Justice League

Started by MacGuffin, August 22, 2007, 02:07:15 PM

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Fernando

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on July 23, 2017, 01:10:48 AM
Jason Mimosa emerging from that building is some alarmingly unconvincing CG to put in a trailer.


haha


RegularKarate

Girl Gadot
Jason Mimosa
and Ben Aflac
are Better than Ezra
IN
The Justice Leak

Jeremy Blackman

Got roped into seeing this tonight. I don't necessarily regret the experience, but this is definitely not a good movie. (Certainly makes me appreciate Ragnarok all the more.) The writing was abysmal from beginning to end. I physically cringed at some lines. There is nothing of substance here whatsoever.

Batman was meh. Robocop was meh. Wonderwoman was okay, Superman was kind of a highlight, and the Flash didn't not work. Aquaman, though... what's going on there? He's basically an ocean biker. They try to push his badassness so desperately that it becomes just more cringe.

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on July 23, 2017, 01:10:48 AM
The trailer is definitely calling out "hey look this is not super grim and we have jokes now!"

Jason Mimosa emerging from that building is some alarmingly unconvincing CG to put in a trailer.

The other effects look really crisp though, maybe better than Thor Ragnarok.

LOL nope. The effects in Justice League are either dark mud or just straight animation. And overall, none of it is all that interesting or fun. It's also astonishing to me that they haven't figured out how to convincingly animate basic things like a human figure leaping or tumbling around. The CGI feels unfinished.

That first street tussle with Batman was some of the worst fight choreography and action shooting that I've ever seen.

Almost forgot... the film begins with a shockingly bad cover of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows." Ugh.

Lottery



I saw this gif and was gobsmacked. Is there more stuff like this in the actual finished film? How do the WB dudes look at this and say "yeah, this is satisfactory for our big flagship movie".

WorldForgot

Quote from: Lottery on November 18, 2017, 01:52:13 AM


Is there more stuff like this in the actual finished film?

It's mostly like this.

Couldn't stick around for the post-credits on this one. Aside from two good performances from Ray Fisher and Ezra Miller, I found it to be nonsense. Even worse than Batman v Superman or Man of Steel. It's as JB says, even the staging and composition of shots feels slipshod. A legion of supervillains at DC must have butchered this film to bits. You can tell it's much too short (and unfinished?). Definitely the production was rushed and two origin stories in the first act never culminate into their own, not really.

Why Steppenwolf and why like this? You're telling me Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon, between the two of them, can't conjure up one villain in the DC pantheon that could thematically bind these characters? I know Whedon was only on for reshoots but he could have patched up the threads that The Avengers achieved.

Seems like it went through the ringer.

polkablues

The CGI in that gif is bad enough in and of itself, but on top of it, that's like "The Room"-level unconvincing greenscreen.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Drenk

Quote from: polkablues on November 18, 2017, 04:15:04 AM
The CGI in that gif is bad enough in and of itself, but on top of it, that's like "The Room"-level unconvincing greenscreen.

That's just the new normal.
Ascension.

Ravi

Everyone hates these DC movies, but people still see them, for some reason.


Jeremy Blackman

I remember thinking there was something weird going on with Superman's face. I had completely forgotten about the CGI mustache removal. It sort of looks like they subbed in a whole different mouth.

jenkins

my context: including home viewings, streaming, and theatrical viewings, this was the 3rd comic book movie i'd seen in 5 years. my 1st from the recent DC movies. the last Zack Snyder movie i saw was Sucker Punch, i own the blu-ray. from way back, when i saw the Dawn of the Dead remake with my friends i laughed so loud, i remember dying.

Superman represents Hope and he goes missing. he couldn't remember why he'd be around. Batman is trying to conquer fear as always, his and the city's, that's his stye. now, the first sequence with Batman is my favorite visual representation of Gotham City ever. total Zack Snyder there. but Ben Affleck is like a hologram of Batman? and his butler, that actor i forget his name--they were both like holograms of those characters. luckily Batman is obviously fucked up so that makes sense. i like when Aquaman asked Batman, "what's going on in your weird head?" i thought the movie was kind of wondering why Ben Affleck was Batman, he couldn't figure it out either, and the the butler made it clear that they were actually holograms anyway.

i had wondered what Wonder Woman's super powers were, then she was like super powerful, and she defined herself by saying "." Wonder Woman was the team's emotional center. she is the one who met to chat with Cyborg. Cyborg is growing powers and trying to understand how to use them. the Cyborg actor had to be half-computer all the time. he was the perfect computer geek, having to be half-computer anyway. so the Flash got to be the total millennial. that was great. i don't think the Flash had a single serious line within the movie, and his most serious moment was when he watched Superman carry a house of people he saved after the Flash had pushed one truck. the Flash is all human nerve. i've heard it said he steals the movie. i forgot there's Aquaman too, he's the mellow male type. he's the cowboy.

so the supervillian is silly he's symbolic. the point is the world feels like shit and does anybody even want to do anything about it. Superman, as Hope, was a big deal, everyone needed him. but i cried 3x during the initial Amazon sequence, when the supervillain was revealed. i cried 1 when the Amazon was holding the falling slab of rock 2 out of confusion over the fallen horse 3 when the Amazons were coming down the hill. i was able to learn of Amazonian emotional strength, and learn of Wonder Woman. as far as i can tell, Wonder Woman represents clear-headed positivity toward others. while Aquaman represents cowboys like i said, and cowboys are like horses, to make them gallop you have to kick them.

so you've got 1 Wonder Woman who is a Belieber 2 Superman is Hope 3 Cyborg represents growing capabilities 4 Flash represents endless curiosities 5 Batman is in a dual battle with himself and the world, he's doing okay 6 Aquaman is the rational, which is reliable but not much else. they all have to work together. i was into it. i got to see what cutting edge Hollywood action scenes look like these days. oh man. you just can't make shit in your backyard anymore (old news). i think that, this far into his career, it's time to acknowledge that Zack Snyder isn't a screenwriter, he's a visual writer. and i'd say he creates Hollywood-type visuals indeed. like Bay. even better though. Snyder is crisp, real crisp. i've heard it said that Synder was needed for editing, and Whedon wasn't helpful. perhaps Whedon was too polite to Snyder, more than Snyder would be to himself, that's the basic complaint. i'm not a musical expert but i wasn't impressed by the score.

i liked this movie as much as i've liked any comic book movie i've ever seen. none of them are my favorite. this was perhaps the most visually memorable one i've seen.

WorldForgot

Quote from: jenkins on November 19, 2017, 08:08:44 PM
this was perhaps the most visually memorable one i've seen.

:oops: Raimi? Nolan? Scott Pilgrim v The World? I feel like even Snyder's Watchmen had better composition + staging during the action scenes than this mess.

jenkins

Raimi and Nolan could fuck right off and i wouldn't bat an eye, if you gotta hear it.

modage

The upfront:
Lifelong DC Comics fan.
Mixed feelings about comic-book movies taking over the world.
Zach Snyder is more talented/distinctive/singular than he gets credit for.
BvS is one of the most unfairly maligned movies in recent memory. Not great but more interesting and ambitious than 90% of Marvel Studios films.

The bottom line:
Justice League is the worst comic book movie I've seen in 20 years, and maybe the worst I've ever seen.

More:
Almost nothing about this film works. It's a visually hideous, narratively incoherent, tonally jarring, bungling of some of the best comic book characters of all time. A huge mess and a total waste of time and talent. But at least you don't have to wonder how this happened because that part is pretty clear.

I don't blame Snyder, I don't blame Whedon, I blame WB. And if you're even nominally a fan of these characters I don't see how this movie wouldn't make you angry at them for releasing this piece of shit. Reviewing this almost feels unfair, because the entire time it felt like I was watching an unfinished workprint (like when Wolverine was leaked years ago).

If Snyder had finished the movie, it may not have been great but it would have been finished. If WB cared at all about the quality of this film, they could've pushed the release date back a few months to March or May and given Snyder (or Whedon) time to finish the film. Instead they threw Whedon onto an unfinished film and said "do the best you can, the clock is ticking" and whatever state the movie was in come November, it was getting released. Pencils down. They literally didn't care what state it was in, as long as it came out this calendar year for whatever investors they had to appease.

I can't imagine Snyder watching this and feeling anything but sick at what they've released. In some sequences, like the opening fight on the rooftop, you can see that it could've been a cool stylized Snyder sequence but without the proper post-production work, it just looks like actors on a crappy set or in front of a greenscreen.

I'm sure Whedon also knows this is a piece of shit and I can't think of anyone less qualified to 'finish' a Snyder film on the VFX side. Every sequence of his is clearly a couple actors standing in front of a green screen quipping. Not exactly seamlessly integrated.

How on Earth WB didn't lay it down that Cavill had to shave his mustache and wear a fucking fake one for the remainder of Mission: Impossible 7 is BEYOND ME. A fake mustache is about a billion times less distracting than a fake SHAVED upper lip. This will be something that gets seized upon, and rightly so, but it's impossible to ignore.

Poor Henry Cavill. He could've been a good Superman if he had been given the chance. Instead he's killed off and brought back for almost no reason. In order to make this work (which it could have) this film just had to establish that after being demonized in BvS and sacrificing himself, thus becoming a martyr, his resurrection, while expected for the audience, should've at least been an emotionally satisfying moment and one that also established him as a true hero/Jesus to the public. No longer would he have to brood and be conflicted, he could've been more or less the true Superman symbol of hope. But unlike BvS this movie is so insular, that we get almost no sense of the outside world or anyone that exists outside of 5 Superheroes and Martha Kent, Lois Lane and Alfred. So instead of getting an emotionally resonant resurrection, we get a fucking gravedigging scene and half a scene of evil Superman fighting. Ugh.

Affleck cannot vacate this role quickly enough.

Flash could've been fun but not in this film.

Cyborg and Aquaman leave no impression.

If I were Gal Gadot I would be FURIOUS at WB for allowing this to happen. I would've been in that office on Monday morning going "never fucking again are you going to do that to me." If I were WB, I'd scrap everything but Gadot's Wonder Woman and start over. Burn it all down.

Final Thoughts:
Justice League makes BvS look like The Dark Knight. All the scorn aimed at that film should've been reserved for this.

It's a movie so awful, so lazy, so cynical, so incomplete, with such disregard for fans, that it made me hate comic book movies.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Drenk

Some people are blaming Whedon. I don't understand how you can not understand what hapenned or how you can imagine that a Snyder cut exists. The film was an unfinished mess and Whedon—a bad choice—had no time to finish it. I don't need to see it to know it probably doesn't work.

BvS is bad. Its ambition exists, but it's such nonsense that I don't see what is there to defend.
Ascension.

jenkins

what's incoherent about the narrative?