If you’ve seen one “group” superhero movie, you’ve seen them all.
At least that’s how it felt watching Justice League, the latest film to slap together a group of superheroes, who then face a formidable foe together despite their differences. This time around, it’s the DC Comics heroes: Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher).
Marvel’s The Avengers clearly had the jump on the DC gang, with multiple standalone movies for its characters and two featuring the entire group (with two more to come in the next few years). Somehow The Avengers seems more streamlined, but that may be because they did it “first,” coupled with the tragic director switch-up of Justice League. While no one’s fault, the film feels hacked and chopped, an unfortunate side effect.
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Of course, Superman and Batman have been depicted on TV and film ad nauseam for decades, with many actors donning the leotards over the years. It’s not so much who’s playing who — though Affleck’s Batman is quite literally stuffed into his suit — as it is the storyline, and the hackneyed attempts to present an original story.
What do you mean by that?
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Right now, if you were tasked with writing a superhero storyline for a movie, what would happen? If you suggest an introduction to each of the heroes with a glimpse into their back stories, then the debut of some mystical enemy that only the group can defeat, then some minor adversity that threatens the group’s success, then a banding together to most likely destroy the foe, then you’d be spot-on. That’s the movie’s plot in a nutshell, give or take.
It’s not that Justice League and its writing team is singularly to blame for this, but unfortunately, it falls into this tried-and-true pattern we’ve seen a million times over. The superhero movies that’ve stood out in the past are the ones that break free of this predictable, boring formula. (How prevalent is this storyline in superhero movies? It doesn’t even qualify as a spoiler because you know it’s going to happen.)
Surely there must be some great parts.
There are. Justice League works best when the team is all together, verbally and physically sparring. The first half features a dragged-out exposition of each character, which again makes it feel like a bunch of moving parts operating apart from one another. For fans of the comics or for those who enjoy a particular superhero, it may be a lot more fun. There’s something dour and dark about Justice League, whereas The Avengers feels much more light and comedic. That’s not to say Justice League doesn’t try to find humour — it just doesn’t succeed very often.
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Any standouts among the superheroes?
Yes, it’s Miller as The Flash. He practically steals the movie, and looks like he’s having a blast doing it. He delivers the majority of the funny lines, and his fish-out-of-water persona goes a long way. Ultimately, he’s fresh blood for the franchise (and movie superheroes in general), which is wholly rejuvenating. You can actually feel it when he’s onscreen.
For The Flash, the whole “mission to save the world” doesn’t have the high stakes it does for the other heroes, which may help explain why he stands out so much. For him, it’s a whole new, exciting world, and for the others it’s almost humdrum. Miller does his character a great service, so expect to see more of him in the red suit.
So what’s the bottom line?
While it’s definitely not the worst superhero movie to come out (that honour still goes to Catwoman), Justice League would be more exciting if it had its own sense of newness and discovery. Instead, it treads the same old ground, now a deep rut from the dozens of other superhero movies before it.
‘Justice League’ is now playing in theatres.
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