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Justice League • Movie Review #JPMN

1,933 views · Published 12 January 2018 · 5:06 · Indexed 4 October 2026

Channel: Movie Night · 2018 · Film & Animation

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• Justice League (2017) - A middling experience with flashes of excitement mired by wasted potential, 6/10.

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Close, but no cigar. The fifth installment in the DC Extended Universe was released nationwide on November 17, 2017 to mixed reviews and disappointing box office returns. Now usually, $650 million isn't "disappointing" - but with a production budget north of $300 million, "Justice League" is the most expensive non-"Pirates" movie ever made. So it needed to earn quite a bit more to match expectations. 

The PG-13 rated comic-book / action film continues where "Batman V. Superman" left off; inspired by Superman's sacrifice, Batman assembles a team of superheroes to face mankind's most dangerous foe yet. Ben Affleck returns as The Batman; portraying him with slightly more humor and hope than in his earlier appearances, describing his superpower as being "rich". I still prefer Christian Bale and Michael Keaton, but "Batfleck" is growing on me. The flawlessly beautiful Gal Gadot returns as well, and is expectedly fantastic as Wonder Woman. Her effortless charisma carries every scene she's in. Henry Cavill doesn't show up until the final act, but does serviceable work as the Man Of Steel, digitally-removed mustache and all. Ezra Miller's turn as "The Flash" is a breath of fresh air for this franchise, injecting some much needed, and often effective levity and sarcasm. The hunky Jason Momoa, pessimistic Ray Fisher, and wise Jeremy Irons round out the cast with solid, if forgettable parts. 

The big problem however is that - outside of single-scene cameos - none of the new team-members were properly introduced in earlier movies. Indeed, Wonder Woman is the only participant to have received a true standalone film beforehand. Warner Bros. saw the success Marvel had with the "The Avengers", and desperately wanted to mimic that ensemble film's massive success. But you can't have your cake and eat it too... you need to lay the groundwork, and build a universe of characters over time. The impatience of this franchise is its undoing. 120 minutes simply isn't enough to bring all of these larger-than-life characters together, let alone have the audience actually care about them. Comic fans with prerequisite knowledge of these heroes and properties may be able to overlook the hurried exposition - but as a standalone experience, "Justice League" feels very rushed and incomplete.

This is most clearly evident with the main baddie, a generic alien-demon thing who wants to collect boxes to destroy the planet for some dumb reason. His characterization is paper-thin, utterly uninteresting, and honestly one of the worst villains of this genre. All that being said, the deficiencies of this movie's antagonist are ultimately immaterial - as the main attraction here really is the titular world-saving squad; assembled on the big screen for the first time. 

... 

But unlike its 2016 predecessors, "Justice League" is never offensively bad - it just lacks vision or personality. The entire adventure is just rote. To quote "Jurassic Park's" Ian Malcolm; Warner Bros. was "so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should". The end result is a film that occasionally succeeds in spite of itself. A far cry from the homerun it should have been, "Justice League" is a middling experience with flashes of excitement mired by wasted potential. Very flawed, but still very watchable, I thought pretty GOOD.

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