Wonder Woman is supposed to be a beacon of hope, but that bitch lied to me. As a lifelong comic book fan that owns thousands of DC comics, the experience of watching Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad was akin to having someone set my soul on fire and piss on the ashes. But the one bright spot in BvS was Wonder Woman and I was further encouraged because her solo movie was pretty damn good. I had hope. But now the dark cloud brought by Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and director Zack Snyder has returned once again to rain shit upon my beloved characters. Justice League is a fucking mess. A disjointed, uninteresting, ugly mess.
Following the death of Superman in BvS, Batman must assemble the Avengers because Thanos is close to finding all of the infinity stones, which would…..sorry, I got confused. Batman must assemble the Justice League because Steppenwolf is close to finding all of the mother boxes, which would allow him to destroy the universe. Or something like that. Interestingly, despite the film’s awkward and lazy use of exposition dumps to explain the plot, the film assumes that audiences will already be familiar with Steppenwolf and the mother boxes. I know about those things because I read the comics, but non-comic fans will likely only have a vague notion of what’s happening. Hell, even I wasn’t sure what exactly the villain’s plan was beyond generic destruction. Anyway, Batman unites the heroes and they resurrect Superman to join them in the fight.
I have to say that this is an improvement on BvS because at least the scenes seem to be in the right order and the plot threads all head in one direction. Maybe the filmmakers attended a community college class on screenwriting between films, and I sadly applaud them for attaining a bottom-of-the barrel level of competence. Fucking bravo. Unfortunately, the film is still a hot mess for different reasons. This movie was basically made twice and the version that you see in theaters is a Frankenstein’s monstrosity of a film stitched together with footage from both. Zack Snyder, the insufferable asshat that made Man of Steel and BvS, originally made the movie. But his version was (surprise!) fucking awful, so Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon (who made the Avengers movies) to refilm much of it and salvage it. The result is a movie with two wildly different tones and both tones are fucking wrong. It’s also incredibly obvious which director made each section. Snyder’s material is more of the overly-serious, downer bullshit that was in his previous films. The opening montage is right out of Snyder’s Watchmen (a movie I like) and is almost humorously sad. On the other hand, Whedon’s material is excessively happy and lighthearted (especially anytime Flash is on screen). It’s like getting two movies for the price of one, only catch being that they both fucking suck. It’s also kind of funny to note how much material was featured in the promotional material and didn’t make it into the final film. I spent the whole last act wondering when Superman would show up wearing his black and silver suit (which was filmed), but it never happened. Hell, William Dafoe’s character was cut from the film entirely. You could probably release ten different versions of this movie without filming additional material and they would all be terrible.
As for the characters, Wonder Woman is still the bright spot. Batman and Superman are actually improved and behave a bit more like their actual characters. Superman actually smiles and doesn’t look like he’s brooding because his mom wouldn’t take him to see Taking Back Sunday. Batman isn’t just killing people left and right. I still find these portrayals of the characters to be boring and poorly-written, but at least I can recognize the characters that they are supposed to be. Aquaman is pretty good, even though they seem to be overcompensating for the public perception that Aquaman is a useless pussy. I’m not sure where that comes from, though the Family Guy skits probably didn’t help, but Aquaman is a badass character. I didn’t need multiple scenes of him drinking whisky and being a grumpy asshole just to get that point across. The biggest problem is The Flash, who is just fucking annoying. Yes, Flash is supposed to be a more lighthearted character. But he shouldn’t be reduced to an irritating comic-relief character that does nothing but make constant quips regardless of how serious the situation is. Most non-comic fans probably aren’t familiar with Cyborg, but don’t worry because most comic fans don’t even give a shit about Cyborg. Even the guy playing Cyborg doesn’t seem to give a fuck about Cyborg. He’s a C-list character that is only here because Warner Bros. has already ruined Green Lantern, who should be the sixth member of the league (though the movie does briefly establish that he does exist in this universe, even though he never shows up).
The biggest problem, though, is the villain. I complained above the awful CGI villain at the end of Wonder Woman, but I now owe that movie an apology. Steppenwolf is possibly the most generic, cliched, godawful villain ever featured in a superhero movie, and that’s fucking saying something. He is nothing but a computer-generated mess that spouts banal lines about destroying the world, all of which are so forgettable that I can’t remember a single line of his dialogue. Anytime he is on screen, the film grinds to a screeching halt and the entire movie looks like a video game. It’s filled with astonishingly bad computer effects that make the viewer feel like they should be able to hit the pause button on their controller before the next boss battle.
Yes, this is slightly better than the other ones in the series (except Wonder Woman). But that’s like saying that Rosie O’Donnell is slightly hotter than Roseanne Barr. This series of DC films may go down as the most disastrous and expensive creative failure in the history of Hollywood. Please don’t’ go see it. Please. It’s already struggling at the box office and maybe, just maybe, this will be the beginning of the end of this series. You only need to see the post-credit scene to know the horrors that Warner Bros. is prepared to unleash upon me. Don’t go see it and, together, we can put an end to this.
Image By: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Justice_League_film_poster.jpg
