All my favourite DC characters in one movie?... Stop right there, I am in!
JUSTICE LEAGUE
CAST- Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Ciaran Hinds, JK Simmons and others (Oh you’d be surprised with the others)
DIRECTOR- Zack Snyder (completed finally by Joss Whedon due to Snyder bowing out because of a personal tragedy)
If you have been preparing to watch a movie all your life, you are so overwhelmed when you finally watch it that inevitably when you start to write about it, you are staring at a blank screen. This happens more so if the movie happens to be freaking awesome. Even though my inevitable 25 other viewings might change how I feel about the movie, but for now it is a completely satiating experience for a true DC fan like me.
Justice League is the coming together of all of DC’s main characters including the Holy Trinity – Superman (oh come on, we all know he ‘died’ at the end of BvS…but you have got to be ten kinds of stupid to believe he won’t be back in DC’s biggest superhero ensemble), Batman and Wonder-woman. The others being Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg. Although unlike Marvel, they didn’t have as much time to give every hero his own movie before bringing them together, they still did a good job setting them up through cameos and dialogue in the previous movie. Even if you aren’t a fan and missed those, this movie does a great job establishing them. Without extensive flashbacks and/or forced expository dialogue, you are given enough back-story about characters like Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg to give you just enough of an idea about where they are coming from and also intrigue you about their future.
After Superman’s death in Batman Vs Superman, the world is in chaos. Without a heroic, God-like beacon of hope to believe in, people have lost their moral compass. This goes to show the amount of work Zack Snyder and Chris Terrio have put in the script. The whole long-drawn arguments we had in BvS about Gods and Men and the effect it has on the world, were building up to this. The sudden disappearance of such a powerful and polarizing being would certainly affect humanity adversely and Snyder through a Watchmen-like opening montage shows us exactly how it would look like. Set to the famous Leonard Cohen ‘Everybody knows’ (performed here by Sigrid), Snyder’s music director talents shine through in just a matter of minutes he takes you to world painstakingly created through 3 other movies (Man of Steel, BvS, Suicide Squad).
As teased at the end of BvS, an alien threat is about to invade earth and without its most powerful guardian, it’s up to Batman to gather other Meta-humans to help stop it. By this time, before walking into a superhero movie, you are mostly accustomed to the flow it would take. But the movie is so structured that it balances emotion, action, humor and intrigue in a perfect way yet takes the kind of flow you wouldn’t expect. There are enough easter-eggs and fan service moments to have the geek in you screaming. There is one particular scene which without spoiling, I’ll just say that the Flash freaks out that had me actually scream ‘Holy Fuck!!!’ at the screen. Zack being the God of Slow motion was the perfect director to director Flash’s action scenes.
If you have in the past seen the Justice League cartoon, or any of the animated movies you probably know the characters like this-
Batman- brooding and dark. Not at all a team player
Superman- Righteous, perfect, always in control
Wonder Woman- Powerful, lovely, Naïve sometimes.
Cyborg- Young and intelligent
Flash- Funny, awkward and Fast
Aquaman – Strong and talks to fish (seriously that is all he mostly ever did)
But how about a Flash that is funny yet afraid to fight because he has never fought before? An Aquaman who is bitter and a loner because his mother had left him as a child? A Batman who is dark and brooding and has suffered a lot…yet wants to redeem himself by trying to bring together a team in the absence of an alien who made him realize his own humanity. A Wonder-woman who is smart, very powerful yet still disturbed by the memories of her first love? This, my friends, is why I love DC movies. This is why I love Zack Snyder. Often being panned for just being a visual director or just being a flashy action director like Michael Bay…Snyder has much more depth than that. He understands comic books better than most other story-tellers and still brings his originality to the movie. Unlike most super-hero movies, this one starts with a crude video shot by some teenagers talking to Superman. It is not only unconventional but for a grand epic movie with such hugely popular characters, it serves to ground the movie emotionally.
All the performances are to the point. Everyone does well and I mean everyone including cameos like JK Simmons as Commissioner Gordon is done well. The standouts for me have to be Ben Affleck and Henry Cavil. (Come on it’s not a spoiler! Believe me even if you know Superman is going to come back…the way they do it is actually the best part of the movie.)
However, the only drawback I can see with the movie, is may be because Snyder had to leave the Post production stage of the movie and Whedon (Of Avengers fame) had to complete the movie, you do not get to see the trademark Snyder-esque touch to the story. The movie has much more humor however some scenes feel like they are going the Marvel way (being funny for being funny’s sake). The difference for me between DC and Marvel has been difference between creating to express and creating to impress. DC (thanks mostly to Snyder) has always been about expressing their art, their stories. Here that seems to have taken a back seat in favor creating more of a popular movie. There are many scenes which were maybe cut out to make the movie more ‘appealing’ post the polarizing reactions to BvS, but they appear in the trailers and not in the movie. The movie seems a bit rushed at times which actually stops us from realizing the full weight of the actions and consequences involved. For a run-time of 2 hours the movie feels shorter than most other DC movies and for an epic story like this, nobody would have minded a few minutes more. Let’s hope as usual we get an extended cut for the DVD release.
Also, the other weak point has to be the villain here. DC has always had the best villains out there. Hence they have always had more compelling story-lines. Other than Ares from Wonder-woman, this has to be weakest DC villain yet. Weakest in the sense of being very generic, world- conquering villain that is as common to comic book movies as is to any other action movie. But somehow I get that at this point, DC’s main goal was to get all its signature characters out there in order to commercially compete with Marvel. Their chemistry and interaction is the focus of the movie and not necessarily the villain. However, a tease in post credit scene {yes there is one. And it again had me saying ‘Holy fuck nuts!’ (Deadpool reference inside a DC movie…so meta that Deadpool himself would have been proud)} which definitely tells us that interesting villains are definitely around the way.
The music by Danny Elfman is digestible but you obviously miss the great Hans Zimmer. Zimmer+ Snyder+ DC was such a great life equation (yes that is also a DC comic book reference) that any change to it seems sacrilege. Elfman is too common for out of the way movies like the ones DC is attempting to make.
Even if Justice League is DC’s most blatant attempt to be more popular in order to compete with Marvel movies, it still does have a lot more depth to offer than your standard super-hero movie. You can see them trying to set up the other arcs we might see in the future movies and also the dialogue particularly where Bruce Wayne talks about how much more human Clark Kent was than himself is thoughtful without being too heavy. There is enough nerdy stuff in this for comic book fans like me and also enough fun and action for non-comic book fans. While BvS was a treat for geeks, it maybe didn’t do well with people who didn’t know about the decades’ worth of comic book back-stories. JL just might please these people. Maybe the whole of it won’t go down well with all true DCEU and Snyder fans but it isn’t a complete let-down as most would feel. Also, we all know from Watchmen and BvS that Snyder’s movies are better understood in extended cuts on DVD. So let’s just wait for that.
I am too much in love with DC characters to rate this movie in one sitting. As I said to my Wonder-woman, they could have shown these characters getting haircuts and ordering coffee and I would still rate this as a freaking CLASSIC!!!
But keeping my feelings aside for a moment, most people will definitely enjoy this movie. Its Total Timepass!!
PS- Please do wait for the mid-credit and post-credit scene. It’s so fucking difficult to write a spoiler free review for this! So So much to discuss!
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