Phillip Reviews: Justice League (2017)

Phillip873 Warning: May unintentionally contain spoilers, be cautious!

Saw the Justice League. D.C. doesn't have a very good track record, except Wonder Woman (not a huge fan personally), and I was totally expecting this movie to be complete trash walking in after reviews were initially hidden opening day. However, it really wasn't as terrible as people were making it out to be! Anyway, here's the review!

Plot Summary:
"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. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes-Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash-it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions."
-Source: IMDb

The Story:
I'm just going to go through the negatives first. What is with D.C. and confusing stories! I was really having trouble following the first act of the movie, until 30-45 minutes in. Then I realized it was one of those "bad guy wants to destroy Earth, good guys look hopeless, they stop them, the end". It was very generic, along with the villain (will talk about later). Basically (if I can really say that), the Justice League must assemble to defeat Steppenwolf, who I think was an Amazonian son, and must resurrect superman so they can stop him for sure. They sort of introduce the characters by themselves, doing stuff I guess. Like Wonder Woman stopping a robbery or something. It was confusing because I didn't know until later that these little parts were solely to introduce and have no impact later. The way their introduced is somewhat choppy, but definitely not as bad as last year's Suicide Squad, like at least here we know all the characters well enough. Now all that I said may make you think I hated this movie, but I actually didn't. It was definitely weak, but my expectations were low so I ended up having fun. I was expecting this to be a complete bore-fest because BvS was super boring, and but this wasn't. It was certainly funnier, especially The Flash [played by Ezra Miller], like I laughed quite a bit. And most of the action was fun. It was one of those movies that aren't very good story wise, but you can still have fun watching it. It might have been my very low expectations too, for the reason why I enjoyed it.

The acting/characters:
I mean, I can't really say much about the acting. It was fine, Affleck and Cavill were fine. Gal Gadot felt a bit more "wooden" in her acting than in the recent Wonder Woman movie, but it was fine. And Ezra Miller was funny as The Flash. Everyone else was fine. As for actual characters, the chemistry between them was kind of off. Like Superman was a very serious and "edgy" character and The Flash was a bit more goofy (but not in the Jesse Eisenburg Lex Luthor way thank god!). I was wondering why Cyborg was acting so edgy at the beginning, they don't really give him much of a background. Aquaman was sort of weird too, like he was funny at times, but somewhat crude. Superman really could have defeated the bad guy himself to be honest too, he punches the crap out of him, and does the most damage. Speaking of Superman, he's not in it for like half of the movie because he was dead after BvS, so they had to resurrect him in some way I didn't understand watching the movie. After that he just mopes around a bit then lightens up. As for the villain "Steppenwolf", he was incredibly bland and forgettable. His motive was just to conquer and destroy Earth, nothing else about his character.

The Effects/Action:
The action for the most part was fun and neatly shot, when it wasn't a bad CGI-fest. Speaking of CGI, DC has a real problem with green screen and CGI, it usually looks terrible, and this movie was no exception (it was terrible in Wonder Woman too!). They used obvious green screen for shots that could have been taken in live action, like Superman in the field with Lois Lane. The green screen was really noticeable, and took me out of whatever was happening. And the CGI looked incredibly fake, like in all recent DC movies. Like Cyborgs outfit didn't look good at all. And during the final battle, I kept thinking, "What the hell is going on?!" I feel that I was being too negative though, because the action that wasn't CGI filled was pretty fun. Like Batman fighting the bad guys on the roof, it was cool, and even though the director of this film, Zack Snyder has problems directing coherent stories, he definitely knows how to direct some neat action (it was the highlight of BvS for me). It really ties back to my point that this movie is mediocre, but still fun!

Extra Thoughts:
I don't really have much "extra" thoughts. I did think the after credits scene was cool, and my little brother got incredibly excited (because he is a comic book/superhero movie nerd), but I won't say much because I want people to see it for themselves. Also this may seem small but when Batman is in Flash's lair talking to him, my brother and I spotted Rick and Morty on one of Flash's TVs, so we chuckled and kept making jokes about Flash being the smartest in the Justice League (because of Rick and Morty memes). It took me out of the scene but it was a funny Easter egg. Also some a-holes in the theater kept talking, and some kid by them kept pushing their foot on the seat. Responded by pushing back whenever they did it, the kid stopped after a couple times. :)

Rating: 4/10 (Mediocre)
Final Thoughts: Justice League truly has a lot of problems with story and character, but if you're expectations we're super low like mine, you will most likely have some amount of fun watching it, because this movie actually has humor and it isn't boring, and it also has some neat action scenes. I still think Marvel makes way better movies recently, and I do think Wonder Woman was a little bit better, but I definitely don't think this is a terrible movie like a lot of people make it out to be.

EDIT: Changed my score to a 4 because this movie is pretty mediocre most of the time.

Comments

Should have mentioned how this is still just D.C. playing catch up with Marvel. - Phillip873 (11/20/2017)

Wow I changed my rating from 5.5 to 5 and now it's not an HQ post anymore... nice. - Phillip873 (12/9/2017)

Technically, admin usually takes back post drafts in order to review them again for any edits made to the current one. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get back your HQ status for this post... in probably a few weeks. - visitor (12/13/2017)

A little bit of an update, now it's back to being HQ. - visitor (1/13/2018)

I noticed, I'm happy now! - Phillip873 (1/13/2018)