Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Before I start this review of “Justice League” opening this week, I just want to know one thing: Where’s the music video? Hey, “The Avengers” had one when they assembled in 2012—a parody of One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful”—that blasted around the world with more than 32 million views on YouTube alone, just a small part of the fan-generated hype that had comic book/superhero courtesans waiting in line for days for the opening of Marvel’s “Avengers.”
Just saying. So, “Justice League” finally bursts onto movie screens with the desperate hopes of the entire Warner Bros movie studio—and a whopping $400 million in production and marketing costs—on the line.
If this movie crashes and burns, you’ll soon have a bunch of studio execs in Hollywood leaping out the uppermost floors of their offices and a studio movie lot up for sale.
Well, the wayward Warner Bros. bosses who gave the greenlight for this muddled mess might want to get their resumes updated as “Justice League” falls in from outer space like a 10,000-pound. meteorite crashing into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. How bad is “Justice League”?
Where do I start? I went into “Justice League” with very high hopes. This writer is the ultimate comic book collector, starting in the early 1960s as the JLA (Justice League of America) were the “cat’s meow” right up there with Spider-Man and Superman.
I know everything about the “Justice League”—inside and out. But in this film version, directed by Zack Snyder of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (with significant reshoots by former “Avengers” helmer Joss Whedon), suffers from recurring electric shock therapy. Just think of someone laying on the ground —helplessly convulsing.
On steroids. Whedon was brought in at the conclusion of principal photography as a family tragedy required Snyder to step away from his film. My deepest condolences. Here is the official synopsis: “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”.
Okay, who are these would-be “JLAers”? There is the Dark Knight, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gail Gadot) who are deeply grieving after the death of Superman (Henry Cavill) at the conclusion of 2016’s “Batman v Superman.” Superman just didn’t die, his entire chest cavity was caved in by the villainous monster “Doomsday.”
Poked like a pig and ready to barbeque. Can you say “worm food”? Yet he comes roaring back in “Justice League”, sporting a new black costume (sans cape) and a mullet hairdo. When it’s our time to meet the Grim Reaper—we should all do so well.
Superman’s “resurrection” is the first of many reasons to start yelling at the 35 ft. tall silver screen for a story that makes sense (although it was extremely cool to hear the original 1978 Superman theme from Academy Award Winner John Williams).
In the months when Superman lay buried six feet deep, it’s Batman’s alter ego—Bruce Wayne—who is on the hunt for superhero colleagues, along with Wonder Woman, as they eventually find and coerce three metahuman misfits—Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash (Ezra Miller) of whom I instantly and universally loathed.
After some do-gooder bonding in Wayne’s Batcave, this new “Justice League” emerges to do battle against not uber-cool villains like the Joker or Lex Luthor … but Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds).
Who dat? That’s right, Steppenwolf—who is the nephew (or uncle as it wasn’t really made clear) of the biggest baddie of them all—Darkseid who could enslave all of mankind with nary a blink of an eye. Instead of heroes, in truth this “Justice League” is a bunch of whining pansies.
The Flash pouts like a four-year-old wussie—never the heroic “Scarlet Speedster”—but a sniveling coward who dons a made-up red costume of black thread and metal wires.
Good Lord, how I hated hearing Miller’s voice and seeing him run around like a pentulant child who didn’t get enough bacon, pancakes and syrup for breakfast.
Momoa’s Aquaman is a drunken half-human, half-Atlantean who whines about not taking his “rightful place” as King of the Seven Seas … and Cyborg? Who cares that his body is made of metal? The Tin Man in the “Wizard of Oz” had more heart and soul than this freak. “Justice League” is by far the darkest (as in lack of light) and depressing superhero movie ever brought to the screen.
You’ll want to bring along your mobile phone and turn on the flashlight app to help the actors read their lines.
The reshoots of what Snyder left for Whedon (who is also created as co-writer of this dreary slog along with Chris Terrio from “Batman v Superman”) significantly ballooned the already massive budget into infinity. Gone are several key characters, including Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor (basically left to a cameo role now) as Whedon attempted to tighten up the film’s running time to fit in within two hours running time so “Justice League” can play in as many cineplex as possible.
Good luck on that. Instead of Lex Luthor, Whedon leaves in a throwaway “backstory” of Martha Kent (Diane Lane) who stupidly gets behind the mortgage payments and loses the Kent Farm—a prized family treasure for five generations—to the bank and is now living hand-to-mouth. Geez, what an idiot. Steppenwolf is a no-name JLA villain of whom no moviegoer will care about when the credits run.
Too much of “Justice League” is spent with Wayne whining about the death of Superman and whimpering to his butler Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons) that he doesn’t have enough super bit players to serve as cannon fodder against Steppenwolf and his army of Paradeamons that are hell-bent of retrieving three super computer “Mother Boxes”—buried by a combined army of Atlantians, humans and Amazons several thousands of years ago when Darkseid ravaged this world—seen in a flashback.
Fast forward to present day where a number of Metropolis’ finest, including Cyborg’s scientist father Dr. Silas Stone (Joe Morton) have been kidnapped by Steppenwolf and his Paradeamons and it’s the “Justice League” to the rescue! Oh, good grief. What in the world were Snyder, Terrio and Wheaton thinking?
To lighten up the mood of this appalling script, they have Batman dropping in comedic one-liners and practically doing stand-up comedy. What? The Dark Knight is a savage monster in cape and tights who kicks butt and breaks the arms of any would be shoplifter.
But in “Justice League” Batman only lacks white face paint to be the Joker’s sidekick. Because we (as the collective audience) know nothing about Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash, again too much precious time is spent introducing their origins instead of focusing on the villains … which is what the audience really pays their hard earned pesos for.
Warner Bros. is doing the opposite of “The Avengers” where Marvel Studios has the luxury of several years’ time to build up the audience’s emotional investment in the individual films of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.
Instead these DC comic book characters are dumped onto the screen without any caring or feelings about them. Oh, Barry Allen’s (The Flash) dad (Billy Crudup) is in prison and we get one scene with these two together? Who cares? Aquaman whines to his undersea wife Mera (Amber Herd) and Cyborg dreams of better days as a college football star.
And these costumed freaks are supposed to save us all from Darkseid in whom there is no mercy? No question that the special effects are excellent. Billionaire Wayne cruises around in a giant flying fortress dubbed the “Flying Fox” and has wonderful toys. Explosions are everywhere … but great super hero movies are not about that.
Instead they about self-sacrifice and being heroic within a plot that has meaning and understandable villains (like the Joker or the Suicide Squad) that are polar opposites. “Justice League” is a spinning mess and Whedon probably did the best he could in the editing room with what he had to work with—especially after tepid (at best) receptions of “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman.”
If you have a hankering to watch “Justice League,” you’d better do so in its opening weekend—as this “super boy band” will be gone ASAP. Great Caesar’s Ghost! I suppose I’ll be waiting a long time for that music video.
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