Justice League Rant-view (Zack Patterson)

WARNING: The following review contains obnoxious opinions and strong language

Our favorite heroes have crossed over before, but never like this.  The humor was there, the action was there, the character development was better than any previous installment in this universe!…..and the Flash was absolutely incredible, for the first time in a long time. Man I loved Crisis on Earth X…..you know the DC crossover thing on CW last week?

But yeah after I watched all of that, I finally went to see Justice League...which was shit…

Despite hating Zack Snyder movies, and Man of Steel, and Batman V Superman…...and Suicide Squad, I felt it was my responsibility as a comic reader to witness Justice League on the big screen. Regardless of past films, the premiere of such a comic juggernaut deserves at the very least one real cinema viewing. After the very amazing and very kickass Wonder Woman film (Seriously, its fucking fantastic), I was thinking DC may have learned a thing or two from their mistakes and even with Snyder back at the helm, might be ready to move forward. And they did take a step forward……...literally one step……..and it was a tiny one…

SPOILERS AHEAD PEOPLE

PROS:

- Wonder Woman continues to shine with all the charm and badassery that Gal Gadot brings to the role. Always aces when she is in a movie and Marvel will never match her.

- Superman smiles! He actually smiles! And laughs and tells jokes! You know, like he’s supposed to!

- So Superman returns (See what I did there?) from the dead, and at first kinda can’t remember who he is and proceeds to fight the other members of the team on the spot. This is the best (and in my opinion ONLY) scene in the entire movie and truly reminds the audience that Superman is the greatest there is (Fight me, he’s better than Goku too). There’s a moment where Flash takes a run at him, and Superman looks right at him and matches his speed instantly. I got chills legitimately and cheered. It was great.

- I saw a Green Lantern!...in a flashback...for about 7 seconds…..don’t care, love GL, worth it

- Ben Affleck is a great fuckin Batman....Yes, I remember what I said about him before BvS...I was very very wrong about him...There, you happy now?

- As little Lois Lane in this movie as possible. Good call studio execs, cause she totally sucks.

- Superman raced Flash in a mid-credits scene. I dunno who won. I don’t care. It was great!

CONS:

- What fucking 1990’s beer/jeans commercial did the writers watch to inspire such a horrible goddamn Aquaman? He sounds like a drunken redneck, uses virtually none of his power, isn't funny and feels completely tacked on. Don’t worry though, he brings with him a giant fork that appears to only grant the power to push some water back for 5 seconds and to stab like 4 things after that. I hated him. Everyone I saw the movie with hated him. Fuck this version of Aquaman, go back to the damn drawing board.

- The CGI in this movie was ABSOLUTE SHIT and the action sequences were chaos with several moments where you have literally cannot see what is happening in a shot.

- Zack Snyder Slow Motion is in the film early and often...very often...hellaciously often.  Somebody needs to legit stop him from doing that all the time. It’s worse than JJ Abrams’ lense flair obsession.

- The script appears to have been written on Take Your Child to Work Day. There’s no way this story was drawn up by anybody older than 11. BATMAN VERSUS SUPERMAN HAD A MORE COMPREHENSIVE PLOT THAN THIS SHIT AND THAT FILM HAD A JAR OF PEE IN IT!  No villain development, no balance in the story progression, and the team is formed in the most half-assed way possible and the final action sequence is virtually a ripoff of the Avengers. Everything here just felt lazy, as if they were relying on the action sequences alone to get you through the movie.

- And Batman gets a Mercedes and Wonder Woman gets a Mercedes, MERCEDES FOR EVERYONE...man I hate obnoxious product placement (Yes, I’m nitpicking, that’s kinda my thing)

-  I saw a Green Lantern!...in a flashback...for about 7 seconds…..AND THAT WAS ALL LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...no word or setup or even a whisper of the current Green Lantern situation in this universe (despite fans begging for it, despite GL being a founding member of the League, despite his lore being the widest and most interesting AND best fitted for a JL movie. Shall I go on?). DC claims to have a future for GL, but their franchise plans are all written in crayon at this point so we will have to wait and see.

- Batman vehicles went way overboard.  We see the return of his admittedly badass bat mobile, but then a giant metal crab thing and a space ship that shot like 500 missiles (Stupidest vehicle I’ve ever seen in a comic book movie).  It was ridiculous. It was distracting. It sold toys………..Damn merchandising...

-Lex fucking Luthor weaseled his way into a post credit scene. Eisenberg still sucking righteously in this role, even when you only have to watch it for 60 seconds.


FINAL TALLY:

The hardest DC fans will tell you that critics panned this movie due to bias or whatever.  Fact of the matter is, critics said it’s a bad movie because it IS a bad movie. Its sloppy and clumsy and feels incomplete.  It feels like exactly what most people said, a rushed movie. An unnecessary attempt to catch up to Marvel when they should have been moving at their own pace all along.  I’m not gonna lay all of this upon Zack Snyder, for the fault truly belongs to Warner Brothers.  Their constant meddling and modifications from start to finish are what damn these movies to the shallow graves in which they find themselves. Justice League itself lost somewhere between 30-60 minutes of footage due to changes. Not saying that would’ve saved the movie, but it’s sure to have poor DC fans shoveling out even more money to buy the inevitable “Unrated Director’s Cut!” of this film when it comes out.
    But for once, it's not all bad. There’s one teeny tiny pearl in the pile of mucus and mush. The one thing that does show here is charm. These characters have charisma (however awkward it is at times) and it's the only reason I’m not completely zeroing this movie. There were some genuine moments of joy for me watching this, which tells me that despite WB fucking everything up as usual, they are still moving forward and slowly starting to learn from their errors. One day I’ll be able to go to a DC movie without the dread of wasted time hanging over me, and that movie will probably be Wonder Woman 2...unless the Flash movie resets the whole timeline so they start over….OR they could reveal this world to be the Injustice world and have new good guy versions come and fight them...you laugh but both of those concepts still aren’t as shitty as the script for Justice League.

1 out of 5

Better than a zero

BvS was a zero