User blog:AustinDR/Justice League (Review)

The DCEU....admittedly, I don't really care for these films. For those unaware, the DCEU is an attempt by Warner Brothers to have their own cinematic universe to compete with Disney's MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). The DCEU (DC Extended Universe) began with Man of Steel, a movie that I personally did not like. Then there was Batman v. Superman which was just outright terrible. The tone was conveyed poorly, characters like Wonder Woman were only there for the sake of being there, Doomsday had no reason to be in this movie, etc. There was Suicide Squad which had characters that you didn't feel compelled to care for, the plot was confusing, Leto's take on the Joker only appeared for about five minutes....Wonder Woman was actually pretty good, though one part of me wanted the writers to push for her movie first before Batman v. Superman because it would've made more sense for her to be in that one. Overall, my qualms with the DCEU is that at some points, it tries to be too serious which makes it difficult to really care about whatever is going on, and the worst part is that they try to build their universe rather than making a good movie.

With that being said....Justice League. While not bad, it has a multitude of issues. The plot is still hard to follow. Essentially, you have these three boxes referred to as the Mother Boxes that when brought together, results in major devastation. Trillions of years before the main storyline, a villain named Steppenwolf tried to invade the Earth, but was defeated by the Atlantians, Amazonians, and early man. Each one takes a respective box into hiding, guarding them in the event that Steppenwolf would return to obtain them. Alright to get this out of the way, Steppenwolf is a terrible villain. He is generic, boring, and he really has no large goal beyond destroying the Earth for reasons no less than because I'm evil. Really, a majority of the villains from the DCEU films thus far are either poorly written or boring. I guess that's one thing that the DCEU has with the MCU that is having boring and bland villains (though the MCU did slowly get better with representing their villains examples being Ego, Vulture, and Hela). Because of Steppenwolf's blandness, I had to look up what role he played in the comics. For one, he was actually Darkseid's uncle. Something that I don't recall the film bringing up.

As for the Justice League themselves. Well, Ben Affleck. It's weird, Affleck was initially praised for his role as Batman...well, except for being overly trigger happy with murdering and branding criminals. In this film, he honestly came off as a whiner with how "Oh, Superman is the only one who can bring this team together" among other gripes. Wonder Woman felt the same (at least to me). Now, for the other members of the Justice League. Barrey Allen (The Flash) was a likable character. He was adorkable, had several quirky moments, and you can kind of get the character's reasons for joining the Justice League. He also has a personal tragedy: his mother was murdered years ago, and his father was framed for it. So part of his motivation was trying to figure out a way to liberate him. Cyborg I found as meh. After an accident, his father gave him artificial body parts to reconstruct him. While I do get that he sees himself as a monster, he just came off as too angsty and selfish. Aqua Man....I felt they were trying too hard to make Aqua Man look cool. True, he had some funny moments here and there, but I didn't see much of a reason as to why he joined the league. I guess my reasons for finding these characters okay was because they were not given their own films to flesh their characters out more. One thing that the Marvel Cinematic Universe did right was having the origin story for their heroes first before slowly integrating them into the Avengers. That way, we know how these characters tick, and their alliance made more sense. With for Superman himself, while I won't give away how he came back after the events of Batman v. Superman, one aspect that I liked was how he finally felt like Superman. Superman is not usually depicted as being dark and moody, so here, it's nice to see that he was closer to the modern take on the Kryptonian.

With the plot, while it was more simplistic, it was still somewhat confusing. While they gave a brief description of the Mother Boxes, they don't fully delve into what makes them that important enough to keep them out of Steppenwolf's clutches. The manner in which the league brought Superman back from the dead was convoluted, and it was overall clunky. So, while it is by no means the worst out of the DCEU, it still had its issues that kept it from being perfect. But it was great when they weren't trying to push for an expansion of the shared universe the films take place in.

Final score:

3 stars out of 5