So I saw Justice League Last Night…

…and I don’t know. It’s a pretty inconsequential piece of cinema, which is fine. I mean Marvel have been getting away with it for years. They can probably get away with it partly because they’ve never given us a Nolan trilogy moment. Also I feel like the interconnecting universe thing stifles the creators’ abilities to do something really interesting (even though DC never officially declared that they were running a DCEU). Add that to that the fact that they went straight in with the space stuff which has meant a shift back to fighting regular old crime on the street would be a very strange transition.

The style applied to Batman in his opening threw me right back to Burton’s version. That could of course be owed to the Elfman soundtrack in which he managed to sneak in that good old arpeggiated Batman theme. Add to that a bumbling criminal and some choice Burtonesque lighting and it sure was a throwback to 1989. Later on in the film you are treated to those dreamy Man of Steel shots of corn fields and a hazy sky.  This of course is forgotten about later on in favour of that too familiar final CGI battle. Out of all other heroes, Aquaman was the only other to have a strong visual context, but only above ground. Altlantis got zero look in. Cyborg had the lab and the computer-filled small family apartment while with the Flash we were given the prison and another computer-filled living space. Wonder Woman was just hanging out in London. It all made for something quite disjointed.

We need to talk about Henry Cavill’s face. If you had no idea until now that they had to digitally remove his moustache for the film (you are welcome) please let me know if his face made you as uneasy as it made me knowing that it had been. That first scene of him being filmed by the kids on the phone was straight up weird. He didn’t look real. I was really distracted sitting there watching Superman’s puffy CGI upper lip any time he was on screen. I kept trying to imagine him actually standing there with a moustache. Adding to that was what I found to be a really wooden performance but maybe I’ve forgotten how Cavill’s Superman normally is. It was all very surreal.

This Justice League film also reminded me how lucky we were to get a solid standalone for Wonder Woman. Diana was thrown under the bus a little bit. Every so often we were reminded that she was indeed not one of the boys. You had Alfred quip about Bruce Wayne wanting to call her because he was a attracted to her, you had Barry Allen (The Flash) swooning all over her but not like he swooned over Batman and you also had Arthur Curry (Aquaman) mention how gorgeous she was but it was funny guys because Diana had the lasso of truth around him. Also that gag of Barry falling on top of her fell so flat that the whole cinema audience were silent. I do wonder where that fell in the shoots and re-shoots. Does anyone else remember seeing her knickers so much either? However, Wonder Woman fought hard and gave as good as she got, she certainly outshone Batman who floundered around a bit only to call on his tech and have it co-opted by Cyborg.

The Flash seems to be a big talking point as some people found him a little irritable. I was personally okay with him. I did find that some of his best moments happened when he wasn’t talking because the “oh my god I don’t know how to talk to people like a normal person” thing can wear thin sometimes. I do think the effort Ezra Miller put into Barry Allen got derailed a little because the last memory you will have of him is running through the streets really oddly. It is a sight to behold. In terms of the other new additions, I thought Cyborg translated really well but as I said above he really made Batman look useless. I honestly could have done with or without Aquaman. It makes sense why he is there based on the plot but he is not fleshed out as much as the others. There is a brief encounter with Mera under the sea but I could not understand half of what was being said. Something about a dead mother.

Speaking of mothers, these DC films have a real problem. The worst instance will always been the Martha revelation from BvS but my gosh does Justice League still run with it. For once, Bruce Wayne makes no mention of his dead parents but that means nothing when we’re given a crash course of dead mother back stories from all three new heroes. It’s a wonder anyone gets out of bed to do anything without having the reasoning that their mother is dead. Fair enough the comic origins of Aquaman and the Flash set that in stone but I did a little digging and guess what? Cyborg has both parents. Both scientists. Then DC are going to further insult me with their dead mother obsession and run with their Mother Box lore. They should have just called them Martha Boxes. But Emer, Superman has a dead daddy and a Martha you say. Well I say, do you recall the BvS Martha thing I mentioned above? Bruce and Clark weren’t reminiscing about how both their dads smoked cigars or something.

I can’t tell you much about the final big battle because I was falling asleep. Nothing to do with the film, I am just at the mercy of having to commute to work during the week which leaves me drained. I was overtly cynical about it all anyway because I couldn’t understand why it took all of Atlantis, Themyscira, the Green Lanterns and a load of humans to defeat Steppenwolf before and then the Justice League rock up and do it easily. Did he have the full power of the Mother Box thing back in the day? That bit of information must have been lost on me. He did not have it when he gatecrashed Themyscira though…okay I am really just not that bothered even thinking about it because at the end of the day does anyone care?

Is there any need to rush to the cinema to see this? Nope. Is it worth throwing on at home some night you want something harmless to put on? Sure. Justice League is no masterpiece and it clearly never set out to be one (well I hope not because that is some delusion). I say this all the time but I need companies to scale the stories down a bit, make them a bit more nuanced and make the audience feel like there is a chance the heroes might actually fail. Give me things like Logan or like Kick-Ass (not the second one that was terrible) because if you’re telling me the villain is going to destroy the whole planet, I know the villain is not going to destroy the whole planet. It has all gotten far too predictable and although that is a comfort for many, it’s feels like a waste of talent to me.