DCember; Justice League: Was anyone expecting this to be good?

I don't really say that as a joke either, this film was in development hell from the start to the point where it was a miracle that it even got to "competently made", and many would argue that even that's a stretch. From rewriting on the fly, to calling in a director with a drastically different style due to loss in the Snyder family, to badly CGI'd upper lips thanks to Mission Impossible, the reports coming out about the film during development was one mess after another. It's safe to say that this movie was released with the expectation that it was going to fail in the eyes of Warner Brothers. Were they right to assume that though?

Starting with the plot of the film, Darkseid minion Steppenwolf has come to earth to seek out and recover three Motherboxes, three alien devices of unexplained (in the movie) power. To try and stop this threat, Batman and Wonder woman seek out the help of Cyborg, The Flash and Aquaman. When plan A fails, they try and use the Motherbox they have to bring back Superman, loosely explained away by it being a similar process that Luthor used to create Doomsday, and after a fight, some moping around and being convinced that the human in a bat costume, the amazon, the walking tin can, a guy that can talk to fish and a kid that can run really fast need some help dealing with an alien army, eventually join the main team to defeat Steppenwolf. For how complex the story was in Batman vs Superman, this is really basic, but thanks to them trying to distance themselves from BvS, inconsistencies do start popping up when it comes to things like how Cyborg became Cyborg. The story though feels lackluster, it's on par with the first Avengers film, however that one had the excuse of being a party, "we did it, we got all these characters together!". Here though, there isn't much to celebrate, because we barely know Batman, we're just waiting for the "yeah, we made a mistake by killing this guy off in movie two" for Superman, and we've just been introduced to Aquaman, Cyborg and Flash, making it harder to enjoy the celebration of them coming together. On top of this, the edits on the fly to the script become really apparent because this movie feels like it was supposed to be two, far longer films, because of how rushed this film is.

There is very little to enjoy about the presentation as well, because it's easy to tell what Snyder shot, and what Whedon shot, due to the fact that the two of them have completely different styles of directing films. I do apreciate the fact that this film is more light hearted then Batman vs Superman's depressing tone, but it feels out of place compared to the last film too. As tonally different as some of the Marvel films can be, what makes those work is that the tone is set to the characters, something I don't really get here. I'll give credit to the actors, they're doing a good job in their parts. Ben Afflek, Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill (for as little that we see him) do good jobs in their returning rolls, a personal favorite of mine actually is Ezra Miller as The Flash. Is it just me, or did they write Barry Allan in this film as slightly autistic? It's just the way that he handled some of the conversations.

For as bad as Batman v Superman is, you'd think this would be worse because that wasn't hacked to oblivion during shooting. And while one could make an argument for that, Justice League is a little better, but I don't plan on going back to either film ever again. It's the difference between a movie you want to be good (Batman v Superman) and a film you know had no chance of being good, not without willing to hold it back from scheduled release. Next week, DC's newest film to make it to the big screen, and hopefully before then the Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee review.