One spoiler in the 6th paragraph. Be wary.
The first film I ever saw in the cinema was Superman 3. Nowadays it's regarded as a disaster but when I was young I thought it was the best thing ever. It made me a life long fan of Kal-El, the Man Of Steel. In 2006 a new version of Superman appeared in Superman Returns. It was massively disappointing and every Superman film since has been the same IMO. None of them could match up to the Christopher Reeve films. Those first two perfect films. Even The Adventures Of Lois & Clark TV show was better. Last year Warner Brothers pit Superman against Batman in a bid to start a series of films that would rival the Marvel extended universe. It was not good. They managed to take two comic book icons and make a battle between them boring. Even lobbing Wonder Woman into the mix didn't help. Then the Wonder Woman film came along and amazingly it was really really good. It had the heart and the sense of fun that Batman V Superman was missing. Had Warner Brothers turned a corner in their comic book films? Had they finally found the right mix? Could the upcoming Justice League film be actually good?
Nope.
Superman is gone. The Earth is in trouble. Forces from beyond the stars know this and plan to take advantage of his absence. Batman and Wonder Woman must now recruit a team of superheroes to help them in their quest to defeat this new evil. They have their eyes on Aquaman, The Flash and a chap called Cyborg. (Nope, I never heard of him either). Together they will do battle but will the five of them be enough??
This has its moments but overall it sucks. It has a couple of good performances but they are cancelled out by the shoddiness on display. A great cast and a fuckload of money to throw around and this is what they come up with. Marvel let their universe grow slowly but surely. Everyone (well the characters with powers....and Iron Man) got a film first to show who they were and what they could do. But Warner Brothers in their greed and lack of foresight have thrown everything into the mix far too early and crowbarred in 3 new characters and it makes for a very shoddy stew.
There's a few good bits. 1 new character is fun, Barry Allen aka The Flash. He's a likable young chap and a few of his lines hit the spot. Ezra Miller does well in the part and I'd happily watch a film just about him. Gal Gadot is good again as Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman, she brings a great presence to the part. A few odd bits of humour hit home too, a blink and you'll miss it David Bowie/Prince joke, a couple of fun lasso of truth scenes, a quick scribble on a face, a knowing look between 2 women. A few snatches of Danny Elfman's Batman music appeared too and made me smile as well. Diane Lane and Joe Morton make appearances and it's always good to see them onscreen. Also a competition between 2 superheroes near the end delivers a proper laugh and a cameo from an actor who appeared in the Reeve Superman films will raise a few grins. But that's about it for the good stuff. Now for the bad. A lot of bad.
If like me you aren't a comic book fan and only watch the films some of it will go over your head. A visit to the home of one hero left me baffled and conscious of the fact it was only there to justify future films for the character. Other actions and decisions are introduced and skipped over so fast that big scenes make no sense. You get the feeling that quite a bit of story was cut out to get the film down to the 2 hour mark. There's some godawful forced humour in here that has been introduced to lighten the tone of the film and it jars badly against the darker tone. Some of Batman's one liners genuinely hurt to hear. There's some painfully obvious product placement too. One scene of Bruce Wayne having a shave will take you out of the film straight away considering he's using a product you'll see in an ad before the film starts. The film's big baddie is muck as well. An entirely CGI character who YET AGAIN wants to take over the world. Voiced pointlessly by the great Ciaran Hinds too. Why hire a an actor like that and then not show his face and distort his voice beyond recognition. Plus he's called Steppenwolf and doesn't make one 'Born To Be Wild' joke?? Come one, that's just lazy. And then it all ends in the usual CGI bombast. This is a complaint that can be leveled at every modern superhero film but here it was bombastic and bad looking. I mean it looked poor and unfinished. So much purple.
For me though, the films biggest sin is it makes the superhero characters look crap. In her own film Wonder Woman rocked. Here she does not. She gets a good solo scene early but gets relegated to the background as the film goes on. Plus all the respect shown to her character in her solo film gets thrown out the window here when the film can't help but throw in a big close up of her arse for the slavering fanboys. New character Aquaman is pointless. Why add him to the story if we aren't going to get to see him do cool watery stuff, the stuff he's best known for. Jason Momoa looks like a big scary fucker and all but he adds nothing here. A 30 second bit of underwater action just ain't enough. He should have been removed and his time given to Wonder Woman. Cyborg is..........dull and totally unexplained. He can do computery and weapony stuff and no explanation is given why. He's a deus ex machina character. He can do whatever the script needs him to do. And Batman, this film makes Batman look shit. He's the weakest of the bunch, relying on gadgets instead of powers and he's pretty pathetic in this film, especially the climactic scenes. And then after all that, a returning character who I won't name although ye can probably guess who it is, makes all the rest of them feel utterly inconsequential.
Director Zach Snyder's family suffered an awful family tragedy during filming and he was replaced by Joss Whedon. The two directors styles don't mesh well together. Snyder's dark and gritty and Whedon's light and breezy. It feels messy. Just watch during the horrible one liners I mentioned earlier. They are mostly spoken in close up, no other character can be seen. It's obvious they were added late in production and they don't seem to match. The light and dark stuff here doesn't mix. It's an issue that should have been dealt with during the writing of the film before filming even started.
The acting is fine. Gadot and Miller shine above the bunch. Anyone no one comes to a comic book film for the emoting. J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon is wasted though. And has a fluffy fringe that would make Pat Hingle turn in his grave.
I really wanted this to be good. I love the main characters in it and I thought Wonder Woman was a huge step in the right direction but nope, this feels like 5 steps backwards. Warner's wanted desperately for this to be their Avengers film but it isn't a patch on it.
A huge but inevitable let down.
Superman is gone. The Earth is in trouble. Forces from beyond the stars know this and plan to take advantage of his absence. Batman and Wonder Woman must now recruit a team of superheroes to help them in their quest to defeat this new evil. They have their eyes on Aquaman, The Flash and a chap called Cyborg. (Nope, I never heard of him either). Together they will do battle but will the five of them be enough??
This has its moments but overall it sucks. It has a couple of good performances but they are cancelled out by the shoddiness on display. A great cast and a fuckload of money to throw around and this is what they come up with. Marvel let their universe grow slowly but surely. Everyone (well the characters with powers....and Iron Man) got a film first to show who they were and what they could do. But Warner Brothers in their greed and lack of foresight have thrown everything into the mix far too early and crowbarred in 3 new characters and it makes for a very shoddy stew.
There's a few good bits. 1 new character is fun, Barry Allen aka The Flash. He's a likable young chap and a few of his lines hit the spot. Ezra Miller does well in the part and I'd happily watch a film just about him. Gal Gadot is good again as Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman, she brings a great presence to the part. A few odd bits of humour hit home too, a blink and you'll miss it David Bowie/Prince joke, a couple of fun lasso of truth scenes, a quick scribble on a face, a knowing look between 2 women. A few snatches of Danny Elfman's Batman music appeared too and made me smile as well. Diane Lane and Joe Morton make appearances and it's always good to see them onscreen. Also a competition between 2 superheroes near the end delivers a proper laugh and a cameo from an actor who appeared in the Reeve Superman films will raise a few grins. But that's about it for the good stuff. Now for the bad. A lot of bad.
 |
| Ezra Miller, one of a few good things about this |
If like me you aren't a comic book fan and only watch the films some of it will go over your head. A visit to the home of one hero left me baffled and conscious of the fact it was only there to justify future films for the character. Other actions and decisions are introduced and skipped over so fast that big scenes make no sense. You get the feeling that quite a bit of story was cut out to get the film down to the 2 hour mark. There's some godawful forced humour in here that has been introduced to lighten the tone of the film and it jars badly against the darker tone. Some of Batman's one liners genuinely hurt to hear. There's some painfully obvious product placement too. One scene of Bruce Wayne having a shave will take you out of the film straight away considering he's using a product you'll see in an ad before the film starts. The film's big baddie is muck as well. An entirely CGI character who YET AGAIN wants to take over the world. Voiced pointlessly by the great Ciaran Hinds too. Why hire a an actor like that and then not show his face and distort his voice beyond recognition. Plus he's called Steppenwolf and doesn't make one 'Born To Be Wild' joke?? Come one, that's just lazy. And then it all ends in the usual CGI bombast. This is a complaint that can be leveled at every modern superhero film but here it was bombastic and bad looking. I mean it looked poor and unfinished. So much purple.
For me though, the films biggest sin is it makes the superhero characters look crap. In her own film Wonder Woman rocked. Here she does not. She gets a good solo scene early but gets relegated to the background as the film goes on. Plus all the respect shown to her character in her solo film gets thrown out the window here when the film can't help but throw in a big close up of her arse for the slavering fanboys. New character Aquaman is pointless. Why add him to the story if we aren't going to get to see him do cool watery stuff, the stuff he's best known for. Jason Momoa looks like a big scary fucker and all but he adds nothing here. A 30 second bit of underwater action just ain't enough. He should have been removed and his time given to Wonder Woman. Cyborg is..........dull and totally unexplained. He can do computery and weapony stuff and no explanation is given why. He's a deus ex machina character. He can do whatever the script needs him to do. And Batman, this film makes Batman look shit. He's the weakest of the bunch, relying on gadgets instead of powers and he's pretty pathetic in this film, especially the climactic scenes. And then after all that, a returning character who I won't name although ye can probably guess who it is, makes all the rest of them feel utterly inconsequential.
Director Zach Snyder's family suffered an awful family tragedy during filming and he was replaced by Joss Whedon. The two directors styles don't mesh well together. Snyder's dark and gritty and Whedon's light and breezy. It feels messy. Just watch during the horrible one liners I mentioned earlier. They are mostly spoken in close up, no other character can be seen. It's obvious they were added late in production and they don't seem to match. The light and dark stuff here doesn't mix. It's an issue that should have been dealt with during the writing of the film before filming even started.
The acting is fine. Gadot and Miller shine above the bunch. Anyone no one comes to a comic book film for the emoting. J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon is wasted though. And has a fluffy fringe that would make Pat Hingle turn in his grave.
I really wanted this to be good. I love the main characters in it and I thought Wonder Woman was a huge step in the right direction but nope, this feels like 5 steps backwards. Warner's wanted desperately for this to be their Avengers film but it isn't a patch on it.
A huge but inevitable let down.
No comments:
Post a Comment