AKA: I rather be working.
People was so hyped for this, the fans thought Jesus himself would come and make everything right in the world just because this movie. But sadly, I would like to say that is the same movie but longer, but no it has a lot more and that makes it even worse, because they added more to something without foundation, and in story telling like in engineering, without a strong base you can’t build a lot more. What I’m trying to say is, this failed try of a rough first sketch of a draft should have died on some film student trashcan and after they green light it this should have gotten a lot of cutting. This movie is unnecessary long and contradicts the other movies that are supposed to support this story or branch out of it, in short this movie fails in script, technique, and even in visuals.
In previous posts I have said “mediocrity is the new greatness” but here we get a new low for cinema, which is “Name is the new genius” just because this had the Snyder sticker slapped on the cover people thought it was going to be a million time better, but what they deny is that the original was 90% of the material made by Snyder in his self-deluded wet dream of what he wants, the story remained the same the shots were the same and the effects are almost the same, Whedon only was hired to put together a movie with the unfinished 4 hour work, and needed a few reshoots to connect all the nonsense. Are you reading this, already 4 hours of material and still not finished! The idea was to make 2 movies but because this monster was already eating all WB money they decided to try and make just one. Also if this was going to be 2 movies and at 4 hours mark still doesn’t have enough story to support 1 movie, making it 2 would have make the first a gigantic flop canceling the second one, or dooming it for a streaming release.
People say they like the movie, but how can they say it when I can assure you most of them were watching their cellphones at least half of the time, how do I know? All my friends who watch it already were posting on FB updates on what they were watching at that moment, so not very engaging if you ask me. Literally 2 hours into this movie and I thought I could better be working and get paid the Over Time, 4 freaking wasted hours is half a day work.
But you think this is overreacting? Well, let’s dissect this and show you all the horrible truth. And it will be long and unpleasant, just like this movie.
Let start with the most basic, story. If the story has problems nothing good will come out of it. Here we have a forced story for an ensemble cast, what means that no character should be bigger than the other, were everyone should bring something and support the main arc, but still having their own arc to work with and grow. That is none existing here, this movie presents you a team similar to the buccaneers of Tampa or Barcelona that the only thing they do is refer to that one team player. In this movie the Justice League Team, team is spelled tIm the Justice league should be called Superman and friends, because they never seem to believe in themselves and their sole purpose is to get Superman to save them. The story starts with Superman and ends with Superman everyone else is just there to waste time. In the story we see that after Superman dies the world is in bereavement for his death, but what did he do for all the world to love him so much? For all we know he was part of General Zod army and just decided to live on earth as our God. We never see him earning the trust and love of the world, we never have progression were we see he how the eye of the world changes from fear to admiration, They just love him because he is the super powerful white man, and to Snyder that’s all we need, right? Also if you are going to take, Superman’s death as a starting point, in the in the comic book that sparked a whole wave of superheroes and vigilantes swarming into metropolis, but here is just gray and boring, even in spiderverse they handled the death of a hero way better.
Wonder Woman is in a new vendetta to kill everysingle man in the world, or at least that is how it looks in her first scene, because there is a terrorist group and she straight up murders all of them. The terrorist say they want to make the world like it was 200 years ago, but they are just going to kill themselves and a bunch of children, also they are not mention again, I suppose this was just to show how willing is WW to kill everything on sight.
By some reason the death of Superman wakes the boxes, how the boxes work? How they sense the death of Superman? Why the death of a Kryptonian was important? Who cares? Apparently the super whine when Superman died was so powerful to break the casing in the box protected by the Amazons, I mean on the other half of the world and was so strong to break the casing, I refuse to call it steal because it was a casing made 5,000 year ago and at that time was the bronze age. So to still impact it with such power that scream should have leveled at least the first 3 cities on its way, thing that didn’t happened, and wasn’t even mentioned on the previous movie. Well as we can see in the screen the Amazons are still a bunch of superstitious primitive bronze age women who are afraid of magic shiny box, when Step-wolf (I know that’s not the spelling) arrive by teleporting inside they decide to die closing the stone doors, are we seeing the same movie? The guy teleported inside and they think closing the door will do something. Also the Parademons here are simple cannon fodder they are as strong as a guy who goes to the gym twice a week so the Amazons kill more of them than they get casualties, but Steven-Wolf is immune to anything they can throw, so the amazons get on the fastest way of transportation they have, horses! Yes the guy can teleport to anyplace in the world in a second and was able to find the Amazon Island even with all the magic is protecting them but he will never catch a horse. Well he get the Magoffin and gets out, he doesn’t kill the leader of the amazons, he don’t enslave the whole island and create a base of operations there, nop, thanks for keeping this for me now let me get back to my undisclosed location I use as a base, it might a ship, it might be in this world, hell for all we know it can be a different planet. So because Stephenwolf is such a nice guy the Amazons can make their ritual to light the warning beacons of Gondor, the whole fucking ritual, it feels like forever for something that we all could live without, a better option would have been for Stepbrother-Wolf to enslave them or being killing all of them and one manages to shot the arrow as a last hail mary hoping for someone to see it. They say the flame will be ignited and nothing will extinguish it, well when WW arrives the flame was already out, I suppose the amazons didn’t know about extinguishers, the arrow still there, no explanation why but still there, and WW see that Darksied is coming.
In a zoom call with Apokoloko (Better name for the planet, change my mind) he say that the boxes activated and called him so the third bow will activate and he will find it. This doesn’t make any sense, because the third box was poked, probed, shocked, licked, bitten, shot, introduced, and all the verbs in the dictionary and is not “Awake” even created Cyborg and was with him besides his porn for a few months and still wasn’t awake, Cyborg can talk to all machines even levers and poleis the box didn’t reacted to him? Also mention that there are no Kryptonians in this plannet, Kryptonians are scientists and diplomats, that’s why General Zod was a mad man and the council feared him, because they were weak to him and will never stand against him. But Kryptonians are not defenders, they are not the Timelords of DC.
In the Aquaman moment Batman ask him to join them, the guy can live underwater, that’s all he knows, is that useful against any enemy? Actually not, I mean Green Arrow is a guy with a bow and arrow but that is useful in lots of situations, he doesn’t know if he has any powers other than that, then we have a whining song like for a Nordic funeral for a really long time and that’s it, basically useless.
When WW tells the story of Darksied she tells how a bunch of cavemen killed Darksied and stole the most advanced piece of technology ever created. Yes it was 5000 years ago, so they were barely knowing about the bronze, and straight up Ares almost chop his head off. And WW killed Ares, so by logic WW can easily murder all Apokolips in her day off. Also when they say what each race did with their box they say Amazons and Atalntians investigate them and tried to use them, but humans only dig a shallow hole and put like 5 centimeters of dirt on top of it, I think it was a Tuesday and they wanted to go early home.
Flash has so little happening to him and at the same time so much screen time, his story is just running in circles, he ask for a job, and by some reason is rejected I suppose because he got his job application in a used napkin. But they say he can’t keep a job but where he gets all the supercomputers? And the space tech suit he has? Is he stealing all of that? If he is finding them broken and he fix them why not do that, would be millionaire in a week, cero investment and 100% profit. But that is not the way the world works. Also I hate all the havoc Flash creates every time he runs, is flashy but at the same time generates a lot of questions, because we see those lightning does break stuff, so those will also hurt people, makes no sense.
Batman has his full subplot in which he doesn’t know how aerodynamics work so he has a hunk of metal that can’t take off, which is completely irrelevant for anything just to see that Cyborg wants to fuck it or something. But I’m getting ahead of myself, then we see SchopinWolf going to Atlanta to get the second MagiBox which is guarded by 2 full guards, that’s right, the thing we are told is the most impressive and powerful of the world has Fatso and Slowpoke to guard it from the teleporting army, but they are outside guarding the entrance, I suppose to keep tourists out, but when Mera senses danger, like Lassie, she takes them in to fight the guy trying to steal it, which is irrelevant and also StephenWolf keeps enemy casualties and destruction to a minimum, very considerate of him.
Back in America the Parademons can “smell” the soap boxes, well no, they can smell people and places who have been close to the box. Which is very stupid because if they can smell it in people wouldn’t be easier to get the smell from the box itself? That would give you a whole new point of urgency to the plot, because the box should be moving all the time to avoid the Parademons, but what do I know, I like my stories with logic and entertaining. So Stewart-Wolf kidnaps a bunch of employees from the laboratory where Cyborg’s dad created Cyborg and takes them for interrogation. The way they find out where they are is super inconsistent with reality, because most of the people were kidnaped in their house or at the lab but Cyborg deduce that the middle of it is the river so they must be underground. Let’s get things straight, the parademons and Apokoloko don’t do stealth, they arrive like conquering invaders, there should have been parademons flying all over Gotham and that looking at the flying patterns triangulate the base, less stupid more accurate. When they go they see Strobo-Wolf interrogating the scientist with a mechanical spider that reads their mind and then lets them with a minor headache, again not torture, no death just want the info not hurt anyone, also the parademons never hurt a single civilian, very strong on their honor code. Then our heroes arrive and start murdering every parademon in sight and Wonder Woman start to beat the living shit out of Stepen-wolf. When Flash and Cyborg are guiding all the hostages I suppose Flash electrocuted to death half of them, because when they are out are considerable less people. Batman fights the parademos barehanded and basically kills them with his hands. I would like to make a prentices here, the parademons are improved versions of the living to make a better army, a single parademon is stronger and with a ton more endurance than a well-trained human, Batman should have come with some new gadget, armor or vehicle to make it out alive, yes at the middle of the fight he gets into the Arachnotank and start murdering everybody but even so, he just kicked one and went flying like 5 meters. When the hostages are out between WW and Cyborg beat Stephenwolf to the point he has to run away. But that easy victory against a Villain who hasn’t harm a non-aggressor or destroyed anything makes them think they have to bring superman from the death to now go and kill the guy who, to this point in the movie, they only know he wants to retrieve his property.
Stefenguolf call Darksied and tells him that this is the planet where he got the beating of his life, apparently everyone got such a beating that they even forgot about it, like in the simpsons when Bart asks Homer “Do you remember your heavy weight fight dad?” and Homer “No” that sever was the ass whooping.
So they decide to go Frankenstein route and bring him back and ask questions later, they never even bring the subject that Zod turned into a monster the last movie, and that the syrup pool is now contaminated by Lex Luthor’s semen, they just ignore the previous events and go ahead with defying nature, no matter that Kryptonian biology is completely unknown for them they are just going to wing it.
Flash states that he already have ran faster than light and that makes him travel through time, what the actual FUCK?! Flash took a lot of time to run that fast, because he is getting faster with time, but here this guy just pulled from a gutter he can change time at his will. Way to skip 50 years of comic books, character development and philosophical debates, so instead of plugging Zod’s ship to the power grid they make flash run very fast to create static electricity, because of course, the boxes don’t use AC or DC they use static, they shock the box, the box that was not activated and fuck knows how to insert commands in that shit we hope it decides to bring back to life Superman, and not turn it into a fridge or something, also if the box was going to bring him to life, why did we need the syrup chamber again? The box was not active so there was no way to sync it with the computer from the ship.
Lois Lane is the biggest waste in this movie, We see her moping the guy who just knew for like a week and then crying on the superman suit he had when he died, I think, if is the Superman suit that is very sick of her I just imagine her stripping naked the lifeless corpse in the middle of the rubble with the bone still impaling him. Then she receive a visit from Martian Manhunter, to tell her to go to the place where the plot needed her to be, there is never a moment where we see her no longer wanting to go see the monument but Martian Maneater decided to make it more obvious. Also Mister Wussy knew the invation and did nothing, the guy is even more powerful than Superman and still decided to just wait and see if he could trust them, I suppose if she lost he would just look for another planet.
Well Superman is alive regardless all the plot holes and contradictions, but Cyborg, who can control all the computers in the machines in the world at the same time has no control over his body, and this decides to aim at Superman, because a defense system is to kill any possible threat, no to keep you safe, I mean a wall is not defense, But having a machinegun firing all the time in front of your house is a proper defense. So because Cyborg aims at Superman he decides to murder everyone in sight, civilians don’t matter, and when they try to stop him they see that the plot demands for Superman to be God mode so nobody can even approach him. In the comic books Aquaman has kicked his Kriptonian ass, WW is as strong as him and has put him in his place more than once, Flash is faster than Superman, that here we see it a little, but we are talking the Flash that can go faster than light if he wants it, no big effort to do so and is just barely faster than Superman, so they are telling us that if superman does a couple of sit-ups he could be faster than light too. But then Lois Lane comes to the rescue and Superman takes her because who haven’t leaved a fight for an opportunity to go fuck something.
And also they realize Stepbrother Wolf has stolen the box because it was active and nobody was watching, but also without breaking anything or killing anyone, such a nice guy. But Cyborg’s dad decides to kill himself to warm the box, I mean that lab should have like 50 safety measures to avoid someone entering the death chamber let alone starting it from inside, the start bottom most likely will be in another room possible on the other side of the building and start it with simultaneous action so only 2 conscious and authorized scientists could start it, but no, here it only has a button that says on. Also they say it is for tracking it. Are you telling me they didn’t put a GPS on the thing, there are jackets with GPS, a cell phone can be tracked by satellite, but no we needed a pointless suicide for a nonsense plot point that could be fixed better, like batman said he has 6 satellites, could you put them to search for anomalies, anomalies the size of a city might be easy to spot, or see where the parademons are going with their flight patterns, because they were not teleported, they were flying all over the world sniffing for the boxes. But no, we follow the heat signal of an object the size of an Xbox, I think is easier to find a city than an Xbox with a city, but what do I know?
Everyone decides to go without Superman and wait for him to decide to go and arrive on time, but I mean, they don’t look disappointed on Superman being crazy killing and fucking everything he can find they think. It feels like they decided to order the new combo in McDonald’s and it wasn’t very good that is the amount of despair they show, like let’s go to Russia and stop this guy. No mayor thought is put into it and we see Cyborg managed to hotwire Batman’s airplane, yes leave it to the Black guy to start the vehicle when no one is watching.
Superman goes to his parents’ home and decide to help, but first he need to go to the Kryptonian ship that crashed in earth thousands of years ago and see that he has a shit ton of super suits, something we never saw in previous movies.
The fight has as much tension as watching water boil because they already killed a ton of parademons and Steppenwolf had his ass handed to him a couple of times by WW so they go but by some reason he is stronger now and is able to beat them, and flash got stopped by a shot of a parademon who apparently was the National champin of NES Duck Hunt so he knew where to shoot but who cares because Flash turns back time and manages to un do the last 10 seconds of the movie.
The next beat is one of the things the bother me the most because of people’s reaction. Superman arrives and start beating the living shit of Steppenwolf the guy doesn’t even put his hands up, but is not just subdue him, Superman is openly beating him with a smile on his face and cutting parts of his body with his heat vision. It looks like the high school jock beating mercilessly the unpopular kid in the middle of a party and laughing while doing it. Is an unnecessary beating and just makes Superman look abusive and arrogant. We have examples of killers like winter soldier, just one shot to the head, Punisher the fastest way and next. But this is not “You can’t touch me” is a “I enjoy hurting you” a very different twist from the first movie when Superman cries for killing Zod to avoid killing that family of stupid people who could not move because they evolve from rabbits (Rabbits stay still with they are nervous) but here is even disgusting if you are paying attention, as I said, Steppenwolf haven’t killed any noncombatants or even invaded a city or town, the place where he started the base was an abandoned city in the middle of a barren wasteland and they even cleaned the air. The only thing they had on him was a 5000 years old myth, he never presented the plan to them. Batman and Superman had created more collateral damage than the “Bad guys” in this movie. I suppose all of this is to prepare the sequel where Superman is the bad guy.
So after that they deactivate the boxes and impale Steppenwolf and decapitate him, why didn’t they do that at the beginning? WW and Aquaman fought him and they never use their weapons. They toss the corpse to Darksied and because he got killed once in this world he decides to no not try his luck, because here Darksied is a little bitch.
Then we have a Lex Luthor meeting with Deathstroke to create the Group of the realy mean people. By some reason Lothor still has all his money.
Then Batman has a nightmare where is a postapocaliptic world and he joins with Deathstroke and the Joker to kill superman because now he is bad, obviously, if Superman is in God mode, he needs to be the bad guy because then it would be super boring, just like this movie. Then Martian Pussy decides to go with Batman, to all of this ask for a “Where the fuck were you?” than an “Oh thanks for offering your help” Just makes no sense. And why Batman has premonitions, you want someone who look into the future you have all the magical DC characters, that are a shit ton like Dr Fate or Constantine, who could see/deviate the future, but no, we use Batman, because fuck it. Also would be way more interesting using Dr. Fate to be the one to warn Batman at the end because if he asked “where were you?” Dr. Fate could respond something like “Saving this reality, the universe includes more planets than this one” but then again, I’m just a guy who actually reads comics.
Well that is the movie, or at least the biggest problems, now we go to individual characters and their arches.
Superman, he was dead then he wasn’t tries to kill people but everything is forgiven to our God the overpowered white man. No growth, no change, well now he is a sadistic bully.
Flash, start as a the peppy teen who wants to takes his dad out of jail, ends like that, no growth. His powers stay the same, his motivation is unchanged.
Wonde Woman, Murdering sociopath at the very first scene, and still killing without blinking, no growth or change.
Aquaman, Drunken bro at the beginning drunken bro at the end. That’s all.
Cyborg start believeing he is a monster and by the end he no longer mentions it, is never shown otherwise but is not that clear. While in the Whedon version it changes from the Cyborg made from scrapmetal and uneven pieces to the more polished and defined look from the comic after working with the Boxes, what gives you an idea of he getting more into accepting his new self.
Steppenwolf was the one who had the biggest change and was because he died, well in that case Superman too :P
The structure of the story is very poorly made, we are still learning about important plot point at the middle of it, which might not be a problem but this is a 4 hour movie, so we already have 2 hours of exposition! If you need that much is because you story is very dense, or you are a dumbass who doesn’t know how to tell a story, this director falls in the second one, Because Whedon cut it in half and the story remained the same.
And talking about poor choices form an idiot, why they thought it was a great idea to shoot the whole movie in IMAX? Yes it is impressive to see it in the big IMAX screen, but also all the framing was made for IMAX this means that regular movie theatres lost part of the frame and the shots must be adjusted for them, also in a widescreen it only looks like it was shot in an old TV camera because it looks full screen, just a square and with all the gray filter it looks like an illegal download.
Many people has told me it needed to be this long to present the characters, but it didn’t needed to be because they say almost nothing from the characters, they just show tem doing stuff. Present a character takes time, takes more time to get you to like a character and even more to care about it, here don’t take time for anything and none of the characters is likeable.
The visual effects look like PS3 graphics, you can see the cheap animation pouring out from each frame.
The dialogs are blend and boring, because there is no character development to give them a personality or something for the audience to care about, not just flashy effects and famous actors. The characters are just cardboard cutouts of what is supposed to be, and this makes every conversation highly forgettable, and because of this, no one is talking about the story or a deep moment a character has. A lot of people talk bad about the marvel movies but all of them have a moment where you bond with the characters, something to make you like them, here they are just there waiting for the next time to get into an action scene.
Everything works by coincidence and nobody asks why because is very convenient. When I made a script with one coincidence everyone told me to change it and make it that was predetermined by someone, but here everything just lands on their laps and nobody has complaint.
The movie doesn’t work at any level and it shows in the amount of people who watched fully, because a lot of people just speed it up or stopped it all together.
So, don’t waste your time in this and better go watch the grass grow or paint dry.
No starts out of 5 it even made me angry.
