I went into “Justice League” with low expectations. After the box office flop “Suicide Squad” and the critical failure “Batman vs. Superman,” I fully expected DC to continue its recent string of bad movies. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that DC’s latest film actually has some meaningful content and interesting characters.
Much like “Batman vs. Superman,” “Justice League” is a crowded movie. It introduces three major characters and a villain, jam-packing the backstories of four individuals into the first half of the film. Aquaman, Cyborg and Flash are all important and complex characters — League’s hurried introductions fail to do any of them justice. However, director Zack Snyder makes the best of League’s studio mandated two hour runtime, and manages to inject at least a little bit of life into the characters he introduces.
The somewhat generic plot revolves around an impending alien invasion by DC villain Steppenwolf. Set on using three hidden items of power to terraform Earth (terraforming, how original), Steppenwolf’s aggression inspires the creation of the Justice League, a group of heroes dedicated to defending Earth.
But while the first part of the movie is dedicated to half-explained backstories and half-hearted character development, the second half is when things really pick up speed. Despite having died in BvS, Henry Cavill’s Superman makes a few appearances through a video recording created before his death, and truly is the saving grace for the film. Even with significantly less screentime than the other characters, Cavill is one of the best parts of the movie.
As far as thematic elements go, “Justice League” was pretty generic. An unsubtle monologue about hope at the beginning of the film, and a few overt lines about the values of teamwork are as deep as League gets, but for what basically amounts to an action movie, that isn’t bad.
Despite the hurried introductions and shallow character development, the interaction between the heroes is another somewhat positive aspect of the film. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck’s Batman have one or two shining moments, and it is those interactions that elevates “Justice League” above BvS and Squad, and keeps it from being a bad film.
Overall, “Justice League” is an average movie. It could have and should have focused more on developing its three newly introduced characters, but does an adequate job of balancing characterization with plot development. In other words, I wouldn’t call Justice League good, but I wouldn’t call it bad either. All in all, It’s worth seeing if you have extra time on your hands.