Justice League (2017) Movie Review
By: Karl Stern (@dragonkingkarl, @wiwcool, karl@whenitwascool.com)
The Depression League (left to right) In The Wrong Movie Guy, Small Part Guy, Sad Weird Lip Guy, The Worst Batman Ever, The Only Good Person in the Movie Woman, and I Tried But Failed to Be Funny Man.
This week's superhero and action adventure movie review takes a look back at the 2017 DC Comics Warner Brothers Justice League movie. This is a movie I'm willing to bet just about everyone my age (born in 1971) has waited for their whole life. Well... surprise! Warner Brothers continues their streak of making completely hateable movies totally devoid of fun.
The Warner Brothers DC movie universe has been a complete disaster. Man of Steel (2013) (which I will be reviewing here in a couple of weeks) was not terrible. It was an action filled movie with larger than life fight scenes but it was also dark and grim. That set the course for every DC Comics movie to come afterward. DC movies are no fun. They are darkly lit, grim, humorless, and the costuming is terrible.
Ben Affleck is, hands down, the worst Batman ever. And we have reviewed MANY of them.
People often retort that, no, no, that Wonder Woman movie was good. No, it wasn't. It was the least worst DC movie to date. Gal Gadot is great as Wonder Woman but that movie wasn't good. It was slow, boring, and the villain was totally forgettable. But, compared to the other DC movies I suppose you could say it was good but you're grading on a scale.
This movie also featured an entirely forgettable villain- Steppenwolf, of all people. A "D" list DC comics villain at best. The lighting continued to be dark and grey. The tiny bit of humor which they finally included in a DC movie was forced and unfunny. The most comedic character was the Flash and seemed completely out of place in this sad-fest.
Despite having a massive budget, Justice League featured numerous unforgivable blunders, most famously, Superman's (Henry Cavill) insanely noticeable CGI lip. There was an incredibly cringe-worthy scene straight out of a high school AV class project of Cyborg and Aquaman flying through the dystopian apocalyptic dankness of a fight scene... just ugh. Could have sworn I was watching a Dio video circa 1983.
Here is a scene of three heroes in... imagine this... a darkly lit scene.
I swore off seeing any DC movies post- Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Sadness but I do run a pop culture website so it's almost required to see and talk about these movies. The kid in me also hopes these will get better. That somehow, someone, will right the ship but so far, nope.
Justice League wasn't as horrible as Dawn of Dankness but it wasn't good either. It certainly wasn't fun. Superman and Batman have the worst costumes in their existence (and that is saying something- see The Batman serial). Please, please, scrap this failed project and just start over.
That's not a normal skin tone color because, obviously, we have to lay some kind of sadness filter over ever single scene in the DC cinematic universe.
Can I find anything good to say about Justice League? Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was again the most interesting and heroic character in the entire DC Warner Brothers universe. She is the leader of this group not the Sad Batman. The Flash was a good character only he was terribly out of place in this movie. The jury is still out on Aquaman who seemed awkward and clunky in this performance. How can Marvel do it so right and DC do it so wrong?
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