Justice League (November 2017)

Official Australian release date: 16/11/17. Viewed: 16/11/17.

Director: Zack Snyder

Actors: Ben Affleck, Gal Godot, Henry Cavill, Ezra Miller

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: M

  

‘Justice League’ is the 5^th film in the DC Extended Universe and, after ‘Wonder Woman’, is their best attempt to compete with Marvel – even going as far as bringing in ‘The Avengers’ director, Joss Whedon, to write the screenplay. The director, Snyder (who also directed ‘Man of Steel’ and ‘Batman V Superman’) is only given a “story by” credit. If you haven’t seen any of those three films, I suggest you do, as this film starts with Clark/Superman (Cavill) already dead and Batman/Bruce (Affleck) and Wonder Woman/Diana (Godot) pulling together a super-team to fight off some impending doom.

There’s the obligatory hour of introductions to each of the five main characters: Arthur/Aquaman (Momoa), Victor/Cyborg (Fisher), Barry/Flash (Miller, the best new character) – plus more screen time for Lois Lane (Adams), Martha Kent (Lane), Commissioner Gordon (Simmons) and Alfred (Irons), who are all kind of wasted. The plot is that they have to fight off an alien bent on destroying Earth, with his army of zombie-grasshoppers – directly ripped off from ‘Star Wars: Attack of the Clones’. It’s an odd choice, since this should technically be aimed at kids, but I’m not sure if I’d let anyone younger than 10 watch this…

But that’s part of the problem with the DCEU so far – it’s still trying to be dark and unforgiving, attempting to reach Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but not hitting any of the marks. Something’s just missing that doesn’t hold it all together as well as a Marvel film. And, odd as it may sound, there’s probably too much CGI here. Not a spoiler: obviously Superman comes back and helps save the day, but it begs the question – isn’t everyone a bit suspicious that Clark Kent is now somehow walking around? There’s some decent quips and a few funny moments, mostly thanks to Flash and some OK battle scenes. Plenty of enjoyable moments, but not quite a fully-formed faction film.

Overall: Not bad, not great, but a decent platform.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.