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Old 20th June 2020, 04:56 PM
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Justice League (2017) ★★★

It's impossible not to make comparisons between this and The Avengers, the Marvel equivalent of DC's 'Superhero All-Star' movie, a match where DC comes second best to the MCU franchise. Part of the reason is that Marvel spend much more time developing the characters as by the time the first Avengers film was released, all of the main characters (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America) had their own origin films before the first Avengers film.

By contrast, this was first the first outing for Flash, a character I hadn't seen much of before – a tiny role in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I was also unfamiliar with Cyborg, as I can't remember the sequence featuring him in Batman v Superman, so he is a character about whom I knew nothing prior to watching this

It had been years since I saw Man of Steel, about seven months since I saw Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and I couldn't really remember exactly what happened in those films, so I feel like to rewatch those, Wonder Woman and then give this another watch.

As for the film itself, the action sequences are very well handled and I like most of the cast, particularly Gal Gadot, and Ezra Miller, whose portrayals of Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, and Barry Allen/The Flash , respectively, are very good. At the other end of the spectrum is Ben Affleck, who just looks bored of proceedings. Where the film suffers most is in the storytelling because without the origin stories for The Flash and Victor Stone/Cyborg told in separate films, the script is left tell their stories and introduce the antagonist, Steppenwolf. The sheer amount of heavy lifting needed for this results in a film which spends too much of the film, practically all the first half, being bogged down in character development when it should be delivering exciting action sequences. It's a film which could have benefited from being 30 minutes longer.

The villain's name is somewhat unfortunate because every time I heard 'Steppenwolf', I started humming the opening of 'Born to Be Wild', something which completely took me out of the film! I enjoyed Justice League more than Batman v Superman, with a lot of the fun coming from the bickering between some of the characters. It's a film I definitely want to watch again, which is fortunate because I bought the 4K Ultra HD release as a 'blind buy' but it's not one which will cause Kevin Feige and other executives at Marvel Studios sleepless nights.

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