Justice League (2017) suffers from the same overstuffing flaw in other DC ensemble features. But hey, it’s still Superfriends, in their first major big-screen outing!
Justice League (2017) Synopsis
The world is in despair after the death of Superman, with crime and violence rising worldwide. Unable to forgive himself for what happened in Dawn of Justice, Batman works doubly hard to assemble the super-powered team he believes would replace Superman as a beacon of hope. He succeeds but in the face of a fresh alien invasion, the team quickly finds themselves unable to counter the threat. It is then that Batman proposes using the aliens’ technologies against them. By bringing back to life Earth’s most awesome superhero.
Snappy Review
Let’s get the bad things out of the way first. As fans have worried over, predicted, and been proven right, Justice League (film) suffers from the same flaw that beleaguered earlier DC Entertainment ensemble cast showpieces.
It’s simply too rushed, too much, and too compressed. There are too many storylines going on for any to be effective. To put it in another way, this is not one but several origin stories competing with each other. The end result is that none shines. All drown each other out.
Now for the good stuffs. There are sporadic shiny moments in the movie, and by this, I don’t mean the humour or the fight scenes, but those that exhibit the human vulnerabilities of the costumed heroes.
To give some examples, there’s Flash’s attempts to cover up his insecurity with banter. There’s also Aquaman’s equally lame attempts to always appear as the aloof strong guy.
Doing the best job here, as expected, is Gal Gadot, who consistently shows she has her Wonder Woman/Diana Prince persona refined to perfection. On this, I must say that perhaps Gadot benefits from being the only hero without the need to explain anything. She is unburdened by origins; she just needs to continue the story from her standalone movie.
This leads me to wonder whether the rest of the cast would have been more memorable had there been more standalones before this movie. To begin with, Steppenwolf would have received better screen time. He could have been more than just an overpowered cosmic threat that dropped from nowhere.
Oh, but … wait. There’s another character who had one-and-a-half standalone shows before this one. I wouldn’t say he was awful, but he was still, hmm …
Which means Justice League (film) is again another example of DC being too eager and too desperate to leap into the super-profitable joint-universe movie franchise business.
What else can I say about this except … I can only keep on hoping. Maybe one day, DC live action movies would be as good as its animated ones!
Click here to view the trailer.
Check out my other snappy movie reviews.
 movie review. It's overstuffed, but hey, it's still the first real big screen outing for the Superfriends!){kind=link}