Category: Movies

Short version: Justice League, perhaps surprisingly, did not actually suck. There is even a hint of a suggestion that the people who put the movie it may have tried to have fun in the process. I dunno just how much each one of you have felt betrayed by DCEU to date, but this is at least matinee-worthy.

Somewhat longer version: ach, well, it’s not a Marvel film, for better or for worse. I’m not going to get in on the relative merits of DC vs. Marvel comic books (largely because I was always on Team DC, so I’m obviously prejudiced there) but there are things that one IP can do more easily than the other, and vice versa. It’s hard for Marvel movies to achieve gravitas, and it’s bloody difficult for DC ones to shed their excess. If Justice League was trying to do anything else, it was trying to get out from under the gloomy nature of the DCEU films that preceded it. And I think that it did a better job than I expected it to.

Also: the movie actually rectified a nigh-constant complaint that I have had in the past. I won’t say more because spoilers.

I mean, we’ll know in a half hour, when Rotten Tomatoes ends an embargo on Justice League that everybody’s largely assuming signifies that the reviews aren’t going to be great. Certainly the New York Times, which doesn’t need no stinking embargoes, isn’t saying the same things about it that people said about Thor or Wonder Woman. And the Times didn’t even hate it! They graded it on a curve, but they didn’t hate it.

It’ll likely make a ton of money, though. If not here, overseas. So how to correct the DCEU? Well, if only there was a director with a proven ability to make a blockbuster film – preferably, one set in the DCEU universe – that was also widely applauded as being a good blockbuster film. But where could DC find such a wonder?