Justice League Review

 Hello everyone!

As a fairly new convert to Amazon Prime Video subscription service, I thought I'd kick-off this year with a review of a film I saw over the weekend; Justice League. Now, bear in mind this is not the Zack Snyder cut, but the og release. So if you like my style, stay tuned this year as I aim to restart my reviews I used to enjoy doing so much in the early days of this blog.

Let's go...

Justice League

I'm not really a big fan of these superhero movies. To contextualise my point, I mean that I'm not one that obsesses over which film falls whereabouts on the time line like other MCU and DCEU fans. I just wait to see if a film's trailer can draw me in and go from there.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this film building on, I believe, the events of Batman vs. Superman and Suicide Squad (of which I wish I could un-see, so bad do I consider the latter!) set a couple of years prior to this movie.

Having recently seen, and thoroughly enjoyed, Wonder Woman 1984 I at least felt like I had a handle on the characters expected to show up in this film. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw Jeremy Irons replace Michael Caine (as found in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy) as Alfred, Bruce Wayne's butler.

I'm a big Irons fan. He's such a good actor and, like Ben Kingsley, seems to give his all to a part whether the overall project is good or not.

This film surprised me. I'd been putting it off until I could afford to purchase this until I saw it on, as I said in the intro, Amazon Prime. I'd filed it away on my save list with the intention to watch it so Saturday night was as good a time as any.

Who else surprised me? I thought Ezra Miller played the role like Tom Holland did for Spiderman in later MCU films; a breath of comedic relief to break up the seriousness of the plot.

I did question, at first, why they have an obsession with turning certain characters emo, almost, out of costume... exactly my initial impressions of Miller. But I told myself to give him a chance given that I can only picture Grant Gustin as The Flash. But that's for another post entirely...

This film was well crafted with a plot that actually made some sense (as far as the over-arching events of its surrounding films go anyway), which made a change from some of the other superhero films. I've found that a lot of them seem to use a plot as a transitional excuse to get from one over-the-top set-piece to the next rather than actually functioning as a useful vehicle to tell the character stories they need to tell to add weight to, and move, the plot going forward.

Bloated run-time this did not have, clocking in at just under 2 hours with the obligatory mid- and post-credits sequences teasing future content. Who knows, with all the casting & production changes going on, whether even a fraction of those ideas will be followed up on now. Shame.

Final Thoughts

This was a thoroughly enjoyable, if I haven't covered that already, superhero film with actual set-pieces that pulled a "whoa!" from my lips a few times, which, given that I've become jaded of late with bad films, it was nice to experience. Especially as I'm not as obsessed with these cinematic universes as others are.

Here's the trailer: -

Go see this time if you haven't already. You'll enjoy it if even a fraction of what I've said has resonated with you personally. I doubt you'll regret it and if you do? That's okay. There's plenty of other films out there.

Until next time...

===TLP===