Zack Snyder's Justice League Review

 

I LOVED this. I didn't think I would have the attention span to sit through four hours of movie, but I was very wrong. This movie was so good, I forgive Warner Brothers for Justice League. 

 

Watching the original cut of Justice League was the worst film-going experience I've had to date. I left the theater in the middle of the movie to get food. That's how monumentally boring it was.  That movie was so bad, I vividly remember leaving the theater after it was over. When the movie was over and the five of us watching walked out, we were all looking at the floor confused. And one guy looked at me in the face, and said with confusion in his voice, and an uneaten bag of popcorn in his hand ,"That was bad." And me and the four other people all said "Yes, it was." Everyone was very disappointed and confused. I wish I was exaggerating. Five random people bonded, albeit for seconds, over a bad movie. That's how mind-boggingly bad that movie was. I enjoyed the overpriced theater hotdog I ate during the movie, more than watching the movie. I was so mad when I got home, I unironically wanted my money back. Like no joke, I didn't even feel like I had watched a movie. And every opportunity I've had to watch Justice League again, I've turned down. And I've watched Suicide Squad three times. I've watched Birds of Prey, twice.

I always thought about how much of a monumental failure it was, to put the world's first superhero team on the big-screen, and make a bad movie. Everyone know the Justice League. Even my 50-year old Dad who hasn't watched TV or read anything but a Bible in thirty years, watched the Super-Friends when he was a kid. My grandparents read Superman and Batman comics as children. How the hell do you make a bad movie with iconic characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash? The odds HAVE to be against you. You have to actively be trying to make that movie bad. That's the difference between Justice League and the other bad DCEU movies. The other ones are just shitty superhero movies. Justice League is a catastrophic failure of American Cinema.

The Synder Cut erases all of that. Everything that was wrong with Justice League is fixed. The terrible CGI? Fixed. The lack of character motivations? Fixed. The horrendously bad dialogue and out of place humor? Mostly fixed. This is still a Zack Snyder film...

Zack "Batman Could Get Raped In My Movies" Snyder

This movie works as a follow up to Batman v. Superman. And now, it is a true Justice League movie, instead of six losers screwing around until Superman shows up.

And so I don't completely sound like a fanboy, there were some cons. The aspect ratio was weird as hell. Don't get me wrong, the movie looked beautiful but if you watch this movie on your phone,  you can't make it full-screen. And this being a Zack Snyder movie, everything is either grey, black, or dark blue. And I mean EVERYTHING. Some scenes were so goddamn dark I couldn't see anything. 

 

 

And that Knightmare scene was god-awful, for one reason...

I love Jared Leto. He's one of the most talented actors working, today and he's an amazing singer and frontman. Hell, he could probably write a better review of this movie than I could, too. Jared Leto is insanely good at damn near everything he does. But he is dog-shit as the Joker. He's awkward. His weird laugh sounds forced. None of his dialogue sounds like anything the Joker as he's presented in any other medium would say. (Hell, half of his lines don't sound like anything, anyone would say.) And he's visibly way younger than Batman. I'm fully aware that Jared Leto is probably going to jump off a building if we don't give him a Joker movie, but did he really need to be in THIS movie?

Also, I couldn't help but notice that Jared Leto filmed his scenes separately from everyone else. Whenever both Batman and the Joker were both supposed to be on screen at the same time, instead of having them stand together, you'd just see the arms, or the back of an obvious double. I don't normally notice stuff like that, but Snyder didn't do a good job editing that scene.

 

I maintain that the only good that ever came out of having Jared Leto as the Joker is Purple Lamborghini...

Also, maybe it's just been awhile since I've seen Man of Steel, but General Swanwick being Martian Manhunter was really jarring. I know it was the plan from the start, but narratively it seems like it comes out of nowhere.

"Are you effing stupid?" - Martian Manhunter, benevolent protector of the Earth.

 

 

 

 I just can't see the hot-headed angry General from Man of Steel being the cool, calm, and collected alien with an Oreo food-fetish.

 

Also wouldn't that mean he sat by and didn't do shit while Earth was being invaded by aliens? Three times? While being a massively superpowered alien, himself? He watched aliens ram a spaceship through a metropolitan city killing thousands, and he let his own soldiers kamikaze into them, instead of stopping them. Which he was fully capable of doing. Discharge this guy from the military and deport him back to Mars.

Either way, The Snyder Cut was probably the best thing I've seen all year. Let's see if Falcon and the Winter Soldier can top it...

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My Thoughts On WandaVision

 

As a whole, this was an okay show. There were a lot of moments that referenced the stories I grew up on like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M. And as a never-ending cycle of on-the-nose easter-eggs, it was enjoyable. The story was a bit of a closed circle and inconsequential.

 

Wanda is more powerful. There's probably another Vision running around out there. Photon is in the MCU. We got to see people coming back after the Snap. We got to see Wanda and Pietro's childhood. The MCU is basically at the starting point of Avengers: Disassembled, and if they go through with that arc, all but one of the Young Avengers are here now, too. This was a good world-building exercise.

Let's start with the pros -

 

It was awesome to see Evan Peters as Quicksilver in the MCU, even if he was just a random guy. (Which I'm not totally buying. I don't believe the man who tried to get Hugh Jackman's Wolverine onto the set of the first Spider-Man would just hint at the Multiverse as a throwaway gag.)

I like the way that they established that it probably wasn't the mind stone that gave Wanda her powers. I like that Darcy was utilized properly. She always felt out of place in the Thor movies, since they tried to use her as comic relief. She would say stuff that messed up the tone of the scene and it was usually more annoying than funny. 

 

 

But using her here felt way more sensible. She's written as being aware of how annoying she is, and that makes her snarkiness and terrible sense of humor more bearable. I don't think anyone has ever cared about Monica Rambeau. She's been an Avenger since the 70's, and has never done anything significant. And Captain Marvel was the weakest MCU movie, literally no one is hyped that there's going to be a sequel.

Hayward is a terrible character. Hayward's nonsensical lack of motivation really hearkens back to the early MCU days of poorly-written villains, like Abomination and Yellow Jacket. And when we've had villains like Thanos, Baron Zemo, and Ego, these kinds of cartoonishly bad antagonists just pull you out of the story. And this is made even worse by the fact that we've had far more time than usual to develop Hayward's character. I don't see the guy we met in Episode 4, shooting at some children, super-powered or not. Especially not after we see him acting somewhat empathetic in Episode 8.

 

The fact that this is the same Universe, makes Hayward look even worse...

 

I'm not forgetting Agatha Harness, she just also didn't really do much, either. I can at least say that Hayward and SWORD were scared after Thanos, and wanted to use Vision as a defense mechanism. Agatha Harkness is just evil. But why? We've seen witches in the MCU before, and they weren't evil. This isn't a comic book. People can't just be evil for no reason...

Also, the "Agnes is Agatha" twist was very obvious and that song was goddamn annoying. 

But goddamn, Kathryn Hahn is stunning...

A lot of times, I actually found myself saying "This show isn't really for the fans." It was like the exact opposite of Endgame or Guardians of the Galaxy, which are just nonstop fanservice. This was just a linear predictable tale, with a few easter eggs thrown in to keep the nerds happy. The only thing this show did that caught me off guard was having Evan Peters as Quicksilver. The rest of it was very predictable. Including Vision still being dead, Wanda not getting to actually keep her kids, and the name "Scarlet Witch" being bestowed upon Wanda. I could see it all coming from a mile away...

 

 Plus they didn't even have the balls to kill the kids off the original way...

This series was just meh...

 

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