Fantastic Beasts - The Secrets Of Dumbledore

 

Dumb Or Dumbledore

Fantastic Beasts - 
The Secrets Of Dumbledore
USA 2022
Directed by David Yates
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers ahead. And please keep in mind I wrote this one some time ago... before real life events moved on.

Fantastic Beasts - The Secrets Of Dumbledore is the third in the series of Harry Potter prequels written for the screen by the writer of the original novels, J. K. Rowling. Now, I absolutely loved the first film in this series (more so than the Harry Potter movies... I’m not exactly a fan of Potter and his fellow tykes) which I reviewed here but I thought the second movie, Fantastic Beasts - The Crimes Of Grindelwald (reviewed here), was a bit of a let down and felt like a stepping stone of a movie. This third installment in what I’m hoping will be running for the number of films originally planned, certainly works a heck of a lot better than the previous movie but, even though it’s way more entertaining, this one is a bit of a mess, to be honest. 

Once more, Grindelwald has changed his visage because of, presumably, Warner Brothers mixing up art and PR with certainly bizarre allegations made against Johnny Depp*. Why they think those audience members strangely not in the Depp camp would be unable to suspend disbelief like anyone else and not get the art mixed with the people behind it is beyond me but, whatever, he’s been replaced with Mads Mikkelsen... who, to be fair, always makes for a good bad guy. 

Among those back from the previous films are Eddie Redmayne as Newt, Dan Fogler as Jacob, Alison Sudol as Queenie and Jude Law as young Professor Dumbledore. Then there’s Ezra Miller, who seems to be on a real bender in real life with various criminal charges brought against him. Warner Brothers’ seem to be reacting to this in the same way as they have with Johnny Depp and they keep postponing The Flash*. However, he’s not got as much presence in this movie as he did in previous installments and, at the end of this one, there’s the open ended opportunity for his character to just dissappear from the films from now on (should Warner Brothers’ do the right thing and make some more of them). Since the script is credited as being written by J. K Rowling and Steve Kloves... but ‘based on’ a screenplay by J. K. Rowling, I can only assume some ‘PR idiots running scared’ studio politics forced a rewrite of the material to make some alterations to Rowling’s original intent? 

And then we have the most noticeable absence in the film... Newt’s love interest and quite strong protagonist of the previous movies, Tina, as played by Katherine Waterston, is almost entirely missing in action from this installment. She has one brief shot near the end and then a couple of minutes at the conclusion of the movie... her disappearance being ‘explained away’ as being that she’s now a very busy person. 

Really? I mean, WTF? 

She was one of the best characters in the movies and now she’s been shunted out. Now, there were the usual COVID delays on this movie, plus the politically motivated ones but I’m also hearing she disagreed with comments made by Rowling (and blown up bizarrely by social media trolls) and that she was deliberately sidelined. I don’t buy that... what have personal viewpoints got to do with making art (and the horrible box office which wags the dog, for that matter)? I suspect scheduling conflicts due to COVID may have been an issue and, again, I suspect it’s why we have the ‘based on a screenplay’ credit on this picture. 

The story itself seems a lot weaker than the previous two, with the ingenious device of making the plan of the protagonists proof against those who can see the future by not having a real plan and obfuscating it from those who are even supposed to be executing it... allowing for the convoluted stitching together of set pieces to remain unchallenged by any collective raising of eyebrows from the audience. It’s a sound concept though so... it just about works. Surprisingly, this doesn’t make the identity of the end game protagonist any less easy to see coming a mile off but, yeah, it’s not a film about surprising anybody, for sure. 

And it’s a big, dumb(ledore) Hollywood blockbuster but it looks fantastic, has a great score by regular composer James Newton Howard (occasionally referencing John Williams’ themes at certain key points... like the obvious one for scenes taking place at Hogwarts), some good staging of certain scenes and some really nice acting turns... if you want to see Eddie Redmayne scuttling sideways and dancing like a lobster as a mechanic of successfully executing a rescue operation, then this is definitely the film to see. 

All in all, I had a really great time with Fantastic Beasts - The Secrets Of Dumbledore and I think fans of the series will appreciate it. I will, however, say three things that I see as problems with it. One is the fact that, if the previous film felt like a stepping stone to something bigger... this doesn’t feel like anything bigger at all... it feels more like a compromised story with an open ended, semi-conclusion in case no more films in the series are green lit. 

Secondly, the motivations of the turncoat actions of Queenie in the previous film are almost completely not addressed. I’m still none the wiser as to why she joined up with Grindelwald at the end of the previous movie. No idea what that was about. 

Thirdly, the definite lack of presence of Katherine Waterston’s character in this really hurts the film. It just feels wrong and is very conspicuous... just not a good idea, at all. If an actor can’t fit in with your schedules and she’s essential to the movie (as I feel Waterston was) then rearrange your schedules, is my advice. Other than those three things... an enjoyable movie and I certainly hope that Warner Brothers’, despite the low box office returns on this one, get off their high horse and get on with the series without worrying about what their actors and writers are doing behind the scenes (which is, frankly, none of their’s... or the audience’s, business). 

*Yeah okay... that kinda shows the huge gap between when I wrote this review & when I’m publishing it.

The Flash

 

Allen, No Alyn

The Flash
Directed by Andy Muschietti
USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand  
2023 Warner Brothers/DC
UK cinema release print

Warning: This one will have all the spoilers. Seriously don’t read if you don’t want to know.

The Flash is the long delayed DCU (DC Universe) movie which is being touted as a soft reboot of the franchise, so DC can mothball the old one and reboot the characters in a new series of movies. Which, frankly, is a bad idea, especially since one of the casualties of this bizarrely terrible decision was the cancellation of a third stand alone Wonder Woman movie, from what I can make out. Well, at least I got to see Gal Gadot reprise her role in at least two DC movies this year (so far... I’m hoping she’ll turn up in Aquaman but, you know, suspect she won’t).

The film has been long delayed, as far as I can tell, due to a combination of the Covid pandemic coupled with the somewhat psychotic, ‘how is this guy not in jail?’ behaviour of Ezra Miller. Miller reprises his role as Barry Allen (aka The Flash), a kind of heavily dumbed down and reinvented version of him than in the original comics, who first appeared in a cameo moment in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice (if memory serves, reviewed here) before being introduced properly in the movie Justice League (um... both of them... reviewed here and here).

And basically, this is DCs big multiverse movie, following in the cinematic footsteps of Marvel’s Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse (reviewed here), Spider-Man: No Way Home (reviewed here) and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (reviewed here). Back in the 1970s or 80s, both DC and Marvel Comics had big event mini-series such as Crisis On Infinite Earths or Secret Wars to try and clean their huge and unwieldy universes of continuity errors and, honestly, it wasn’t the last time they had to do this. Now both companies seem to be taking a similar approach to clean house cinematically with their big screen counterparts but, honestly, I’ve no idea how the next two DC movies this year featuring Blue Beetle and Aquaman, destined to be the last DCU movies, will manage to fit in with this one. This one is very loosely based on the Flashpoint storyline.

As a movie itself... well a few people seem to hate The Flash and many are saying it’s the best thing DC have done in a while. My take is, it’s neither of those things. It’s action packed and has a lot of good comedy moments with a lot of spectacle and, in some ways, a morality lesson although, honestly, the endgame of the movie leaves a lot to be desired in terms of just where we are with the version of reality the first Ezra Miller Flash has landed in. Yeah, that’s right, there are two identical looking Barry Allens in this movie (plus one not so identical looking version) but, even so, it didn’t need to get confusing... except where it leaves things in both the pre-end credits scene and the post credits scene is... somehow not going to connect up with the next two films, I suspect.

Okay, so it’s got action, it’s got comedy and... it’s got a fair few actors from DC’s past crammed into it in much the same way as Marvel started using previous franchise iterations as manifestations of the multiverse. Primarily we have Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman (even though Ben Affleck starts off as Batman in this movie) and, I suspect he’s probably the main reason people are flocking to this film. He may be 72 years old now but his participation in this movie as a major character demonstrates just why he owns the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne. And once the ‘old man raggedy beard and long hair’ is gone... he doesn’t look that different to when he played the role twice in the 1980s, it has to be said.

Also, we have a new superhero in this film’s version of Supergirl, played with a lot of good screen presence by Sasha Calle... who ends up helping the two Barry Allens and Batman take on General Zod in his attempt to destroy the Earth (with Michael Shannon once again reprising the role of Zod, from his appearance in Man Of Steel, reviewed here). In addition we have, as I said, a lot of actors from DC’s past... both in the form of proper cameos and also CGI integrated moments. Most of these are uncredited too, on the final cast list and, I wish Warner Brother had put their names up there. And we really do get into spoiler warning territory here so, yeah, you were warned...

So, in terms of proper cameos with real actors doing new things, we have Gal Gadot back as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ben Affleck as a version of Batman, Jeremy Irons as Alfred and George Clooney as another version of Batman (or more strictly, just Bruce Wayne).

And then there are the computer integrated cameos. So we have a welcome return to George Reeves as Superman, Christopher Reeve as Superman, Adam West as Batman, Helen Slater as Supergirl, a version of the original Jay Garrick Golden Age Flash played by Teddy Sears and, yeah, even a terrible looking CGI version of Nicolas Cage turning up as the Superman he almost made with Tim Burton (although wearing the more traditional Superman suit, rather than the black version designed for him for Superman Lives). What I got annoyed about though, is the actors that don’t make it into the movie. How can you have George Reeves in this, who was the second screen incarnation of the last son of Krypton... and not have the original actor, Kirk Alyn, put in a cameo appearance? That’s crazy.

Yes, the film is piled high with cameos and, of course, multiverse jokes (Eric Stoltz didn’t get fired from Back To The Future in the version of the universe in which Barry Allen version one ends up, for instance). And it’s... relatively entertaining. It’s not the greatest thing ever but it’s not too terrible either and it’s great seeing Michael Keaton’s Batman trying to pull electricity into his Batcave in exactly the same way Dr. Frankenstein did in the 1931 Frankenstein movie (reviewed here). Yeah, this almost goes the full Strickfadden in regards to that... I suspect that’s the way Tim Burton might have gone with it if he was directing this thing. All held together by a quite good score from Benjamin Wallfisch (who also incorporates Danny Elfman’s Batman theme into the mix), which I really hope will get a proper CD release at some point soon and not just wallow in a useless digital version.

And that’s it apart from one more slight criticism concerning Ezra Miller... or more accurately, Ezra Miller’s character. I’m not going to pass any judgement on what he’s allegedly done in real life but he seems like a good actor to me. However... and this may be the reason why I found this movie to be only quite good as opposed to great... his character, specifically the alternate universe version of Barry Allen, is extremely grating and unlikeable. I mean, I get it. He’s supposed to be irritating but... guess what writers? Bullseye. Why did you think I wanted to be that irritated by this annoying character throughout? I was just hoping he’d get killed at some point because he’s so unlikeable. Oh... and for the record... I don’t believe The Flash has super-healing powers, right? If you get shot in the knee and are acting like you’re in agony and can’t walk properly for a while... it doesn’t kind of fix itself so you can carry on being a superhero after a few hours. A little verisimilitude wouldn’t have hurt here or... you know... have it so he doesn’t get shot in the knee in the first place, if he has to carry on doing all the superhero stuff.

Oh... and alright... maybe one more criticism, now I think of it. In an alternate version of Earth where Kal El never made it there, how the hell did anyone manage to capture his cousin and keep her trapped away from the sun for so many years? Surely you would have to have had some Kryptonite to do that (and recognise what that is) and, yeah, she’s obviously been in a Russian jail for many years before Zod arrives so, hmm... that’s a puzzler (or just bad writing) for sure.

Anyway... The Flash is a nice enough movie, not a disaster but certainly also not one of the best of the DC universe films, for sure. You might want to give it a go because, heck, it’s nice to be able to see George Reeves, however fleetingly, at a cinema again.

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)

Just Ace League

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)
aka Zack Snyder’s Justice League
USA 2021 Directed by Zack Snyder
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers here.

I’ve already reviewed Justice League once,  back in 2017 when the theatrical cut, which was mostly reshot and retooled by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder had to drop out for tragic reasons, was released. However, this new version released, due to fan pressure and with a lot of money spent on it, allowing Snyder to reintroduce something approximating his original cut, runs over four hours long and, although the reshoots weren’t extensive, Whedon cut out and reshot so much footage for his ‘rescue version’ (which I reviewed here and didn’t like all that much... it was okay), that there was a lot of original material both left out or existing in alternate forms and that’s why the film deserves both another look and a new, if shorter, review.

So what have we got here? Visually the film looks very different. For starters it’s in a 4:3 classic, old school movie and TV ratio which, frankly, didn’t take long for me to get used to. I suspect the film may even have been shot in this ratio for reducing optically for an original widescreen release as opposed to cropping the footage down here. It looks pretty good, in fact. I don’t know why the director has done this though. I mean, I guess I can see a point for it if he wants to say he was approximating Golden Age comic book panels but, if that was the case, why weren’t his previous two DC Universe films... Man Of Steel (reviewed here)  and Batman VS Superman: Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) also in that aspect ratio?

Secondly, the colours in this version are quite dark and muted. Not as muted and dark as they possibly are in Snyder’s alternative black and white version of this movie (which I think is only available on the UHD release) but still pretty near to as greyscale as you can get it and still have colour in it for many of the scenes.

There are pluses and minuses here too. Because of Whedon scenes which have been excised, there’s much more continuity with the previous and following films in the DC Universe. Granted, some of my favourite dialogue exchanges and action moments are gone completely but there’s a much more organic feel to the final product and its connective tissue with the other movies. That being said, a lot of the scenes which have changed are put into a completely different order. Early scenes from the first version might turn up three quarters of the way through the film and vice versa. There’s also a really problematic continuity error in this too which I can only suspect comes from the way the story now plays out. It comes when, near the final set piece of the movie, Alfred The Butler (played once again by Jeremy Irons) is introduced by Ben Affleck’s Batman to Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa)... regardless of the fact that, in the way the film plays out here, he has already met at least two of the team by this point. It felt like a bit of a jarring mis-step, to be honest. When he meets Henry Cavill as Superman, it plays out far more naturally.

The story has been enhanced by not only featuring Steppenwolf but also Darkseid in the film as ‘the big bad super villain’ behind the scenes (much like Thanos was to Phases One and Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). This all works really well though and, for the most part, the whole storyline involving all the previously unseen elements and the new, enhanced CGI on pretty much everything, is actually a heck of a lot better than the studio cut, I have to say. This version makes a lot more sense and is much more attention grabbing, I thought.

Other things of note are as follows...

Well, it was nice to see more action from one of the Green Lantern Corps but I think the first appearance here of J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter was problematic at best. Why in heck would he be checking out Lois Lane? His appearance at the end of the film is not something which solves this conundrum either and I think his first transformation to show he was posing as Martha Kent really undermined the scene where Martha and Lois Lane are bonding in grief over Superman’s death.

The scene where the newly formed Justice League bring Superman back from the dead is by an entirely different method and makes much more sense, integrated into the Motherbox plot line in a much more believable way... although it has pretty much the same outcome as it did in the theatrical cut, it has to be said.

The replacement music by Junkie XL is interesting. The director jettison’s Danny Elfman’s original score which had recycled John William’s Superman The Movie theme and Elfman’s  own Batman theme from the Tim Burton films and uses the established leitmotif of the current DC Universe, like Zimmer’s Man Of Steel and Wonder Woman themes, in a much more appropriate manner. Again, the music seems more integrated into the DCU movies as a whole. Alas, it’s only been released as a compromised, electronic download rather than as a proper CD so, I guess I won’t get to hear it as a stand alone listen anytime soon. Which is a shame.

All this adds up to a much more dynamic and satisfying version of Justice League, I have to admit... which was a little surprising. Also, although some of my favourite Wonder Woman/Diana Prince scenes have been excised, there are other scenes with her in and even the ones which did make their way into the theatrical cut, such as her rescue of the school kids in the Old Bailey in London, are much more interestingly handled here and seem like light years away from the Whedon cut. And Snyder even manages to restore the London skyline to something more resembling the real London, in that shot where Gal Gadot is standing by the Scales of Justice, as opposed to the more pastiched caricature of a US guess at the London skyline from the theatrical release... which is kind of nice, actually.

The last ten minutes or so are Snyder laying down the threads for what would come in what was to be his proposed continuation of the series. It’s got a lot of stuff going on and seems pretty bleak, it has to be said. It’s also there, I’m sure, just to get the fans ramped up again so he can get to make the next one but, well, it remains to be seen, I think, whether the suits at Warner Brothers are ready to indulge him or not. As it is though, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a much better movie than its predecessor and I certainly found it entertaining. It’s certainly nowhere near the best of the DC superhero movies by a long chalk but it’s pretty good and worth catching up with if superhero movies are your thing. Definitely worth another, augmented glance, for sure.

Justice League

Beleaguered Leaguers

Justice League
2017 USA Directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah, there will be some spoilers in this one, I think.

Okay, so let me just say up front that Justice League is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination... it’s just not a very good one either. It has its great little moments and a whole bunch of problems but, out of the five films to date making up the story arc of this particular set of interlocking DC superhero movies, this is about halfway up the list in terms of being an effective and entertaining movie.

DC’s track record hasn’t been all that great since the fantastic last part of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night trilogy, it has to be said. Man Of Steel (reviewed here) was just dreadful. Batman Vs Superman - Dawn of Justice (reviewed here) was a fair bit better but ultimately not very well received by critics and audiences alike, it seemed to me. Suicide Squad (reviewed here) was... okayish but really wasn’t making people that happy either. But then we had ‘the movie’. Wonder Woman (reviewed here) isn’t just the greatest superhero movie of all time (and, yeah, I know that’s a brave and bold claim to make but I promise this is not a knee jerk reaction to it)... it’s also one of the best movies in the past few years, period. It’s also flattened all the competition at the box office for the forseeable future (or just maybe until the new Star Wars movie premieres next month) and it more than deserves its success.

The thing is, though, everyone was kinda hoping that Justice League would somehow live up to the almost impossible standard that Patty Jenkins set with Wonder Woman and, frankly, that would be hard to top even by her, when she comes to work on the sequel. So I guess it’s no surprise that this movie comes nowhere near as close to the dizzying heights that Professor William Moulton Marston’s amazonian princess scaled to in her own solo movie adaptation. A shame, though, that Justice League doesn’t come close to the Batman VS Superman movie either.

Now I’m not going to go into the production problems this film had, what with Zack Snyder leaving for very understandable reasons and Joss Whedon reshooting the thing in places... firstly because I would be no good at figuring out which bits were directed by whom and, secondly, because it’s the film we’ve ended up with, for better or worse. Given Snyder’s reasons for leaving, there’s absolutely no point in having an autopsy on why this theatrically released cut doesn't really cut it.

Okay... so lets look at the good stuff first and get that out of the way...

Well, some of the action was okay, especially the Amazon’s fighting the villain of the piece, Steppenwolf, near the start... and also in the bank scene where Gal Gadot’s Diana saves a bunch of people by doing some cool action stuff. That being said, I did miss the sudden glow of orange as the metal on her wrist bands cool down after a bullet hit, which was a nice detail in Patty Jenkins movie during the alley scene in London... itself an homage, presumably, to the alley scene in Superman The Movie. Gadot is just wonderful again here, as she was in her previous two movies with this character because a) she looks just like she could do all this stuff in real life and b) because she performed it in such a way that she doesn’t betray the character as set up in the previous two films.

Similarly, say what you will about Ben Affleck but I think he makes a brilliant Bruce Wayne/Batman and I really hope he doesn’t leave the role after this. I think he could really do well in a solo Batman movie and I would really like to see it.

Henry Cavill... well I hated Superman in Man Of Steel but that’s more because of the script than Cavill’s performance and I certainly warmed to him more in Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice. He’s great here too and you really believe in his character, who he portrays with the same kind of honourable presence as some of the great actors who have played the part before him... and I’m specifically thinking of Kirk Alyn and Christopher Reeve here. Now if they’d only bring back the ‘S’ kiss curl and the red trunks then the illusion would be complete.

Jeremy Irons as Alfred has about as much screen time as he did in the previous movie but I think his character makes a bigger impact here, with various ironic comments thrown at Bruce Wayne which I found fairly entertaining.

 It was also great seeing a Green Lantern in the sequence flashing back to a battle on Earth which took places many hundreds of years ago, too. It’s been suggested that the cloak on him was a reference to the original Golden Age iteration of the character in comics but, the people saying that might do well to remember that the original Green Lantern’s costume was red (yeah, I know that’s ridiculous but don’t blame me... I didn’t write those things).

And that’s mostly the good stuff.

Now we also have three new members on the team...

Ezra Miller does okay as a really bizarre and teenage angsty version of the silver age version of The Flash (aka Barry Allen) and he was getting a good reaction from the audience at my screening. Personally I didn’t find him all that easy to identify with and I could take him or leave him, to be fair. Then we have Cyborg, who was a member of the Teen Titans the last time I read of him (sometime in the early 1980s) so goodness knows what he’s doing in the Justice League of America (as the supergroup was always known in the comics... until maybe recently). He’s played here by a guy called Ray Fisher and, although he turns in a solid performance, I couldn’t help but think that the script wasn’t doing him any favours. He just comes across as a bit dull, to be honest.

Jason Momoa’s version of Aquaman is a more fun character but, honestly, is nothing like the Aquaman I used to enjoy reading about when I was a kid (I even had a little action figure). The clean shaven, blonde version of Superman with the blue eyes, orange suit and green legs and gauntlets has morphed into what is presumably a more contemporary comic book version of the character (well... at least he still has both of his arms here). Again... he was okay but I really would have preferred the version of the character I grew up with here.

Okay... let’s get to the really bad then...

So much of the dialogue between Batman and Diana feels forced and, bearing in mind the amount of times that Steve Trevor’s name is bandied about, it somehow seems disrespectful of the truly marvellous solo Wonder Woman movie what came out earlier in the year.

Another thing which felt out of place was that the background story about the ‘mother boxes’ seemed like it came completely out of the blue and Diana never once goes to Thermyscira to consult with the Amazons. Indeed, she even goes so far as to say that they cannot leave their island... which is a completely redundant and contradictory idea in terms of their purpose on Earth, to be honest. This film so badly needed a scene between Diana and her mother and it similarly needed ‘the amazon horde’ to come galloping in for the somewhat bland (as it is here) action finale too. Especially since their own battle with Steppenwolf near the beginning of the movie was a heck of a lot better.

The way Superman is brought back to life is really stupid Doctor Frankenstein stuff and I couldn’t help but think it all seemed just a little too optimistic and contrived. “Gee whiz... wouldn’t it be great if we could use this mother box technology to bring Superman back to life with?”... well, okay, it wasn’t quite like that but it was pretty close. It felt like the whole thing was written by a small child at this point. What was worse than that though was... Superman and Batman were allies by the end of Batman Vs Superman. In fact, Batman saved Superman’s mother’s life. So why the heck would the newly woken Superman be so aggressively hostile to Batman and the others and try to kill them all? It made no sense. It was like watching that truly dumb scene in Superman III where he splits into two and the evil and good halves fight. It just made no sense.

And then they trot out Amy Adam’s Lois Lane to calm him down? Honestly, it felt like her role was really pushed to the back in this and the scene where she and Diane Lane as Martha Kent were talking in the newspaper offices felt like it was shot quickly in the director’s favourite room in his house one afternoon. The set dressing and feel of the scene seemed to be completely unconvincing.

The music is perplexing too. Danny Elfman has been tapped for this one but I felt like either Hans Zimmer or, especially, Rupert Gregson-Williams (who had provided real emotional depth to the Wonder Woman movie) should have got the gig here. Instead, Elfman uses various themes from films gone by to weave a new musical direction for the franchise and... it just felt wrong. Okay, so he uses Zimmer’s Superman theme from Man Of Steel at one point and he similarly uses Zimmer’s “Is She With You?” theme for Wonder Woman in a less striking arrangement (but without using Gregson-Williams gorgeous thematic material). However, he also uses John WIlliams' Superman music at one point too plus... he even uses his own 1980s Batman theme for some of Ben Affleck’s Batcentric shenanigans. None of that really made sense... what’s he trying to evoke here. It’s a nice enough score, when you can hear it over the noisy sound effects but... it doesn’t knock it out of the park like some of the films in this series do.

Okay, last thing I’ll highlight here is the running time. This is the shortest of the recent DC movies, clocking in at one minute shy of two hours. But you are dealing with six superhero characters, not to mention the big bad guy and the introduction of the mother box on the narrative. How do you cram all that into two hours without losing sight of something? Short answer... you don’t. This film feels like it should be a lot longer and, I dunno, less flippant and somewhat darker in tone considering the events that have birthed it in the previous films. Things felt somewhat rushed... especially when it hurtles to a climax that is less than interesting.

Also... you have continuity errors like the mother box being used to bring Cyborg to life being in the previous film, which makes no sense. Or the fact that the third mother box was found during World War I when, if you check out the epilogue scene included on the home video version of Wonder Woman, you’ll know that Etta Candy and the others were tasked with the mission to find it after the end of the war depicted in that film. Thins like this just seemed a bit like sloppy writing to me, it has to be said.

So, yeah, that’s my review of Justice League. All in all I’m glad I went to see it... if for nothing more than to see Gal Gadot totally slaying it as Wonder Woman. However, the film didn’t blow me away, for sure and it certainly felt a little more anti-climactic than I was expecting. All in all, if you loved Wonder Woman then you’ll probably want to see this one anyway. I can’t really recommend it to anyone on any other basis though so... make of that what you will. Old school DC comics fans, though, would do well to look out for the first of the two post-credits scenes if they want to see a familiar homage and... don’t miss the end if you want to see what happened to another character from a previous movie in the series.