JUSTICE LEAGUE, directed by Zack Snyder
Look! Up in the sky – it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … a bit of a mess.
The Justice League brings together the DC comic gang in the hopes of capitalizing on Wonder Woman’s incredible success earlier this year, while simultaneously erasing from your memory the dark flop that was Batman v Superman. This is a tall order and Justice League doesn’t quite deliver.
To be fair, it’s better than the all-darkness, all-the-time disaster that was Batman v Superman but it doesn’t come close to touching the heart, humour and chemistry that was found in Wonder Woman.
With Ben Affleck returning as the least enthusiastic Batman that has ever been, the gang is assembled to fight a ridiculous CGI villain named Steppenwolf that looks like a blue giant mixed with a ram.
Joining Batman are, Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman, Clark Kent aka Superman (whether he appears in flashback or real time, I won’t say!) Arthur Curry aka Aquaman, Barry Allen aka The Flash and Victor Stone aka Cyborg.
This is the first introduction of Aquaman, The Flash and Cyborg, and they are all welcome additions to the universe. Jason Momoa (best known as Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones) plays Aquaman with the swagger of a rock star and a heaping dose of charm and wit, Ezra Miller introduces The Flash as a sweet, socially awkward, fan boy with a backstory viewers can actually care about, and Ray Fisher’s performance as the half-man, half-robot Cyborg has just enough emotion to remind you there is a real person underneath all that metal.
The tragedy of the movie is that they’ve cast good actors (with the exception of Affleck’s Batman) and established good characters that you want to get to know, but DC can’t come up with a plot that is worthy of any of them.
These heroes spend two hours hunting down boxes of energy called mother boxes that if brought together by the giant blue ram could bring about the destruction of the world. A $300-million budget and all they came up with was a silly looking villain and boxes.
The only real success in the film is making viewers excited for the stand-alone movies of The Flash and Aquaman.
Both Miller and Momoa have started strong and I’m hopeful DC can find them individual plots that don’t ruin what they’ve created.
If you’re hoping for a repeat performance of Wonder Woman, you’re better off waiting till 2019, but if you’re simply looking for a DC movie slightly better than Batman v Superman, Justice League delivers.
Vicky Sparks is a Bright’s Grove native and movie critic for Global TV’s The Morning Show, which airs nationally on Fridays. Her Journal Reviews cover movies playing at Galaxy Cinemas Sarnia