I consider myself to be a pretty optimistic person. I like to look out for the best in people and I want to be the type of person that builds things up rather than put them down. I want this blog to be built upon constructive criticism rather than sour and angry deconstruction. That doesn’t mean everything I see is great, however. The movie I watched today was bad. I legitimately did not like this movie and found very little redeeming in it, so this creates a very good opportunity for me to turn something that could be very easily negative and toxic into something constructive. This review will comprise of 3 parts: A review, where I break down all of the things I liked and disliked, a spoiler section, where I talk about things I liked and didn’t like in the movie that you should see first rather than read about, and finally, a rewrite section, where I take all of the things I dislike and turn them into things that I find to be more functional.

The Review

I would be remiss to try and talk about the Justice League without going in relative depth about the movies that came before it, since they fuel both the positives and negatives in Justice League. You can skip the next 2 paragraphs if you want to hear my thoughts on Justice League itself, but I think they’re important in informing my opinion on the movie.

I actually enjoy Man of Steel and I find myself to be one of the few apologetics for it in my film critic communities, but I also acknowledge it has some major problems. The main and most problematic one moving forward is that they either fundamentally don’t understand or intentionally miswrote Superman. This movie is a relic of The Dark Knight super hero period where a movie was better simply because it was “dark” and “realistic” and “philosophical” (it’s even written and produced by the same people). This movie turned Superman into an emotionally distant, constantly upset person who almost never smiles and expects us to believe he represents “hope” just because that they says he does. He absolutely destroys Metropolis and shows virtually no remorse for it. There is no scene in Man of Steel where he actively protects the people of Metropolis or shows any passionate care for them. The movies talks endlessly about how much it “cares about people” but when the city is being absolutely decimated, he makes no effort to save any civilians. I don’t even need to talk about the scene where his kills Zod, because it is ultimately secondary to his absolute apathy to human life and humanity displayed in the 30 minute rampage shown before it. Superman is fundamentally broken, and ultimately set the “dark, realistic” and dour tone that will follow in its sequel.

The sequel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is one of the worst movies of last year. The movie is centered on Batman and Superman fighting, yet we are given little to no motivation as to why they should fight to begin with. In the comic that the movie is based off of, Superman is a happy go lucky, patriotic pawn of an imperialistic and authoritarian American government, sent to fight a heavily libertarian Batman by Ronald Reagan because Batman broke the law in an attempt to empower the people and govern their own city. While it sounds kind of ridiculous, it ultimately works because Batman and Superman are ideologically opposed, and the conflict is directly entwined with who they are as characters. In BvS, they are both constantly frowning and upset vigilantes who kill people and work outside of any government. These two characters have no reason to be opposed to each other than the script tells us that they are. These characters also share no resemblance to any interpretation or comic thus far, but that is not intrinsically a negative. On top of all of this, in this movie, they killed Superman. I will talk about this in more depth in the spoiler section, but this should’ve been one of the biggest and most heartbreaking moments in our generation, and it wasn’t. This scene failed to hit because we’ve had no time and no reason to care about who Superman is. We know what he represents, as these movies love to tell us about how important he is, but we don’t know anything about who he is, and so it falls completely flat. Also the Justice League is assembled over email, but as with Man of Steel, this is nitpicking compared to the fundamental emotional separation we have from the characters on screen.

I can’t believe I had to write this much before I got to the actual movie, but I think this set up is important in forming the final product that I had to sit through. I’ll start with the easy stuff. Justice League is ugly. This is a recurring theme in this franchise, but this movie has an ugly color palate and is too dark, and I don’t mean in terms of tone, I mean the movie is poorly lit. While I would also agree that the Marvel movies have a color problem (click here for explanation) this is nothing compared to the art direction mistakes these movies have made. The colors on Wonder Woman’s costume are almost indistinguishable, and Gotham is literally just Grey and nothing else. The third act is a gross mix of maroon and brown and grey that grows tiresome after a couple of minutes. Also the CGI is bad, like comically bad. The villain looks like a video-game character, and if all feels unfinished. There is a conversation scene in Atlantis between Aquaman and a character that we don’t know and never see again, and it is lit like a TV show and the CGI background legitimately looks like it was done in the 90s. This movie needed more time to polish its visuals and it needed to adjust its colors, especially given how dissonant the colors are with the tone of the movie.

This movie’s tone is all over the place, and in a bad way. I will break down a specific scene in the spoiler section, but this movie cannot pick how it wants to feel within its own singular scenes. The tone reminds me of Suicide Squad, where the movie originally wanted to be gritty and dark, but people realized every movie can’t be like that, so they just started plugging in jokes to a script that has very little room for levity, giving us scenes that make you legitimately wonder if you should be laughing or not.

This script is also quite frustrating. These characters do not sound like people, they sound like exposition dump trucks who want to explain to you how deep this movie is. There are scenes where characters are recovering from the loss of a loved one, then immediately shift to pontificating about the nature of the world and how much the plot has changed since the last movie. Amy Adams, who plays Louis Lane, is one of my favorite actresses working today, and even she cannot work past this script and transform it into something we can emotionally attach to. Characters who we originally knew and enjoyed, like Wonder Woman, feel fundamentally different and worse than who they were in their previous movies, even if those movies were really good, especially in Wonder Woman’s case.

One of the most apt comparisons I have come up with for this movie would be to Rogue One, the Star Wars movie that released last year. In both of these movies, we spend the first act jumping from weird location to confusing location, rushing to establish characters without giving us any emotional reason to, other than that the story centers around things that are ingrained in our cultural zeitgeist, ultimately culminating in a climax that, while fun, can’t save a sloppy script and is based around characters we don’t care about.

If you enjoyed the movie, I don’t want to shame you or sound like you’re wrong. Art is subjective, and your connection to what transpires can be completely different from mine. I don’t want this review to come off as me explaining why you shouldn’t like this movie, but I want this to explain in depth why I don’t think this movie worked. If you thought it worked, then I encourage you to message me or comment and we can talk about it, and if you don’t like this movie, I hope I was able to put into words what you might have thought, but not fully realized. So now we’re going to go even more in depth with the spoiler section, though I’ll try and keep the next 2 sections shorter than the first.

Spoilers

So the Superman revival sequence was bad. It had a good setup, though. There was an interesting amount of unease leading up to it, with a lot of themes reminiscent of Frankenstein, as to what they might bring back, and whether or not it would be him or even human. Then he comes back, and everyone is uncomfortable and a little worried. Tension begins to build, and in a horrible instance of forced conflict, Cyborg attacks him, even though it was never established that he has a defense system and has no control over it. So Superman goes berserk and gets mad and starts kicking the snot out of everyone, and he seems like a monster. He is angry and impulsive and fights without asking questions. The problem is that this is almost the same behavior that we see in the previous two Superman movies. He is not terribly different from who he used to be, making the conflict even weirder. He asks Batman if he bleeds, making an uncomfortable reminder to the bad writing of the last movie. Then Flash gets involved, and the scene quickly becomes somewhat comical, and that tone carries on for the rest of the scene, with no warning or indication that we should be laughing now. Then Louis shows up, which I really liked and it was a nice way to both tame the beast and get the heroes out of the scene. The scene with them talking in the farm was almost really good, and Amy did her best, but the script jumps from a really good moment from her talking about how she wasn’t coping well without him, to a forced monologue about how the world has fallen apart without him. We have no reason to believe that the world is substantially better with him around, and there is very little indication that the world is much worse without him either, other than that someone kicked over a fruit stand in the opening credits.

Cyborg started strong, but the need for the script to be quippy and comical forced him through a character progression off-camera. He begins the movie in the first act not even sure if he is a good guy, tormented with his own existence and the guilt that comes with it. Then when he fights Steppenwolf in the second act, the villain comments about how he is a child of the destroyer of worlds, and he brushes it off like it’s no big deal, leaving us to assume that he came to terms with his powers and circumstances somewhere at some point without telling us when or how. His character progression has now ended and he is a static character for the entire third act.

The Flash was definitely the best part of the entire movie, no contest. The scene with him and his dad in the beginning was emotionally touching and really well acted. This is effective and does a good job of informing his actions for the rest of the movie. While his doesn’t really have much of an arc for the rest of the movie, what we are given is effective, and he’s pretty funny throughout the whole movie, even though it might not have always ideal to be making jokes in the first place.

Aquaman, while fun, didn’t do much, had virtually no arc, and had very little bearing on the plot, so I’ll just leave it at that. In the hopes of keeping this short, I’ll leave the spoiler section and move on to the rewrite section.

Rewrite

So first we need to fix Superman. He is the backbone of the entire DC Cinematic Universe and it’s hard to tell a compelling story without a good heart. While he does a good job at focusing on saving civilians in this movie, this should be a consistent and recurring theme throughout the series. He should feel conflicted on his focus. There should’ve been scenes in Man of Steel where he is desperately trying to save civilians and Zod is using that as an opportunity to beat him up while his back is turned. I feel that this movie is taping a dam that already broke because they essentially tried to rewrite and almost reboot Superman in this movie, but it is too late. You can’t fundamentally change a character in their third movie, and expect us to accept it and act like nothing happened. I do genuinely appreciate the effort and I hope we get a more optimistic Superman moving forward.

Batman needs more to do. It almost feels as though Ben Affleck is trying to escape the DC movies and get out of this failing franchise, given how this is written. Cyborg has become the brains of the group, doing a lot of the planning and a lot of the plot muscle-work, which should be Batman’s job, since he can’t really have an impact on the fights. While I have no problem with Wonder Woman being the leader of the Justice League, this gives Batman even less to do, given that he has no actual powers. Batman needs a role, and he needs to show that he is the best at that role.

Cyborg needed some fixing, and ironically enough, could’ve taken some notes from its own franchise. His arc should’ve taken place across the entire movie and should’ve comprised of him learning to cope with both his powers and the circumstances that created them. While this arc would’ve been the same as Diablo from Suicide Squad, he was the strongest part of that movie too, so the change would’ve been welcome.

I think this franchise needs a tonal fix. Man of Steel should’ve been the wide eyed and hopeful first movie, BvS should’ve been the dark second act, and this should’ve been the fun team romp. The way this ended up playing out, was that all of them are visually and tonally dark, and this movie just has some more jokes. This leaves it all feeling messy and not very much fun. Not every movie needs to be fun, but this movie felt like it didn’t earn its tone or quips or anything.

While I don’t find the Marvel vs. DC fight to be anything other than petty tribalism, I do think both this and BvS could take some notes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. BvS and Civil War share striking similarities, but Marvel established both who Iron Man and Captain America are years in advance, and gave them an organic conflict. Justice League and Avengers have obvious similarities as well, but Avengers took more time to establish who the characters are beforehand so the movie could simply be about the conflict itself, and it generally had a tone that was consistent within the franchise and its own movie.

Closing Thoughts

I really didn’t like Justice League, but I don’t think it was irredeemable. It had good moments and the cinematography was stunning, as all Zach Snyder films are. This movie, however, had fundamental character and tonal flaws that sadly could not have been fixed overnight. It is a problem that is ingrained in the franchise itself, so I can only hope that this movie serves as a transition to a more hopeful and more pleasant sequel.

Holy cow did this turn out to be long. I really appreciate if you made it this far, and I hope you share your thoughts on either the movie or my review. I didn’t cover everything that I wanted to, but I think we can all agree that I covered enough. I hope that most of my reviews aren’t going to be this long, for both of our sake, but I think this movie needed to be broken down, and broken down in depth.