This week's feature-length Justice League film benefits as much as it suffers from a "can't get any worse" reputation. Between the diminishing returns of Zack Snyder as a filmmaker, a crowded cast of new-to-film DC characters, and the incredibly stinky shadow of Batman V Superman, you'd be foolish to go into the latest (and likely final) Snyder DC film with high hopes. Like, even if it's adequate, that might seem monumental.

With that in mind, Justice League lands almost exactly where I predicted: as a mostly tolerable, occasionally fun, often ponderous, rarely logical attempt to unify the DC Comics film universe. It doesn't unseat Wonder Woman as the best DC Comics film in recent memory. It's certainly no Avengers, and, gosh, it isn't even Avengers: Age of Ultron. But it also won't live in infamy as another one of DC's midnight-movie laugh-a-ramas. It's just acceptably subpar.

Two outta three origins ain’t bad

If you're desperate to have your pro-DC bias acknowledged, Justice League does kick butt at a couple of things. The film has to juggle a whopping three film-universe origin stories, and it surprisingly succeeds at two of those.













The Flash, played by Ezra Miller, shines by stealing most of the film's best scenes, even if he liberally borrows from Tom Holland's quirky, boyish portrayal of Spider-man. Miller is at his best when he leans into the Flash's weaknesses and failings as an archetypal superhero. Turns out, this brilliant master of space and time is freaked out by all kinds of stuff. Fights, heights, bugs: his Kryptonite list reads like a Seinfeld episode.

Luckily, the film's script helps him along by focusing on his reluctance and anxiety as a terribly young world-saver. He also knows the value of a smirk, a gasp, and a wide-eyed look of astonishment in selling the odd happenings all around him, and his comedic knack is valuable in scenes where his face gets a ton of slow-motion time to sell a gag. DC struck gold with this guy, and if anything else, Justice League makes me very excited at the potential of a good Flash film.

Ray Fisher as Cyborg isn't as fun to watch, but he may be more impressive in his portrayal, if only because the script does him zero favors. This version of Cyborg is as generically brooding and mysterious as they come, and the way the film reveals his rise to superhero status, via failed experiments by his scientist dad, is a little hammy. Yet he still impresses. During standard dialogue scenes, Fisher is careful not to oversell his teenaged melodrama and confusion over having his body overtaken by an other-worldly energy. Yet during the film's most intense combat, he stands out as a happy-to-be-here butt-kicker, which is even evident through his cybernetic, ever-morphing suit.

On the other hand... sorry, Aquaman fans. What a wet blanket.

'90s sketch comedy show The State had a famous bit about the Justice League that ended with DC's best superheroes laughing at what a loser Aquaman is. At first, Justice League leans into these laughs by having Ben Affleck's Batman make some off-handed jokes about "talking to fish." Sadly, Jason Momoa's Aquaman never really rises above the status of "guy who can talk to fish." His visible superpowers in the film include jumping high, throwing a pike, and stopping a giant wave of water. That's it. He looks silly in every fight scene and feels lacking as a foil to the other heroes' varied, weird powers. While the film attempts to frame Aquaman as a tough-as-nails badass—a buff, tattooed, surly drunk who is made entirely of whiskey and sarcasm—he only gets one legitimately interesting moment: an off-character confession that comes courtesy of Wonder Woman's lasso of truth.

Worse, Aquaman stars in the film's worst action sequence by far: a battle against the film's nemesis, Steppenwolf, that is entirely submerged in water. You may use the phrase "like moving through water" in your day-to-day life as an insult or a comment on something being slow, unwieldy, and annoying. Justice League takes that to a whole new level by framing a slow, plodding fistfight within realistically slow water physics.

Whedonesque?

















That's the only "realistic" part about that fight, by the way, as Justice League suffers from a surprising number of awful-CGI action sequences. All too often, the film's actors are clearly replaced by CGI humans who fly, zip, and punch all over the place, while action-scene elements like explosions, fire, and water look like they were handed off to a second-rate CGI firm in order to meet a deadline. We still get a few compellingly framed battles. When the Justice League first comes together to face Steppenwolf, their combined powers flash in a steady, thrilling sequence of varied attacks through a falling-apart sewer facility (though, I gotta say, Aquaman is mostly absent in this one). And the film's primary superheroes-fight-each-other clash does a lot to make its superpowers pay off (other than boring ol' Aquaman).

In some respects, Ben Affleck redeems himself as a dark, burdened Batman, though this is only through sheer force of acting. His character development doesn't extend an inch beyond "gosh, I really regret getting Superman killed," and that means his warmest and most human moments (which he gets more of than in BvS, at least) come as reactions to other characters, not through searching or character development of his own. Had the film trimmed some fat—particularly the awkward and super-slow mourning scenes with Amy Adams as Lois Lane—Affleck might have been afforded room to flesh out his improved take on the Dark Knight. Likewise, Gal Gadot really does nothing in this latest Wonder Woman appearance beyond kick ass in crazy battles (which she's great at) and look down at her feet when reminded of a lost love (which she's not so good at).

Snyder had to step away from production due to tragic circumstances, and I feel bad pointing out certain issues in the film as a comparison, buuuut... in some parts of the film, you can clearly see step-in director Joss Whedon applying his non-crappy touch. Conversations between Affleck and Gadot toward the film's end are among the most touching for either character since the actors started out at DC, and they, like some other good dialogue scenes, have all the hallmarks of a Whedon production, in terms of camera angle, distance, and conversational cadence. Conversely, the film's all-over-the-map, jumping-between-scenes madness reeks of Snyder's insipid filmmaking approach. At one moment, Batman wastes his time stopping a single perp on a rooftop; during the next, we walk in on Wonder Woman saving the day from no-rhyme-or-reason, "damn the modern world" terrorists in downtown London. (There's also a disturbing moment in which a man nearly murders an entire row of innocent people with a machine gun, which already feels tacky even without its similarities to all-too-common news headlines.)

The film's jumps in logic are pretty wild, as well, with Steppenwolf gaining a destroy-the-world lead on our heroes due to some head-smackingly dumb decisions. The worst is when the heroes have a super-powered cube in their possession, which Steppenwolf needs to fulfill his darkest plans. And, wouldn't you know it, the Justice League leaves that cube alone for roughly 12 minutes to have a violence-filled argument. Once it's over, whoops—cube's gone!

Who you gonna call?

By the film's end, the whole premise changes. For most of the run time, we're looking at a mighty, unstoppable villain who can't be brought down by even the world's five strongest heroes. Does the team win out by overcoming its personal trials and tribulations? Do they unlock the greatest power of all and overcome in a mysterious or interesting way?

Nope. The Justice League instead finds the cheapest solution humanly possible, and if you know anything about DC Comics, you can guess how it ends. That's the exclamation point on a film that repeatedly fails to understand why the zillions-of-egos Avengers films worked: because they have carved out the right amount of time, room, and dialogue for us to not only care about the major characters, but also see their wildly different personalities clash and contrast in compelling ways. Justice League has good actors, good one-liners, and good moments, but it ultimately feels hollow—like a Cadbury Creme Egg with nothing in the middle.

I left the theater hopeful that the Flash and Cyborg could stretch their backstory wings in their own respective films, and I left feeling like the Justice League production crew really blew it on a few things. (For starters: Aquaman instead of the Green Lantern? Seriously?) Most of all, I left forgetting about the expectations I brought into the theater. Even in a vacuum, this movie just isn't very good, and anybody who hoped for DC redemption, or a continued decent-movie streak after Wonder Woman, deserves so much better.

You know, like Thor: Ragnarok, which is still out in theaters and is way, way better in every respect imaginable.