IMPress Polly
11-25-2017, 11:25 AM
The excellence of Wonder Woman this summer (which exceeded even my expectations) left me mildly optimistic about DC's filmmaking trajectory and accordingly hopeful that the Justice League movie wouldn't turn out to be as lame as the trailers suggested. *sighs* So much for that.
I think the best way to characterize the Justice League movie would be to say that it's basically Suicide Squad for DC's hero characters. Like in last year's Suicide Squad, this is a case of DC trying, and failing, to be Marvel instead of themselves. An extended "universe" of characters who team up, mostly forced attempts at humor strewn throughout (though a handful of the gags did land for me), etc., except with the bleak aesthetic that we've come to expect from DC (but which was not central to Wonder Woman, notably!) to distinguish it from Marvel's Avengers movies. I have two main issues here:
1) I dislike team hero movies. Their large number of protagonists renders any meaningful character development impossible and the result invariably is a thin plot and half or more of the film consisting of CGI-heavy action sequences that just don't interest me both because they have an excessively cartoony feel to me and also because they have no genuine emotional weight behind them. I feel the same way about Marvel's Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy films. I'm not a big fan of superhero movies in general for that matter, but I tend to find the origin stories to be the most enjoyable (or tolerable, as may apply). Why? Because that is where you're going to find the most character development going on almost invariably. Taking this summer's Wonder Woman movie (which I LOVED, in case you didn't notice!), for example, that movie was 80% story and character development and only about 20% fight scenes. Justice League seemed like it was mostly fight scenes. And worse, unconvincing ones.
AND...
2) DC is not as good at making team hero movies as Marvel. That's because they clearly don't want to. To make them is obviously just a marketing decision that they've made in order to try and be competitive with rival properties like The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. The jokes largely feel forced and the dark aesthetic doesn't go with the light-hearted tone that Justice League and Suicide Squad both have sought to strike or with the cheesy, video gamey plot about collecting magical objects scattered across the world that this film features.
Other issues? Yeah, Superman gets resurrected. You knew that was coming, which is precisely what's wrong with that development. The critics talk about Gal Gadot's role as Wonder Woman as a minor saving grace, but I want to stress the "minor" part of that because Diana's role is fairly minimal in this story and, unlike in the Wonder Woman movie (but like Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad!), she is sexualized and a Smurfette type of character (the lone woman in a fairly large, otherwise all-male group). You can tell that this movie, unlike Wonder Woman, was directed by a man. That said, I did manage to develop a mild level of sympathy for Cyborg as a character, who has easily the most thought-out arc. But it's not nearly enough to save this movie. And incidentally, I hear that Cyborg's character arc was substantially revised by Joss Whedon late in production after the movie's initial director Zack Snyder was forced to abandon the project due to a death in his family, so, in other words...yeah the best aspects of Justice League appear to have been afterthoughts!
It's time for DC to get out of the business of team hero movies and focus on doing things that they are better at; things that they actually want to do. And after Watchmen, Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and this film, I think it safe to add that it is also time for Zack Snyder to stop directing movies period, especially in this genre.
I think the best way to characterize the Justice League movie would be to say that it's basically Suicide Squad for DC's hero characters. Like in last year's Suicide Squad, this is a case of DC trying, and failing, to be Marvel instead of themselves. An extended "universe" of characters who team up, mostly forced attempts at humor strewn throughout (though a handful of the gags did land for me), etc., except with the bleak aesthetic that we've come to expect from DC (but which was not central to Wonder Woman, notably!) to distinguish it from Marvel's Avengers movies. I have two main issues here:
1) I dislike team hero movies. Their large number of protagonists renders any meaningful character development impossible and the result invariably is a thin plot and half or more of the film consisting of CGI-heavy action sequences that just don't interest me both because they have an excessively cartoony feel to me and also because they have no genuine emotional weight behind them. I feel the same way about Marvel's Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy films. I'm not a big fan of superhero movies in general for that matter, but I tend to find the origin stories to be the most enjoyable (or tolerable, as may apply). Why? Because that is where you're going to find the most character development going on almost invariably. Taking this summer's Wonder Woman movie (which I LOVED, in case you didn't notice!), for example, that movie was 80% story and character development and only about 20% fight scenes. Justice League seemed like it was mostly fight scenes. And worse, unconvincing ones.
AND...
2) DC is not as good at making team hero movies as Marvel. That's because they clearly don't want to. To make them is obviously just a marketing decision that they've made in order to try and be competitive with rival properties like The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. The jokes largely feel forced and the dark aesthetic doesn't go with the light-hearted tone that Justice League and Suicide Squad both have sought to strike or with the cheesy, video gamey plot about collecting magical objects scattered across the world that this film features.
Other issues? Yeah, Superman gets resurrected. You knew that was coming, which is precisely what's wrong with that development. The critics talk about Gal Gadot's role as Wonder Woman as a minor saving grace, but I want to stress the "minor" part of that because Diana's role is fairly minimal in this story and, unlike in the Wonder Woman movie (but like Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad!), she is sexualized and a Smurfette type of character (the lone woman in a fairly large, otherwise all-male group). You can tell that this movie, unlike Wonder Woman, was directed by a man. That said, I did manage to develop a mild level of sympathy for Cyborg as a character, who has easily the most thought-out arc. But it's not nearly enough to save this movie. And incidentally, I hear that Cyborg's character arc was substantially revised by Joss Whedon late in production after the movie's initial director Zack Snyder was forced to abandon the project due to a death in his family, so, in other words...yeah the best aspects of Justice League appear to have been afterthoughts!
It's time for DC to get out of the business of team hero movies and focus on doing things that they are better at; things that they actually want to do. And after Watchmen, Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and this film, I think it safe to add that it is also time for Zack Snyder to stop directing movies period, especially in this genre.