Justice League (2017)

Justice League (2017)

IMDB Rating  8.7/10

PG-13 | 2h 1min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman's selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy.

Director: Zack Snyder

Writers: Chris Terrio (screenplay by), Joss Whedon (screenplay by)

Stars: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa

 IMDB link Here

Together At Last, But Still Not Strong Enough

Dani Di Placido

After years of buildup, and a criminally underwhelming introduction to the members of the League via an onscreen computer screen, the team is finally, officially, united. And the result is decent, but half-hearted.

To be fair, it’s not really DC’s fault that they’re so late to the game, and that the whole “I’m putting a team together” trope veered into parody years ago. The first act is certainly the worst of the film, as Batman gathers the team and tells them the world is ending, and all that. You’re dying for it just to happen, to just be thrown into the action and learn the details later, because you’ve seen it all before. But when the League is assembled, things quickly improve.

Justice League is fairly funny, at times, and many of the action scenes are impressive, but the villain is ridiculously boring. Like, Marvel boring. Worldender, I mean, Steppenwolf, looks like a God of War cutscene inserted into a blockbuster. He looks cool and all, but he doesn’t emanate any sense of threat. He talks vaguely about “ultimate power,” but really, the guy doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose; he’s a human tank built to plow through the League and make them look useless. 

And they are weirdly useless, and mismatched. Wonder Woman and Batman always have good chemistry together, but Batman definitely looks out of his depth fighting alien demons. He swings away from them a lot, and hides in his gun-toting machine. But it’s ok because he’s Batman and we love him, even if he’s made for the gritty streets of Gotham and not an apocalyptic battle.

Cyborg is perfectly likable, but dull. He moans way too much because he feels like a monster, but we don’t really have time to dwell on that, and let’s be real, nobody cares. Just enjoy yourself kid - you’re a superhero now. His coating of GCI was a little disconcerting, as we only have half a human face to look at, so it’s tricky to really connect with him.

Flash got all the laughs, and he deserved them. As the teenage fanboy who’s not really a hero at all, he's the most interesting person there, and a kind of onscreen representation of the audience. He’s literally a starstruck kid who got dragged into a war zone, and brings a much-needed human touch, as well as a stark contrast to Batman’s middle-aged world-weariness.

Aquaman was enjoyable, but trying way too hard to be “cool.” I understand the character has been a running joke in pop culture for decades, but they really overcompensate here. His introduction, when he steals the whiskey and swaggers along the beach chugging it down, was as awesome as an aging father driving a hoodless Lamborghini, clad in an oversized leather jacket and blasting tunes from the seventies.

That being said, it’s impossible not to like Jason Momoa, and I actually want to see him in his solo film, because it’s clear he has absolutely nothing to contribute to the Justice League whatsoever. All those jokes about talking to fish, and being useless on dry land, are still relevant, because his finest hour is when he rescues the team from a giant water spillage. As Liam Neeson might say, the man has a very specific set of skills.

Wonder Woman has already established herself as awesome, so there’s not a lot to say about her. Her Lasso of Truth is certainly put to good use, but mostly she stands around smiling at the boy’s mischievous exploits. She’s better solo, really.

In fact, I got the feeling that they’d all be better solo, and that this movie only exists because Marvel did it, and now they had to do it too, only it’s too late to differentiate themselves properly. But DC does have a visual edge over Marvel; Zack Snyder really understands how to translate a lurid comic book onscreen and retain the visual splendor, without looking in the least bit silly.

All-in-all, Justice League certainly isn’t a bad effort, but isn’t particularly memorable either. It serves as a setup for spin-offs, and a potential sequel. The audience reaction in my cinema was interestingly divided, as the fans loudly argued amongst themselves to whether or not the film was actually good, as we all waited for the after-credits scenes.

There were a lot of disappointed fans, and just as many incredulous fans defending the film’s awesomeness. I think the real answer lies in the middle, and that the film was a major step-up from DC’s previous efforts, but not worth going out of your way to see.

For those of you who have seen the film, let’s talk Superman. Weirdly enough, the film is saved by him, of all people. Just to clarify, I really really hate Superman. I think he’s one of the most bland, uninteresting characters ever conceived. But here, among friends, he actually works. I especially enjoyed his fury at being resurrected, which led to the greatest scene in the film.

Flash speeding past Superman, only for Superman to actually notice him and react at the same speed, was brilliant, and horrifying. I felt genuinely frightened of him - Superman really felt like a threat, a god amongst demi-gods, and as he swings at the helpless kid, it’s clear every punch could kill him, and Superman doesn’t care.

The Flash scene was followed by Batman vs. Superman, in a scene that managed to top the entirety of Batman V. Superman. This is really how the fight between the two should have gone - Batman, helpless as a child, is nothing without his glowing green cheat codes. But being Batman, there’s always a plan B, and he effectively disarms his opponent by appealing to his humanity. It wasn’t a fight at all, but a plea to stop.

Not to mention, the League spent the entire film ineffectively fighting Steppenwolf, only for Superman to destroy him in seconds. Superman is always overpowered, but the fact that he’s standing among his supposed peers and is still unstoppable, really elevates the character as a living god. I’ve never really seen him depicted in this way before, and I thought it was interesting. Watching Justice League made me crave a sequel where Superman turns evil, because I’m tired of demonic alien invaders trying to terraform the planet. Let’s see the Messiah turn twisted; it’s a more frightening idea than a villain who is evil by nature.

I’m not sure what DC plans for the future, especially as their plans seem to fluctuate day-by-day, but they appear to be on the right track for future success.

 Read full review at Forbes

Movie Rating ★☆☆☆☆

The superhero superflops: Batman and Wonder Woman's Justice League is a crime against Cinema

BRIAN VINER

The last movie from the so-called DC Extended Universe, Wonder Woman, came out this year to positive reviews, some of which verged on the rhapsodic.

Audiences flocked to see it. But Justice League, the fifth film in the DC series, makes it worth flocking in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the universe might not be extended enough to avoid it.

It aims to be a kind of superhero version of The Magnificent Seven, with Batman (Ben Affleck) assembling a team of all the talents to foil the dastardly Steppenwolf, an enormous fiend (voiced by Ciaran Hinds) with a battalion of flying demons at his disposal.

The original director was Zack Snyder, who had to withdraw in the most tragic of circumstances, after his daughter killed herself.

In stepped Joss Whedon, who is no slouch in the comic-book genre, having written and directed 2015’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron for DC’s deadly enemies over at Marvel. But whatever tinkering Whedon did, it was either too much or too little.

Justice League is not just incoherent, it makes no attempt even to explain certain narrative threads. Why does Steppenwolf make his base in a benighted town somewhere in the former Soviet Union, plainly based on Chernobyl?

Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Vladimir Putin interfered in the script-writing process.

The team of superheroes, meanwhile, is one player short of a tilt at glory. It has Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), who begins the movie by thwarting terrorists in London. And it has Aquaman (Jason Momoa), who zooms along under the seven seas saving ships in distress, like an all-powerful lifeboat in the guise of one man with loads of tattoos.

With Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash also up for the fight, that makes a formidable unit. Yet they are nothing without Superman (Henry Cavill). But Superman is dead, having gone for a burton (a bit like the film itself) in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice...

It hardly counts as a spoiler — since Cavill’s name looms large on the credits — to let on that Superman is duly exhumed and quickly looks about as hale and hearty as any self-respecting superhero.

This makes something of a nonsense of everything that’s gone before, like Bobby Ewing soaping himself back to life in the shower, in the TV drama Dallas of blessed memory. Then, Bobby’s death turned out to have been a horrible dream.

Here, Superman just needs some mates to dig him up. Soon he is reunited with Lois Lane (Amy Adams), for a clinch in a field of corn, one of the corniest fields you’ll ever see.

Incidentally, Justice League also features Jeremy Irons, who looks more world-weary than ever as Alfred, the butler to Batman’s alter- ego, Bruce Wayne. He has a great deal to be world-weary about. The script and the plot, for starters. Even the special effects look tired.

 Read full review at Daily Mail

Movie Rating ★☆☆☆☆

 DC's superhero embarrassment is beyond saving

Robbie Collin

“A man I knew used to say that hope was like your car keys,” quips Superman (Henry Cavill) at the beginning of Justice League, into a cameraphone clutched by a couple of flustered schoolboy fans. “It’s easy to lose, but if you dig around, it’s usually close by.”

Yet there’s no trace of the stuff in Warner Bros’ latest hapless attempt to jump-start their DC Comics blockbuster brand, which at this point looks less like a cinematic universe than a pop-cultural black hole, sucking up as much money and audience goodwill as the studio can shovel into it.

After a four-film build-up that began four years ago with Man of Steel, Justice League should have felt like a culmination, with Batman and Wonder Woman recruiting new heroes and bringing back Superman in order to fend off an extraterrestrial invasion, in much the same way the Avengers did for Marvel five years ago.

Instead, it feels like a sheepish feature-length retraction of the franchise to date. It’s consistently embarrassing to watch, and features plot holes so yawningly vast they have a kind of Grand Canyon-like splendour: part of you wants to hang around to see what they look like at sunset.

Batman and his alter ego Bruce Wayne are once again played by Ben Affleck, but his earnest, striving, Just For Men-box version of the character here is all but unrecognisable from the machine-gun-toting hungover gargoyle in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Then there’s Henry Cavill’s Superman, whose personality changes on a shot-by-shot basis, from blank-eyed demigod to lumbersexual funster faster than a speeding bullet.

Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is perfectly recognisable from her solo film earlier this year – they’d have been nuts to tinker – although there’s naturally a lot less of her here, and without Gadot’s full-beam star power to light the way, the film frequently struggles to get through a scene without tripping over itself.

Its fundamental lopsidedness might come down at least in part to its unusually chaotic production. The rave reviews for Wonder Woman and pastings for Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad led to a series of frantic course-corrections mid-shoot, which were followed by the sudden departure of director Zack Snyder in unthinkably tragic circumstances, after his 20-year-old daughter committed suicide in March. (Both the remainder of the editing process and the substantial reshoots were supervised by Avengers director Joss Whedon, who receives a screenplay credit.)

But for whatever combination of reasons, the end result is a broken film, swimming in bad CGI and forgettable mayhem, that you can’t imagine any number of rewrites or reshoots could have saved. It can’t even decide how to start, and offers up no less than five introductory scenes, including Bruce Wayne pony-trekking in Iceland, Wonder Woman thwarting a terrorist attack in London, and yet another instance of that DC franchise staple, the slow-motion funeral.

One of the film’s three new superheroes, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman – picture Marvel’s Thor crossed with the disgraced Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, holding a garden rake – is introduced twice, once trading Whedonian zingers with Bruce Wayne, and then again a few minutes later, with much Snyder-esque gurning and flexing on the prow of a sinking ship.

Ezra Miller’s early scenes as the lightning-fast Flash bode a little better – as he visits his father (Billy Crudup) in prison, there’s at least a glimmer of backstory – but then he’s immediately reduced to the team’s fantastically annoying comic relief. As for Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, the film doesn’t seem to know anything about him: he has his hood up a lot, and that’s more or less all we get.

Meanwhile, gurgling away in the background is Danny Elfman’s score, which grabs at John Williams’s 1978 Superman theme, Elfman’s own Batman motif from the Tim Burton years, and Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL’s Wonder Woman cello riff, in a panicky fumble for something, anything, the audience might recognise or like. The result, as if it even needs to be said, is an incoherent din, and a total mismatch for Snyder’s images.

At least the League’s inaugural mission seems simple enough. Three ‘Mother Boxes’, ancient gadgets with the power to end all life on Earth, must be kept out of the clutches of Steppenwolf, a computer-generated demon voiced by Ciarán Hinds, and his squadron of flying parademons.

Except even the basics of this turn out to be bewilderingly difficult. At one mind-boggling juncture, the team inexplicably leaves the final Mother Box unattended in a car park, only for Steppenwolf to beam down and make off with it while they’re doing something else.

For a scene that risible to end up in a $300 million blockbuster is no mean feat – but Justice League is a mess in ways cheaper productions could only dream about. A post-credits scene dutifully teases more to come, but the film’s heart just isn’t in it. After Justice League, there’s nowhere else any of this can go.

 Read complete review at Telegraph

Movie Rating ★★☆☆☆
  
 Good, evil and dullness do battle

Peter Bradshaw

A passionate spark of frenemy-bromance between the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader was famously created in the last DC adventure, Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, when these two legends discovered their mums had the same first name: Martha. That somewhat anticlimactic coincidence was widely considered to be indicative of something unconvincing in the whole project. The problems are still evident.

This new film has had a troubled passage. Its original director, Zack Snyder, had to step aside after a family tragedy and Joss Whedon took over, reportedly reshooting between 15 and 20% of the film, a segment which may or may not have included the ending. It’s an unhappy state of affairs that may account for the film’s tendency towards shapelessness. Or this may have been a function of the ensemble structure and an uncertain handling of Batman’s new, more respectable and collegial role within the League.

We are now a few months on from Superman’s awful fate and huge, sombre banners hang on public monuments all over the world, including Tower Bridge in London. People everywhere are thoroughly depressed and demoralised. Then it becomes very clear that a terrible new threat to Planet Earth is materialising: a grotesque force of evil and destruction in the form of Steppenwolf (played in digital motion capture by Ciarán Hinds).

Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) who in costume and mask is still being called that primitive prototypical name “the bat man” and still going into the deep voice, even in front of people who already know who he is, persuades Diana Prince, otherwise known as Wonder Woman – and enjoyably played by Gal Gadot – that a crack new supergroup should be assembled under their joint command. Metahumans need to be recruited. They will be the lightning-fast Barry Allen, or the Flash (Ezra Miller), the technohuman hybrid Victor Stone or Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Arthur Curry, or Aquaman, played with muscular and humorous panache by Jason Momoa, from Game of Thrones. He is the kind of exotic undersea creature that David Attenborough might discover in Blue Planet II.

Meanwhile Lois Lane (Amy Adams) mopes listlessly about the Daily Planet newsroom doing dull human interest stories and Bruce’s manservant Alfred (Jeremy Irons) is even less the traditional below-stairs figure of old, now more a silver-fox computer whiz who says things like: “What the hell?” But everyone must put aside their differences and worries to fight together against the wicked invader – in honour of Superman.

Momoa brings some punch and humour to this film, especially with Aquaman’s inadvertent confession of a certain tendresse for Wonder Woman, and Ezra Miller does his best with the Flash, whose job it is to provide the nerdy, incredulous, alienated humour. Ray Fisher, too, does his best with a figure half-hidden in hi-tech armour.

But Ben Affleck is unrelaxed and ill-at-ease in the role of Batman/Bruce, unconvincing in both the bat armour and the three-piece suit of the wealthy plutocrat. “What’s your superpower?” asks The Flash and Bruce replies: “I’m rich.” It feels a bit late for this film to have cottoned on to a daringly heretical Batman joke that people have been making for years. Really, Affleck spreads a pall of dullness over the film. He doesn’t have the implacable, steely ferocity and conviction that Christian Bale had; he seems to have a faint sheen of sweat, as if the Batcave thermostat is up too high, and his attempts at droll humour and older-generation wisdom make his Batman look stately and marginal. Maybe we should get George Clooney back for the role.

It falls to Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman to cheer things up a little, especially early on, with her dramatic intervention in London against a bunch of self-declared “reactionary terrorists” who invade the Old Bailey and threaten an explosion with a bomb attached to a timer device with the traditional LCD countdown display. It will, they say, cause devastation for “four city-blocks”. (City blocks? What city are we in, again?) Wonder Woman winds up posing, with great aplomb, atop the justice statue. A nice touch. It is Wonder Woman who provides the link to the ancient world, and with it the surreality and exoticism.

In the end, though, there is something ponderous and cumbersome about Justice League; the great revelation is very laborious and solemn and the tiresome post-credits sting is a microcosm of the film’s disappointment. Some rough justice is needed with the casting of this franchise.

Read complete review at The Guardian

Better Than the Last One

 MANOHLA DARGIS

“Justice League,” the newest DC Comics superhero jam directed by Zack Snyder, is looser, goosier and certainly more watchable than the last one. The bar could scarcely have been lower given that the previous movie, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” was such an interminable slog. The superhero and villain dynamic is much the same (slayers going to slay, etc.), but there are a few fresh faces now and Wonder Woman has more to do than play backup. The story is a confusion of noise, visual clutter and murderous digital gnats, but every so often a glimmer of life flickers through.

The last time he fronted a movie, Superman (Henry Cavill) seemed to die, a plot twist that not even the most credulous viewer could buy. So, of course he’s back in this one, eventually, although first the band needs to get together. Having seen trouble on the horizon, Batman, a.k.a. Bruce Wayne — played with a sepulchral growl and bespoke stubble by Ben Affleck — takes the lead on this enterprise. He’s the insistent manager as well as the scowling host, the guy with the cool digs, smooth rides with blinking screens (“critical damage” reads one with great comic-book sincerity) and suave butler (Jeremy Irons as Alfred). He’s also pretty much of a yawn.

The pumped-up Mr. Affleck again fills out the bat suit from ripped stem to stern, but his costume remains grievously larger than Batman’s (or Bruce’s) personality. Bat-Bruce clearly has some kind of unrequited thing for Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot, a charming super-presence), which leads him to stammer like a teenager. (She’s got other things on her mind.) He has money and a modest sense of humor, including about his wealth, which inspires one of the movie’s few decent laughs. Mr. Affleck, a generally appealing actor who can plumb the depths when pushed (“Gone Girl”), needs something more substantial (or just more jokes) if his Batman is ever going to work.

As it is, the little bit of bat brooding in “Justice League” feels unmotivated and unearned, and lacks the shading of the character in the “Dark Knight” or even in the Lego movies. That’s too bad, and would be dire if he played a more valuable role. But “Justice League” is about solidarity rather than flying and soaring solo, so the movie spends considerable time piecing together its newest parts: the Flash, a.k.a. Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), a zippy wisenheimer wreathed in lightning; Aquaman, a.k.a. Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), an underwater tough with a chest full of muscles and tattoos; and Cyborg, a.k.a. Victor Stone (Ray Fisher), a machine man built from metal and serious attitude.

The original Justice League of America (as it was called) first convened in 1960; the movie takes place in the present or at least a facsimile of the same. The world is in mourning for Superman, and so is Lois Lane (Amy Adams, shedding tears and largely wasted). Everything is about to get worse, because of course it has to, leading Bat-Bruce and Wonder-Diana to round up a troika that was teased earlier. Some of the best scenes in the movie are of the introductions to these three newcomers, who step up beauty pageant-style to fill in some back story — one has roots in Atlantis, the other two are from hard-luck city — while flexing individual quirks and superpowers.

“Justice League” settles into a groove once it finds its gang. As Bat-Bruce moodily pushes and prods and Wonder-Diana smiles and smirks, the newbies jockey for position. The Flash gets most of the best jokes, and Mr. Miller makes most of them work, largely in the role of in-house fanboy with a touch of the Cowardly Lion. It’s golly-gee stuff, but it’s also human and Mr. Miller keeps you hooked, as does Mr. Momoa (“Game of Thrones”), who supplely shifts between gravitas and comedy. When Aquaman chugs a bottle of booze before plunging into an angry sea, the movie hits the comic-book sweet spot between deadly seriousness and self-amused levity.

Cyborg isn’t as buoyant a presence, which makes sense for a character who’s been partly cobbled together from scraps and a sob story that Mr. Fisher puts across with bowed head and palpable heaviness. The hoodie he sometimes wears, which can’t help but evoke Trayvon Martin, imparts a larger meaning that the movie doesn’t or can’t explore. Like the references to a coming world catastrophe that suggestively shudders with wider implications, the hoodie suggests filmmakers who are still struggling to keep an eye on the offscreen world while spinning a fictional universe that can somehow offer a brief escape from it.

Mr. Snyder remains regrettably committed to a dark, desaturated palette that borders on the murky, and this movie’s chaotic, unimaginative action scenes can drag on forever. But the touches of humor in “Justice League” lighten the whole thing tonally and are a relief after the dirgelike “Batman v Superman,” which he ran into the ground with a two-and-a-half-hour running time. (“Justice League” clocks in at a not-exactly fleet two hours.) Written by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon, the new movie shows a series that’s still finding its footing as well as characters who, though perhaps not yet as ostensibly multidimensional as Marvel’s, may be more enduring (and golden). It has justice, and it has banter. And while it could have used more hanging out, more breeziness, it is a start.

 Read  complete review at New York Tmes