Justice League

Marvel has had its heroes together on the big screen for years. It's now time for DC to get its Super Friends together. The Justice League is here to fight for truth and justice and redemption with moviegoers. The end result has some issues, but it's amazingly coherent given the turmoil it experienced this year.

The evil Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) wants a pack of Macguffins called Mother Boxes. He had them years ago but a Last Alliance of Fantasy Characters thwarted him. Why does he want them? Because they can terraform planets to make it like his home planet, Apokolips, when they're assembled. He's going to Earth and get them back.

Meanwhile, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) join forces to save the day. They bring together The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to their team. Flash is the only one who jumps at the call while the other two wait a while. And what of Superman (Henry Cavill), who perished at the end of Batman v. Superman? The Man of Steel comes back in eerie fashion late into the narrative.

Co-Writer Joss Whedon came aboard when director Zack Snyder, who has story credit, departed after a family tragedy this year. His screenplay with Chris Terrio is a serviceable spine of a film. The heroes have to stop a bad guy from doing stuff. That's understandable. Its plot points are solved reasonably, save for how Steppenwolf acquires the last Mother Box. But Steppenwolf comes across like a third-rate Sauron with a thin goal. Cyborg and Aquaman only join the League when Steppenwolf knocks on their front doors. The Flash is already an eager hero as we see he has a wrongly incarcerated dad (Billy Crudup). Aquaman's backstory is brought up once with no pay off. That's a lot to stretch for two hours.

The film's saving grace comes with Ezra Miller as The Flash. His eagerness and humor were aspects that Man of Steel and Batman v Superman needed a lot. He has a convincing character arc where he learns to be a capable hero. It also helps that his speed abilities were the visual highlight of the film. I very much want to see a movie with this character.

Wonder Woman was also great too. Her rescue of civilians from a terrorist attack was outstanding.

There's an acceptable league of technical professionals. The editors did all right with the action scenes but they overdid it sometimes. They also did their best to coalesce the scenes shot during this year's reshoots. A few others have thought ill about the end results (especially regarding Cavill's scenes), but I didn't notice. Danny Elfman has another memorable score which incorporates his theme from Batman and John Williams's Superman March. The production design was fine comic book scenery; Gotham City, in particular, looked straight out of Batman. Cinematographer Fabian Wagner's use of color on our heroes' suits is striking.

Justice League isn't the deepest film about superheroes but it gets the matinee job done. It avoids some of the most divisive mistakes of its predecessors and introduces some new ones. It's a hard film to think about even when the plot is so basic. I hope this inspires future franchise makers to know what they're doing before they sally forth. You don't want to spend $300 million per installment on snap decisions.