First Take: Justice League (The Theatrical Cut) - unleash the hounds

Spoiler free as usual. Because 37% though.

SYNOPSIS: Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy.

I really wanted to see DC capitalise on the success of June’s Wonder Woman, it felt like their combo-breaker - and considering the production troubles of the film, notably with the well-documented departure of Zack Snyder during post production due to family circumstances, it would be harsh to launch into a typical rant. But Justice League unfortunately falls short in many aspects, so let the
tearing apart begin.

Clocking in at 2 hours, Snyder’s direction and vision for this film is good, much better than on Batman vs Superman, but it still isn’t quite perfect, and that leads me on to the film’s script from Chris Terrio and co-director and film-finisher Joss Whedon. Some of the dialogue in the film is absurd, and the reshoots are unfortunately glaringly obvious, with Snyder’s darker vision complemented beautifully (in every ironic sense) by Whedon’s lighter, more humourous approach that he utilised on the Avengers films. While it may be ace to hear Danny Elfman’s classic Batman theme blaring out of modern cinema
screens, his score lacks the depth and the punch that DC films have become known for, however, the cinematography from Fabian Wagner is on point, and arguably one of the things I enjoyed about the film.

The cast is generally decent, Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and the crew are on form, Gal Gadot once again nails it as Wonder Woman, and making their DC big screen debuts are Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller and Ray Fisher. It’s obvious that they get on well together, they are a brilliant group to watch, but considering the hype around this film and the amount of time it’s taken for DC to bring the group together for the obligatory film, this felt like a real let down, and it’s a shame- buried in here somewhere is what could have been an incredible film that would cement the DCEU as a force to be reckoned with - instead, we get an absolute nightmare.

THE VERDICT

It’s a film that made me disappointed, but not angry for once. Justice League may have its flaws, but following this film, I have a lot of optimism for the future of DC- the characters have been really well
developed, and if the story and the general editing of the film was done differently, maybe audiences would enjoy it more. Either way, die hard DC fans are going to really enjoy this.

RATING: 3/5