Review: Justice League Picks Up The Pace of DC Universe Poorly
There is an ongoing fear that Zack Snyder would mess up the first unification film of DC superheroes, just like what he did on anti-heroes unit, “Suicide Squad”. Your fear might come true, although “Justice League” is a tad better than BvS. Since Snyder left the movie in the middle due to personal matter, Joss Wheedon re-shot some of the scenes. So, this movie could not help but to be a half-assed effort and not so coherent in its presentation. On a press screening held at newly opened Cinema XXI IMAX at The Breeze BSD City, we witnessed first hand of the fate happening to these super humans after Superman died to save the world. The film picked up what was left from “Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice” that was released in 2016. It started off with Bruce Wayne a.ka. Batman (Ben Affleck) parting ways with Diana Prince a.k.a Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) after Superman’s funeral and everyone mourn the huge loss.
Secretly, Batman collected data of meta humans as can be seen on BvS’s ending scenes. Wonder Woman was the one he met first, then he went on collecting other superheroes and tried to convince them that a massive threat was coming to endanger the lives on planet earth. The Flash (Ezra Miller) was the next target and he was a regular college boy who admitted they he never went to battle. Cyborg (Ray Fisher) knew about Batman’s recruiting plan even before he went to meet him, because he was so high tech and attached to anything technology, after all he’s part human part machine. The last one and the hardest one to convince was Aquaman (Jason Momoa) who lived in a remote village in Iceland. He believed that strongest man is strongest alone, so it took quite some time to make him believe in a common cause to join the crew.
At last, the threat was already there and it’s led by Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), an eight foot tall warrior from the nightmare world Apokolips. He brought along an army of Parademons who are ready to help him eliminate anyone who stood in his way in search of three Mother Boxes on earth. After obtaining those three boxes, then nothing can stop him as the son of Kryptonite has gone. In Justice League, the characters have their own strong personalities that somehow did not really suit to be put together. Ezra Miller portrays a funny, naive, and seemingly innocent college student with a sense of humor a la Joss Wheedon. Ben Affleck’s acting was a little bit more likeable than his performance on BvS, but he played it too safe as the leader of this team. On the other hand, Gal Gadot was truly born to be Wonder Woman and we were sad her character had to be in this movie, since “Wonder Woman” was awesome. Jason Momoa had this ancient aura around him, but we did not see him anywhere near water and that’s weird since he was supposed to be the descendant of Atlantis people. Cyborg was the typical IT guy of the movie whose costume was awkward to look at.
The plot of the whole movie felt jam-packed since so many character and background stories had to fill the two hour slot. Compared to its previous fellow DC films (BvS and Suicide Squad), you’d find lots of plot holes and those who do not follow any of DC series would be left confused. We’re not gonna spoil more about this movie because some die-hard DC fans out there might be disappointed in us, but Superman (Henry Cavill) was present in “Justice League”. Was he still alive or was it a part of a flashback scene? Will these heroes succeed in saving the world? Then you’d better watch the film on theater starting tomorrow! It is predicted to gain $325M-$355M revenue on its opening week and set some new record.
P.S. : There will be 2 credit scenes that will correlate with next movie, so you’d better stay on your seat after the movie is finished!
