully during the Christmas period I get the time to write more posts and reviews because I have missed writing on my blog so very much. Til next time!
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