Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Good movie, worth the price of admission. Not as good as Thor: Bossom Buddies, but still better than that crapfest called Suicide Squad.

Dude.

That time Professor Finbarr 'OH CRIKEY' McLunatic replaced my eyes with burning, rabid badgers was better than suicide squad.

I liked Suicide Squad better than Justice League. It's really the second best movie in the DCEU...

Even as a DC 'fanboy' I've got to admit that some parts of Squad were ok but most of it was, ick. I watched the DVD again a couple of weeks ago, second time watching the DVD, 3rd time watching the film in general.

And, well, yeah, it's a struggle to watch a lot of it. I've still not finished watching it, to be honest.

Justice League though, I feel like I could pop that DVD on (when it comes out) anytime and have a thoroughly fun and enjoyable couple of hours of ZAP BANG WALLOP.
Hopefully more than a couple of hours, if they add back in some deleted scenes.

I take Squad for what it is, which is an ugly, confused mess that doesn't quite know what it wants to be, and yet is still a good laugh and plenty entertaining enough. Though I will concede that it goes downhill after the first half hour or so, on occasion I have watched that opening act then just put on Assault On Arkham...

so... in the credits ..


" Crispus Allen".... blimey eh ?

http://comicbook.com/dc/2017/11/20/justice-league-crispus-allen-the-spectre/

..only slightly ashamed to say I noticed that.

saw Marc McCLure too -- nice tip o' the hat there but I was looking out for it.


.. Flash speaks Gorilla sign language eh ... wonder who that might come in handy with/against ?

Why didn't Batman bring his BvS power armour to the fight? It probably would have come in handy.

It did kinda get borked a bit...

From the looks of it, he spent a lot of time working on the Flying Fox.

Friends and I saw it tonight and we all thought it was brilliant - great pacing, humour was spot on and everything worked.

I thought it was on a par with the first Avengers film and whilst I enjoyed the recent Thor film allot - this IMO was better, much tighter and more coherent.

Showed once again how useless and worthless crictics are.

The one woman with us did note how they had made the Amazons clothing more skimpy and lingering shots of Diana's ass (ok so us guys noticed as well ) but she was happy with a shirtless henry cavel so all good.

only one minr thing wrong with it.

My wife and I went to see it last night. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. She thought it was better than Thor: R, I thought they were on par with each other. Thor had a bit TOO many silly moments, but the pacing for this was just right. And Thor also had fun Easter Eggs...if you were a comic/movie junky and caught all the references. The references in JL were enjoyable even if you didn’t know the source material, like WW’s whip on Aquaman (ripped from the cartoon WW movie, used on Steve Trevor), the joke about exploding penguins (Batman Returns), or the mid credits race (from a JL cartoon where Barry and Supes are competing in a race for charity). All great fun, but the source material didn’t matter and wasn’t a requirement for a casual moviegoer.

The Superman/Flash race goes back ever further than that - I think it first shows up in the comics in the 60’s!

 Paradigm wrote:
With actual reviews, it depends entirely on the reviewer and whether I trust them to know what they're talking about. For example, if I want a rough idea of how a comic book movie is, I'd check someone like Chris Stuckmann on youtube or The Weekly Planet podcast or Empire magazine, competent movie reviewers who typically also have an understanding of the source material. By contrast, someone like the BBC's Mark Kermode might be the more accomplished reviewer and surely has a good understanding of film as a medium, but I get the feeling he's never read a comic in his life and therefore is approaching the film from a very different angle to what I'll be doing, therefore his review is worth less to me.

I completely agree, but from the opposite end, as it were. When it comes to a film (or any other medium, I suppose), I'm interested in whether it's good as a thing in itself. The source material is irrelevant (especially for comic-book movies , as I don't read comics) to me, so a review that concentrates on whether Gadot's Wonder Woman compares well to the character as depicted in the comic, but I am concerned with whether the script's any good, the story is coherent and whether the actors are any good.

Well I'm definitely going to be breaking the mold here...

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Well I'm definitely going to be breaking the mold here...

Most of what you said has already been mentioned so I don't see any danger to any molds here.

I think it's more of a case of a lot of those issues are more less significant for other people, than something significantly. I don't want to say 'nitpicks' exactly, because that trivialises that they were big issues for you, but a few of them, for me, were no real issues of note and more something that could be improved for next time.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Well I'm definitely going to be breaking the mold here...

Spoiler:

The pacing of this movie was absolutely horrendous. Everything happens at lightning speed because this movie tries to cram way too much gak into its running time, like: introducing THREE new heroes, getting the team together, introducing the villain, establishing how said villain is going to threaten/challenge the team, bringing Superman back to life, explaining the McGuffins, etc.). As a result of having to do all this, this movie has absolutely no room to breathe at all. Everything just progresses as quickly as possible so there's no time to develop any sort of attachment to any of the characters in the movie. It even robs the final confrontation of any sort of weight or gravitas because the whole thing starts and ends too fast.

Other issues I had with this movie: MAJOR continuity problem with Dawn of Justice. Superman and Batman end that film working together to fight Doomsday, and Superman even trusts Batman to go save his mother. Despite this, Justice League goes out of its way to add some sense of foreboding about Batman's fate if Superman is resurrected (i.e. Wonder Woman saying he better not be the first thing Superman sees). Now, when Superman gets resurrected you can explain his hostility on the effects of suddenly being brought back to life by a mysterious McGuffin, but he clearly remembers the events of Dawn of Justice well enough to taunt Batman about his line ('do you bleed?'). If he remembers details like that, there is no way he's not going to remember they were fighting on the same side That entire thing was just incredibly baffling.

There is also a whole lot of stupid people doing stupid gak in this movie. Bruce talks to Alfred and mentions his name in front of the criminal at the start of the movie, Lois actually blurts out Clark's name with a cop standing right next to her when she gets to where the team is fighting, and Steppenwolf getting the last motherbox is absolutely comical. Literally just beams in and out after the fight with Superman.

The balance of the characters was also pretty off. Batman felt pretty useless, with Cyborg just taking over control of his toys and everyone else totally outclassing him physically. His only actual purpose in the film is to get the team together. By contrast, Superman was so insanely strong that he didn't actually need the rest of the team, and the writing just threw in the civilians for Clark to save so Steppenwolf could get a few more licks in with the rest of the team before they defeat him.

I would personally be a lot more forgiving of these faults if we didn't already have the exceptional teamup movie that was Avengers, which didn't have to introduce ANY new characters, didn't have to introduce the villain, and didn't have to introduce the McGuffin. Every character is already established and fleshed out and the Tesseract has an entire movie devoted to itself. It's definitely not a perfect movie by any means, but it flows much better than Justice League. It's a shame too because I actually rather like DC, have played all the Arkham games to death, and really enjoyed Wonder Woman's solo movie, but everything else they've put out just feels so rushed and lifeless. Hopefully they right the ship soon.

Obviously its all subjective as its a movie but IMO

Yeah, biggest glaring issue I can see is Bats naming Alfred in front of a goon. Other than that? Issues are “meh”. They did a good job of making use of everyone’s talents, and not really making anyone seem useless.

Unless he said "Alfred Pennyworth", then I'll guess that it wouldn't matter in the long run.

I would say Justice League was fine in general. It was enjoyable and watched itself pretty well. I expected a movie clocking at almost three hours when I learned they cut it down to a little bit under 2 hours. I was rather skeptical about the movie due to three superheroes and one supervillain needed to be introduced during that time frame.

I enjoyed pretty muh all six heroes to various degree. Wonder Woman was expectedly excellent. While Batman was still depressing, he was at least bearable. Cyborg was weird. I expect him to be "the Spock" of the group due to his cyborg nature and the fact he's supposed to be a genius student, but came out more like a mildly depressed athlete which is somewhat fine. Aquaman was...weirder. Obviously, being played by Momoa means the character was supposed to be a sort of barbarian king (a water themed barbarian king I would say), but he felt more like a sarcastic, pessimistic bruiser. He lacked a little bit of nobility and a proper asskicking moment. I had heard lots of good stuff about the Flash, but found him rather uninteresting and unfunny despite a few good quips. I am not a big fan of the hyperactive, anxious nerd they made him out to be. I prefered the immature, strangely clever doofus he was in the animated version of Justice League. Superman was finally not so bad.

Despite rather good dialogue and at least competant acting, the movie did had several major flaws that amount nearly as sins in that type of movie. The villain, Steppenwolf, was incredibly bland and unthreatening. He felt about as powerful and threatening as Ares who was defeated by Wonder Woman alone. His motivation were obscure and glossed over. His villainous quality are almost entirely informed traits. The only clearly cruel thing he makes is make a sarcasm about people pleading they have a family to not get killed, else, he is just like any stock warlord. The lack of a good villain prevents the movie from ever reaching a point of climax and the entire thing is very anti-climactic.

Superman's return is also misshandled. despite Batman insistence that they needed him to defeat Steppenwolf (frankly, they barely gave it a shot in a less than ideal circomstance and that was without the presence of Aquaman; Wonder Woman did a pretty good job at holding him off alone). The portrayal of Superman in this movie seems to make him much more powerful than he was in BvS. So much so that he basically can defeat the entire Justice League without breaking a sweat and the villain even more easily. In resume, once Superman returns, without any interferance from the villain, its automatic and easy victory for the good guy. Making Superman so powerful he makes the entire Justice League obsolete or into cheerleaders is a big problem. In a team up, every hero should bring something to the table that is special in which they are, evidently the very best. Superman transgress that rule. The movie would have been much better served by Superman being resurrected by the villain to help him defeat the League, thus forcing them to wrestle him out of the villain's control. This would have raised the stakes and could have made the scenario a bit more poignant. Instead, we got a half baked "Superman is against us" moment.

Still, it could have been much worst and I will certainly keep watching the DCU movies. I am pretty eager for the upcomming Aquaman since the character could certainly be interesting in his solo movie and the already announced Wonder Woman II can hardly be bad considering who is involved in it so far (a simply wonder who is going to be the villain: Circe or Cheetah?).

Steppenwolf is yet another example of how this film severely suffered from being cut down so heavily. I saw the other day that the actor behind him has said in early versions (which he did record lines and mo-cap for) Steppenwolf had a whole sub-arc that totally changed the dynamic of his character, essentially he was on a 'last warning from Darkseid', hence his desperation to take Earth this time and explaining why what happens to him at the end of the final fight happens.



Much like Age of Ultron, Whedon's last movie, this should have been at least 20 minutes longer and was cut down by studio interference... though that's a moot point as the version we should have got is the one that concluded Snyder's trilogy, remained true to the established tone of the universe and had even a modicum of gravitas and weight that made it work on more than just one level of shooty punchy bang bang...

 Paradigm wrote:
Steppenwolf is yet another example of how this film severely suffered from being cut down so heavily. I saw the other day that the actor behind him has said in early versions (which he did record lines and mo-cap for) Steppenwolf had a whole sub-arc that totally changed the dynamic of his character, essentially he was on a 'last warning from Darkseid', hence his desperation to take Earth this time and explaining why what happens to him at the end of the final fight happens.

Spoiler:

Just that detail changes the whole dynamic of his story; in the cut we got, it's an unqualified victory where the bad guy gets zapped off into space by his own army and poetic justice is served. Go back to that other version and what the League think is a smart trick, making him feel fear and thus being taken by the Parademons back to Apokolips is basically them sentencing him to torture and inevitable death at the hands of the most evil being in the universe... Not that it makes him sympathetic, but it at least introduces some stakes on both sides that qualify the cost of victory and defeat.

Much like Age of Ultron, Whedon's last movie, this should have been at least 20 minutes longer and was cut down by studio interference... though that's a moot point as the version we should have got is the one that concluded Snyder's trilogy, remained true to the established tone of the universe and had even a modicum of gravitas and weight that made it work on more than just one level of shooty punchy bang bang...

Ughh god no - these films are already long enough - the added character bit you mention for the Stepenwulf guy would take another 5 mins - tops.

IMO The "established" tone of the universe (Nolan and Synder) was the problem - its dull, lacks any kind of heart, avoids human characterisation, or actual meaning and depth in favour of grimdark for the sake of it.

I think we have to just agree to differ there; I rate Snyder and Nolan as exceptional directors* and Whedon as a competent one at best, consider 2 hours a very short film and I'd argue it's JL that lacks meaning and 'human characterisation' in favour of making everyone 2D archetypes with no development over the course of the film while its predecessors handled those areas exceptionally well.

But each to their own! The film certainly does deliver what a lot of people wanted. Actually, I enjoyed it a great deal, but I still feel robbed of what I think I personally would have found a much more enjoyable and worthwhile film. And I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment, I've seen a lot of commentary online about how even people that weren't massive fans of Snyder still feel JL's departure from his tone is to its detriment, and there is a sizeable campaign (around 138,000 signatures thus far) to get a more complete cut of Snyder's version of the home release.


*I saw Snyder's Watchmen for the first time a few days after JL... the gulf in quality between that and Whedon's version of JL is immense. You can say the source material had a hand in that, but even just as a director it's clear to me that Snyder demonstrates an understanding of cinema as an art that Whedon just doesn't get.

 Paradigm wrote:
I think we have to just agree to differ there; I rate Snyder and Nolan as exceptional directors* and Whedon as a competent one at best, consider 2 hours a very short film and I'd argue it's JL that lacks meaning and 'human characterisation' in favour of making everyone 2D archetypes with no development over the course of the film while its predecessors handled those areas exceptionally well.

But each to their own! The film certainly does deliver what a lot of people wanted. Actually, I enjoyed it a great deal, but I still feel robbed of what I think I personally would have found a much more enjoyable and worthwhile film. And I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment, I've seen a lot of commentary online about how even people that weren't massive fans of Snyder still feel JL's departure from his tone is to its detriment, and there is a sizeable campaign (around 138,000 signatures thus far) to get a more complete cut of Snyder's version of the home release.


*I saw Snyder's Watchmen for the first time a few days after JL... the gulf in quality between that and Whedon's version of JL is immense. You can say the source material had a hand in that, but even just as a director it's clear to me that Snyder demonstrates an understanding of cinema as an art that Whedon just doesn't get.

Yep its inherently subjective.

I see Nolan and Whedon as very different directors - Whedon is all about people and characters (and that appeals to me) - Nolan is said to be about big ideas – but he has major issues with actually portraying people – watching various of his films I find they are bland and with very little humanity, especially women. Whedon is the opposite.

Both Nolan and Snyder love imagery - I really loved Sucker Punch and considered a far superior film to the much lauded Inception which I hated (*). I have no interest in seeing any more Nolan films, will see what Synder comes up with and look forward to Wheedon film.

My perfect length of film is about an hour and half but 2 hours is tolerable depending on the pacing and the longer films I enjoy are mostly older films from the middle of the last century.

I like Watchmen - in fact much more than the comic.

(*) I found it very much style over substance with a languid, plodding pace, a poor structure and narrative rules that shifted far to obviously to fit the needs of the plot. There are two women in the whole film as far as I recall and neither have anything approaching an actual character – not that the men are any better. There is no humour or in fact any reason for me to engage with or indeed care about anyone in the entire film. I think that is what some people like about it – it’s not about people – it’s about an idea and no one matters within that structure.

Back on JL - I think yoi can do alot wth some humour, some knowing looks and banter - much more than telegraphing information or tired monologues- the old show don't tell - Bats vs Sups also had the shockingly awful portrayl of Loopy Lex Luthor - perhaps the worst acting / casting in recent years in any film.

 AduroT wrote:
The only time I really took notice of extra skin on the Amazons were the ones “sealing the gate” and to me it looked less like sexy hot bikini time and more look at how Ripped these ladies are as they swing giant hammers around.

Exactly, the bikini-amazons where the ones with the hammer, and it was obviously to show how muscular they where. It was literally, something like 15 seconds.

I’ve not seen Man of Steel, but I’ve enjoyed all the other films to the apparent consternation of my friends. I know they’re flawed, yet I find them good viewing that passes the time well. BvS was decent enough that I sought out the extended version, Suicide Swuad I liked for the music and general goofiness. Wonder Woman was properly good, and Justice League was enjoyable too. I felt it struggled to get going with a lot of things being established at the start but it came together. It was a bit more colourful and had some more comic book humour after Snyder trying to make everything as po-faced as possible. I think the series is going the right direction after a very rocky start. I think Justice League clearly showed the signs of reshooting and being butchered in post production, hopefully it will be fleshed out with a considerably extended cut.

I think most of the JL characters are well enough established that they don't need individual films to set their backstory. I don't think JL suffered at all for not having origin films for Aquaman or Flash, while they work well as part of the team dynamic I've never been all that excited by either of them that I'd want to watch a film exclusively about them.

The BvsS was terrible and trying to tie this film with it makes for a bit of disconnect but outside of that I enjoyed it as I just watched it a self contained piece and put aside the other movies. Of the DC films I enjoyed WW the most and I thought in JL she was probably the best carry over since her film wasn't as convoluted and she didn't conflict with her origin story or the minor appearance in BvsS.

I thought Steppenwolf was pretty flat, the cg on him wasn't impressive and they just should have used some practical effects to do his costume. I also fail to see how once he loses his axe he can so be dragged down by his own minions so quickly. Yeah I get that they swarm to fear but fething Batman was able to beat several and he has normal human strength meanwhile Steppenwolf is trading full strength blows with both Aquaman and Wonderwoman but can't best his own underlings. The varying threat levels of villains in films always bugs me but it seems to happen in all superhero flicks regardless of being DC or Marvel.

Overall I enjoyed it but I didn't go in with super high expectations. Comic movies are getting a bit meh for me as like they comics they are very formulaic which becomes even more apparent with each film they crank out. I wish they'd dial back the speed of the releases a bit and reinvest some of that time and put it back into the writing.

 Paradigm wrote:
Much like Age of Ultron, Whedon's last movie, this should have been at least 20 minutes longer and was cut down by studio interference... though that's a moot point as the version we should have got is the one that concluded Snyder's trilogy, remained true to the established tone of the universe and had even a modicum of gravitas and weight that made it work on more than just one level of shooty punchy bang bang...

We are never going to get Snyder's trilogy. Warner mucked up the 2nd film by making it JL-lite, and then thoroughly blenderized the 3rd by having Whedon heavily rework it.

Snyder and Whedon have totally different styles, and I'm doubtful that Snyder's action and weightiness are a good match for Whedon's lightness and banter. While Snyder's films could use a little lightening in tone (and color palette!), jump cutting to a newly-written Whedon scene probably isn't the best way to do it.

To be honest, I don't see why they even considered Whedon to rework JL (well, I do, WB wanted a carbon copy of Avengers Assemble, and they got it). To my mind, the sensible thing would have been handing it over to Patty Jenkins, the extremely competent director who made the only universally acclaimed DC movie thus far.

Whedon was never a match for this universe and it's tone and style, and was clearly only considered because he made 1.5 good Marvel movies WB wanted DC to ape.

I'd guess part of it is because of overlapping timelines. - People forget how long films take to make, and the biggest chunk of that can be in pre and post production.

In other words, Patty was almost certainly still doing things on Wonder Woman at the time.

 Paradigm wrote:
To my mind, the sensible thing would have been handing it over to Patty Jenkins, the extremely competent director who made the only universally acclaimed DC movie thus far.

Um, The Dark Knight was pretty good and pretty much universally praised as well...