Justice League

[mirth]

Mirth,

   Do you think they should have broken this up into 2 movies.

Not sure. Would have to see what was cut. I'm inclined to say no because Steppenwolf was such a weak villian and the story is pretty thin.

I think they were in too much of a rush to make this movie. They should have spent more time introducing the individual heroes through their own movies.

[mirth]

Fwiw, the CGI lip on Henry Cavill is really overblown in my opinion. I didn't even notice during the movie.

[mirth]

Mike & Jay are much harder on JL than I think it deserves. It's not a great movie, but it's definitely better than their take on it.

[JasonPratt]

Mirth,

   Do you think they should have broken this up into 2 movies.

Not sure. Would have to see what was cut. I'm inclined to say no because Steppenwolf was such a weak villian and the story is pretty thin.

Agreed. The only theoretical split point would be when the League has to bring back Superman and he comes back "Pet Semetary" at first. But dear Lord I wouldn't have wanted to milk either side of that for a two movie split.

I think they were in too much of a rush to make this movie. They should have spent more time introducing the individual heroes through their own movies.

Absolutely agree. The whole project has stunk from Marvelenvy from the start -- maybe not with Man of Steel exactly, but even then WE'RE GOING TO DO JUST LIKE MARVEL BUT REALLY REALLY DIFFERENT LIKE BATMAN WAS BECAUSE THE MCU WAS REACTING AGAINST THE DOUR BATFILMS!

[JasonPratt]

Fwiw, the CGI lip on Henry Cavill is really overblown in my opinion. I didn't even notice during the movie.

I was specifically looking for distortion and never saw it. I think people are imagining it looks different.

The Bag Crew are definitely being a little harder on the movie than they should be. Mike, notably, loved it, as a bad movie that was so bad it was legitimately great...??? That doesn't even make sense, and he emphasizes that he doesn't mean that ironically.

[JasonPratt]

I just realized (from the Bag review) what the three marks on the wall from the parademon were supposed to be: the cosmic cubes I MEAN MOTHER BOXES! Why?.... no reason at all. In fact, I remember now that the only thing that would kind of make sense from it leaving that mark, was if they were the creation of Brainiac -- like Batman, Brainiac knows the importance of branding and likes to leave his simple but stylized mark around in ultimately useless ways. But that's a consistent character trait, and with the series heavily implying that the "New Gods" and the Atlanteans and the Amazons and the "old gods" all directly trace back to Kryptonian expansion teams ten thousand years ago (which is kind of usefully clever until you realize the results aren't Superman's power levels or power set) I could see Brainiac being teamed up with Darkseid by that route.

But this is the same movie where a drawing which seems like it's supposed to be centuries old shows Jason Mamoa as Aquaman hanging out with the three Mother Boxes (which gives Bruce a plot opportunity to ask about them and connect them to Atlantis ahead of discussing things with Diana, who would / should / does already know the situation and tells everyone later). That drawing makes less than no sense based on the information given in the movie about Aquaman's pretty normal origin (son of a princess of Atlantis and a lighthouse keeper); and this one isolated fishing village in the middle of nowhere.

On an unrelated note: Arthur having blonde highlights at the ends of his hair, was distracting. Good Lord, movie, if you don't want him to be blond, fine, but stick to it. Don't do dumb things that make less than no sense and which call attention to breaking the immersion (since those things wouldn't last long in the water as decoration, and wouldn't be natural out at the ends like that.) I can understand the scooping decollatage and hair of Mera in the water as a stylistic choice somewhat in keeping with the character, but this is pointless for sake of making a connection that the design department already rejected forcefully.

Arthur sounds like the lighthouse his dad ran must have been off the coast of Florida, too, or maybe Georgia, which doesn't mesh with his ice-cold visual thematics (or coming from Maine).

[mirth]

Fwiw, the CGI lip on Henry Cavill is really overblown in my opinion. I didn't even notice during the movie.

I was specifically looking for distortion and never saw it. I think people are imagining it looks different.

The Bag Crew are definitely being a little harder on the movie than they should be. Mike, notably, loved it, as a bad movie that was so bad it was legitimately great... ??? That doesn't even make sense, and he emphasizes that he doesn't mean that ironically.

I think the truth of it lies somewhere between Joe's review and Mike & Jay's. Joe was a little fanboy-ish and the Bag guys were nitpicking hard.

This is a flawed, but still pretty good genre movie.

[Sir Slash]

So Justice League can't get no... juss--tiss!  Take a knee DC!  Till we get some ree-spect in the House. 

[JasonPratt]

^ Omg I thought I was going to barf a lung out having to listen to whatever weak-ass version of "the revolution will not be televised, give me my respect" semi-rap song was playing behind the "Black Panther" ad -- which I had to listen to twice, due to seeing both this and Thor Saturday.


Meanwhile, you might have noticed (but probably didn't) that the "Mr. Sunday Comics" team's review of JL was subtitled "Not The Worst". That wasn't only a review summary in itself, it was also a reference to what we could have and, back in the 90s, did get instead:

However, scientifically we all know that this wasn't the objectively worst version of the League put to live action. That was the live-action Superfriends show, the second of its two episodes being what seemed like a half-ad-libbed fake-audience celebrity roast for... Batman? I can't recall. Each other? I'm sure YT has the video(s) somewhere, as a black hole of pain and despair for generations to come.

It is not physically possible for even BvS to be that bad. Let us be thankful this holiday season.

[JasonPratt]

Also while I'm pimping those guys for no consideration, their pre-production commentary vid on how to make JL not suck, has aged very well. Or not well. Depending on how you look at it. Maybe both.

[JasonPratt]

Further evidence that Warner Brothers does not have the slightest idea what they're doing, and have made the films for love of money (and maybe jealousy) as their first priority: the Matt Reeves Batman trilogy, which has previously been marketed as outside the DCEU continuity (a bad idea but understandable) and as a prequel showing Batman's history (a good idea imo), is now being discussed by producers for a sequel to Justice League.

As if that isn't schizophrenic enough, producers are also talking about WW just going into a standalone universe for her films, totally apart from DCEU continuity. Which of course was what they were temporarily talking about for the Batfilms. Whereas previously the next WW film was being pre-plotted as a(nother) prequel set during the Cold War. At this point I feel confident predicting they'll toss the pickle-slice of 'a sequel to JL' up onto the window to see if that sticks, too.

Because -- and I won't even try to emphasize this enough -- they really have no plan, and don't really care enough to have a plan that they're willing to believe in and work to make work.

[Sir Slash]

I noticed the same thing about the Black Panther preview at the theater. It wasn't in the trailer I had seen but was damned annoying in the preview. I thought they must be trying real hard to market to what they imagine should be a proper black image. Maybe some fast with an African-type sound would've been far better I think.  :-X

[Martok]

This was a solid B. Good not great. Cast was solid. Story was meh. Steppenwolf was meh. Henry Cavill finally settled into the Superman role and the character felt truly heroic for the first time in 3 tries. Momoa made Aquaman cool and a bad ass. Some nice moments of interplay between the characters, but not much I would consider as depth. Definitely one of the better DC outings, but still not on par with the best of the MCU.

I went and saw Justice League yesterday, and this was precisely my take on the movie as well.  ("Good, but not great" was exactly what I said to my roommate when he asked me about it.)  It's definitely an improvement over most previous DC films, but they have a good ways to go before they're on Marvel's level (if that's even possible at this point). 

I too look forward to seeing the extended edition/director's cut.  It definitely felt like there are missing scenes that (once re-inserted back into the story) would better flesh out the overall viewing experience. 

I would still like to see a standalone Batfleck movie even though it doesn't sound like we're going to get one.

+1 

[JasonPratt]

Semi-related-thematic trivia point: for my birthday this past week, my Mom gave me, for the first time I recall in my life, a Superman themed birthday card. Actually suitable for a five-year-old, but with some nice artistic stylization (reminding me a little of the DCAU's "dark deco" art style).

I'm not even all that big a fan of Superman -- I just know various canonical and alt-canon details because I'm a geek and that's part of my cultural hobby to keep up with such things.

But that card meant a lot to me, almost as much as a religious card would have meant (and my family and I are all strongly Christian), because of what she was saying with the card: I help my parents out a lot, and have devoted my adult post-college life to doing so for decades (roughly half my life now, or even more than that if helping at the business during my school years counts), and so she was expressing her gratitude by comparing me with Superman.

That's the cultural importance, not only in America but worldwide, that Warner Brothers had bought to rights to play with, and they pissed it all away on two films that fundamentally sunk the character for sake of being different -- and that's why even non-fans are upset with MoS and BvS. And why JL could feel like what we really always wanted and expected, because Films Are Important and you've got to establish the core appeal of Superman first before creating a deconstructive alternative even means anything. You don't lead with the bleeping deconstructive alternative, morons!!

And even then, they couldn't resist putting one more eeeeevil Superman sequence into JL, just to let us know that they're still thinking of going in that direction later. (Which the cast has vocally said in promotional interviews they're all up and ready for.)

Fuck.

Them.

I don't curse like that much, and I hate using that particular curse, and I want that understood as context when I say with all my heart, FUCK! THEM! My parents for the first time in our lives used that particular ideological character as a way to express how much they love and appreciate me, and that's what Warner Brothers wants to shit on for the sake of artistic ego and/or trying to show they're better and more important than Marvel.  >:(   :pullhair: The more I think of it, the less inclined I am to give them a pass for finally caving under intense audience dislike and giving us unwashed peons the ideal of the character that has meant something to the very people they're trying to make money off of.

[JasonPratt]

Back to the reviews, this time from HISHE:

Daniel makes a point that I've seen some other people make (like MovieBob Chipman), and that I noticed while watching: it course-corrects soooo hard on what the prior film was supposed to be about, that the film pretends everyone loved Superman and that he was a bright shining light of hope and loved everyone and was glad to be helping and everyone loved him -- instead of him massively dividing the world so hard that Batman thought if there was a 1% chance he was their enemy they should take that as an ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY.  ::) But maybe that's supposed to be, like, a JFK thing? The dialogue given to Batman on the topic is super tone-deaf, though. But maybe that's supposed to be Batman overcompensating for his failures. It would be nice if someone had pointed that out in the film (and now that I think of it there could be a couple of remaining dialogue bits along that line?).