Justice League (spoiler review)

"Justice League” is the 5th and latest instalment in the DC Extended Universe movie franchise that began in 2013 with Zack Snyder’s “Man Of Steel”. From then Snyder has gone on to direct “Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice” for the DCEU which released in 2016 and has taken up the mantle of being man behind the camera for “Justice League”. It wasn’t until months before the release Joss Whedon, director of “Avengers 1” and “Avengers 2” for the successful Marvel Cinematic universe, stepped up to take over directing “Justice League” due to a tragedy in the Snyder family.
 
The movie begins by introducing The Dark Knight himself, Batman, taking on a parademon, one of the minions of the DC villain Steppenwolf. This was definitely a good way in introducing the the plot as well as reminding DC fans of the intimidating nature of Batman. The movie then follows with respectable quick introductions for the following members of the superhero alliance: Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman and the Flash. Even though the movie has a promising introduction, the next 40 mins of building up the story is a drag and a mess. The movie doesn’t give enough time to focus on certain scenes during this build up which allows for very little character development and some of these scenes in my opinion are too slow and some too fast; there is a severe pacing issue in this part of the movie. In my opinion they should have showed more action scenes involving each superhero, so we got to know their powers better. Otherwise they could have just cut the movie down to hour and a half. The next segment of the movie-when the team decides to revive superman and finally take on the villain- does come with its problems however is a huge improvement. Firstly, the pacing of the movie becomes more consistent and allows for more fun action sequences especially the ones related to superman. The initial fight scene with superman and the Justice League is a spectacle for the eye, more so for DC fans. However, the tone massively changes from being serious in the first hour of the movie to being more comedic. This showed the switch in the directors. While I didn’t mind this too much a change of tone was slightly strange. Finally, one of the biggest problems with the movie overall is its villain. During the build-up, Steppenwolf is shown to be quite a serious villain for example when he wreaks havoc over the Amazonians however in the end he is easily beaten by superman which in the end makes superman look cool but Steppenwolf’s character look extremely lame. A minor problem in the overall movie that may not affect a large portion of the movie is the woeful CGI. The CGI in this movie looks like it has come out of a 2005 video game. I have seen the DCEU do well in terms of this before and it is very weird that they focused little on this in the anticipated superhero team up of the year, “Justice League”.
 
Pros:
-Initial introduction of team members
-Fun fight scenes in second hour of movie
 
Cons:
-First hour of movie was mostly a drag and a mess in terms of build up
-Bad CGI
-Some bad character development
-Weak Villain
 
Rating:
4/10

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