Justice League reviewed by Mark Kermode

so Justice League directed by Zack Snyder with script by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon who was brought in to oversee the to direct the reshoots after Zack Snyder had to leave the project for reasons of family tragedy the story is where we pick up where we left off Superman is dead the world is still in mourning and the world needs Superman more than ever because there is a super big beastie on they're on their way to earth and they're going to beat everybody into submission and we really need you know we need to have sleep no we just need Paddington we need Paddington that's what they give it a super hard stare yeah you know come over here Stefan wolf and I'll give you a super hard stare so Bruce Wayne Diana Prince Batman and Wonder Woman they need a new team and to get the new team this will involve traveling to Iceland to recruit Aquaman who doesn't talk to fish he talks to the water and then the water talks to fish cyborg who's been rebuilt Robocop star following an accident calm controllers mechanical parts and flash aka Barry Allen played by Ezra We Need to Talk About Kevin Millar who is there as far as I can tell for comic relief I know you have abilities I just don't know what they are my special skills include viola web design fluent in sign language gorilla sign language silica-based quartz and fabric Rajon resistant resistant yeah I do competitive ice dancing what they use on the space shuttle to prevent it from burning up on reentry I do very competitive ice dancing whoever you're looking for [Music] [Music] he's a Batman so you're fast that feels like an oversimplification I'm putting together a team people with special abilities you see I believe enemies are coming stop right there I'm in you are yeah I need friends he's the comic relief um there is a the reports are that having done the initial shoot and having looked at the reaction to on the one hand you know BBS Dodgers no one's calling it and on the other hand Wonder Woman it was decided that when they were doing reshoots they should get some more levity some more jokes some more humor into the film because that was clearly what audiences wanted what audiences didn't want was you know super dark super somber um I mean this is actually nonsense week I mean as Wonder Woman and a and the Dark Knight proved you can have I mean the the Nolan Dark Knight movies are really dark and they're really great patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie is really colorful and it's really great the thing about them is is that they're both really good films this is neither dark nor light it is just absolute rubbish before the screening started there was word because we'd looked on the internet and the word said that the film was 2 hours 15 minutes long and it was like 15 or 52 hours 15 minutes long and there was a quick note and then everyone no no no that's a mistake it's not 2 hours 15 minutes long it's 2 hours long we can submit on the BBFC site so for some reason the internet was reporting it was 2 hours 50 minutes long but it wasn't there was a huge sigh of relief Oh fine okay two hours that'll be a breeze honestly watching Justice League was like sitting through the director's cut of Heaven's Gate and then some it was one of those films in which I mean the storytelling is absolutely storytelling is a phrase I use loosely this is the kind of film which by comparison joel schumacher's Batman and Robin is a masterclass in coherence in character development in razor-sharp storytelling this is a fluid storytelling is all over the place in which there are too many characters given too little to do and nothing no reason for us to engage with them whatsoever it starts with a fight scene and it pretty much continues with the fight scene in that vein all the way through stopping occasionally to explain the plot do a bit of globe dropping and to do those flippant asides many of which look like they have been largely inserted afterwards the characters all have different character defining abilities well yeah except essentially they're all indestructible and they can all fly you know that line in Toy Story that's not flying that's falling with style there's a massive amount of falling with style that is to all intents and purposes flying also it's a film which does that Kingsman thing as Kingsman demonstrated you kill a character and then you bring him back everyone's indestructible once you've once you've overturned death once that's absolutely fine more importantly it suffers from the Michael Bolton problem of where do we go from here so at the beginning there's all this stuff about all you know this threat that they're facing it's the threat II is threat in the history of threaten us and this threat above all other threats is particularly threatening and it's going to require some incredibly ominous threatening music at all times and people looking really threatened by this inconceivably threat a threat that's going to happen it's going to be bigger you just go yes it's just Doctor Who isn't it's like this thing when every single herb and everything's happened before but this is worse and this is going to require and then what happens well you know have a punch-up and reverse the polarities that probably will be fine in the end the battle sequences look like outtakes from Lord of the Rings and I don't mean Lord of the Rings the film's I mean Lord of the Rings the computer games the early computer game spin-offs which attempted to bring some of that majesty that Peter Jackson had onto the small screen characters spent an awful lot of time standing on things that make you wonder how did they get there so there's a shot of Batman standing on top of a massive scaffold he's watching something I'm just thinking how did he get up there Wonder Woman is yeah he flew he flew in destructively Wonder Woman is standing on the arms of you know justice holding the sword and the scales she's up it and all I could think of is seriously how did you get up there that's how uninvolved I was it all the actors look bored and awkward everybody looks like they want to be somewhere else when gal gadot is easily the best thing in the film but what you realize is that when you put her in the context of a film like this it sees it shows you how much wonder woman was to do with the filmmaking with the direction with the writing with everything it's not just the gal gadot makes a good Wonder Woman there is one character in the film who act who's acting is so wooden that I literally spent a sizeable proportion of the film wondering whether they weren't in fact a CGI replacement and I'm pretty sad that they weren't but it was you know it was like watching you know a movie entirely populated by Princess Leia and grand moff tarkin from the from the recent Star Wars films of people brought back by the miracle of CG main we get the end credits sequences and I don't wanna spoil any of this I will say that there are two and credit sequences one of them involves more jokes and the other one for which I waited till the end of the film as I was watching the film I thought well at least one really annoying character hasn't come back so that's good news and then at the end of the end of the end of the end they came back so it was like literally just before the film finally said wiedersehen I've wasted enough of your time I shan't be troubling you any longer but one person that I was glad wasn't in the film was in the film you judge are Binks it was Jar Jar Binks it is really shoddy and really ill-conceived spectacularly messy thunderously boring and an absolute demonstration of our idea that more is less you know just give me a character that I can care about you remember when we talked about Man of Steel whole thing is that all the interesting stuff in Man of Steel is front-loaded when it's about Superman's vulnerabilities okay mm-hmm the minute that a superhero film stops being about those things it ceases to be interesting and as I said it's a world of in Destructo flyyy people hitting each other whilst looking do me while the threat is threat of threatened 'us threaten is it a world of dread and fear it's his world of dread and banging Chinese it is yeah yeah and it's their snow I can't remember well there won't be any snow in Africa this Christmas

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 349,087

Keywords: Zack Snyder, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Justice League, Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, BBC, 5live

Id: hsLcTO2a0Ec

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2017