"Justice League" review

For better or worse, the initial road map for the “DC Extended Universe” has reached its conclusion.

The reality that criticism of “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” somehow manage to mount into some sort of tangible negative financial impact necessitating its studio to pivot into damage control mode still has me left shocked into near speechlessness when we live in a world of billion dollar box office takes from “Transformers” movies.

All of that is before even factoring in the insane on the fly alterations occurring to the shoot involving script rewrites, other directors being brought in, a post production process that damn near completely altered the final product from its initial intent of being a duology, sky rocketing the budget beyond its already substantial initial cost, and of course the tragic and horrific circumstances behind previous franchise director and architect Zack Snyder’s departure from the franchise, which just cast a giant sour note on the whole affair regardless of how it ended up.

No matter what, “Justice League” has earned a certain level of infamy deserving of the legacy of an adaptation of DC comics legendary coalition of the greatest superheroes ever made by simply leaving behind a trail of mangled executive careers from a studio still hungry to establish a viably marketable blockbuster franchise.

These difficulties are now more noticeable than ever, as compared to the tight, polished, and confident critical darling that was “Wonder Woman,” Warner Bros. culmination of a superhero cinematic universe accelerated into existence far too quickly and far too soon feels like the heart of an identity crisis struggling to admirably move forward with little sense of what direction that is.

The film opens with an awkward attempt to overcompensate for the franchise’s infamously poor understanding and appreciation of Superman by embarrassingly parading Henry Cavill out in an attempt to bond with normal people that has no sense of direction or flow, punctuated by Cavill’s bizarrely stiff delivery that left me uncomfortably wondering what the point of that scene was despite its efforts to retroactively establish Superman as somebody we’re supposed to care about laughably transparent. A for effort but the execution was too painful to even warrant analysis for proper grading.

Things then pick up proper with a rooftop burglar in Gotham City, staring at his haul with a smile before looking up and seeing the Batman hanging off of a ledge, accompanied by a surprising reprisal of his iconic Danny Elfman theme, proceeding to give a dejected look.

This small subtle yet brilliant visual cue for what’s to come is then unfortunately marred by Batman’s efforts to use the petty criminal’s fear of him as bait to lure out our big baddy’s parademon henchman in a tactic never hinted at or previously established for an altercation that never really factors back into the plot, ending on the crook expositing that the world has lost hope without its botched and hollow shell of a Superman as though he wasn’t just committing a crime not a minute ago.

It’s this pattern of inspired scene conception dragged down by insincere mechanical follow-through that follows the movie practically from start to finish, reeking of panicked executives mandating ill-suited talent dial back their ambitions in favor of the mundane vanilla approach to be polished to even safer focus test marketability in post as a means of ensuring future profit.

“Justice League’s” mutational watering down is present in almost every aspect from the makeup of the story that it tells, clearly designed as an almost Peter Jackson-esque Tolkien epic march towards a larger than reality itself villain being reduced to a bare bones “Magnificent 7” style assembly against a CGI villain so lame that he’s giving Cara Delevigne’s Enchantress a run for her money, to the musical score, which clearly was meant to evoke a grander sense of being for the set pieces tying the movie together but feels more like filler music to hold its place in production until the final tracks are complete.

When it tries to course correct, it does so to rather mixed results, the most noteworthy of which being the narrative leap made to bring Superman back from his demise in “Dawn of Justice,” which is so bluntly disrespectful and dirty that it almost wraps around into being darkly hilarious and subsequently working when paired with its tangible results demonstrated in the climax.

Where the stock nature of its approach really comes to a head however, is with the characters.

Newcomers Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg all come off as rather one note to fill particular portions of a group dynamic void centered around Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck’s multifaceted reprisals of Wonder Woman and Batman respectively and it’s here where the most boneheaded screw up of the entire DCEU venture comes to a head.

Without investment in these characters, it’s just way too challenging to really care about their stakes or what their fighting for. Affleck’s Batman barely works thanks only in part to the character’s nigh 3 decade long media overexposure while Gadot feels much more at home in the skin of a wiser and more experienced Wonder Woman whose previous adventures actually feel appropriately informative.

Everything else however comes across as the same kind of cynical hollow crowd pleasing business venture that this franchise was doomed to be the moment they decided a “Justice League” movie would precede roughly half of the settings established heroes’ origin stories, despite being wrapped up in a competent package. It’s the kind of half measure that deserves just that; half credit.

5 Apokolips Invasions out of 10

HOWEVER…

A year and a half ago, competent is not the word that I expected to be using at the mere mention of this movie’s theater experience.

While a great portion of art is undeniably viewed in a bubble for the purposes of optimal dissection, there’s just no denying that occasionally, metatextual information is imperative to the assessment of a product’s evolution. The stumbling of “Justice League” as a result of having to throw out and rewrite a 6 or 7 year long production plan that had nearly a billion dollars sunken into it before getting the ball rolling is as evident on the screen as the blue sky in broad day light. However, that the film somehow manages to come together in a way that Warner Bros. had previously attempted and failed at with “Suicide Squad” can’t go without commendation.

Through all of the nightmares of a production that never stayed set in stone, the movie maintains a sense of cohesion and focus that dwarfs all of its DCEU predecessors, save “Wonder Woman.”

Those average scenes and set pieces may lack originality but they’re never excessive, limit the scope of damage to what’s directly involved in the battle and best of all, feature a focus on actual heroics. If nothing else, a scene in which Batman snaps a novice Flash that has never seen proper battle before out of his on the job jitters by shutting him up and telling him to just save a person, and he’ll know what to do afterward, may be one of my favorite things that I’ve seen from the genre in recent history.

Furthermore, as flat as those aforementioned characters are, the utter conviction dedicated to their performances by the actors in question brings them to life, always makes them somewhat relatable and establishes consistent dynamics that you legitimately want to watch play out.

I know that praising something as being better than a previously produced monstrosity may seem like a backhanded compliment but for all the inorganically calculated moves made by “Justice League,” it can’t be ignored that a real effort was put into improving what didn’t seem possible to improve.

For all of the film’s flaws, it slowly works towards a functional vision of where it should have started while remaining a decent enough crowd pleaser along its tight 2 hour runtime and when its direct chorological predecessor’s idea of “addressing criticism” was aimless talking head news bite debates on self serious mythological pretense and Anderson Cooper proclaiming nobody was hurt because it was the “end of the work day,” that’s progress that can’t be ignored.

The DCEU’s battle for maintaining quality standards is far from over but if “Justice League” could be done while the cameras were rolling under supervision of those that created the problems from the jump, maybe the battle for improvement isn’t as uphill as it once seemed.

6 Great Halls of Justice out of 10

You have a clean slate now DC.

DON’T FUCK IT UP.