“Justice League” could have been great

On November 17, the newest film by DC Studios arrived in theatres. For the past six years, DC Studios has been attempting to play catch-up with Marvel in their cinematic universes, while Marvel has seen unprecedented success in “The Avengers”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, and “Doctor Strange”. “Justice League” was DC studios’ attempt to launch them back up in competition with Marvel, but it failed significantly.

The biggest complaint of the movie were the many scenes and characters being created with CGI rather than practical effects. Now CGI can look pretty amazing; it’s been used fantastically in JRR Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” trilogy, however, when it envelops the majority of the film, it’s more of a nuisance to the audience than a film extravaganza.

Another complaint of the film was that it felt like we’ve seen it before, we have in Marvel’s “Avengers.” Both films follow a group of heroes that must band together to defeat an unworldly evil; the evil’s both with mindless armies commanded by something out of this world as well. The parallels are numerous and it’s damaging, with DC already struggling taking their rival’s premise is not what devoted fans wanted to see.

There was a lot of potential for “Justice League” to be great, however, in DC’s ploy to accelerate their timeline to compete with Marvel is not working. Marvel found success because they took the time to build up their characters, they showed where they stood and what they fought for. This, and a great team of screenplay artists, led to a captivating movie-going experience for most. “Justice League” did not do this, and instead” forced itself too quickly to achieve their goals. Its characters seemed too one-dimensional and with some lines of dialogue similar to those found in Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’.

“Justice League” could have been successful if it played of its own strengths instead of playing off of Marvel’s. What has always made Marvel and DC different is that DC has always been a darker universe with gritty and moody visuals. While Marvel began leading with humor and never taking itself too seriously. These who studies have their own separate styles and both work individually when done correctly like in DC’s “Dark Knight” saga and Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”. When DC found failure in Suicide Squad, they tried to correct themselves in “Justice League” by taking Marvel’s format and trying to blend it into theirs.

What “Justice League” ended up being was a film with snippets of great scenes of amazing visuals, great character development, but then mixed with an annoyingly, great deal of scenes with humor that felt forced and out-of-character. This damaged the quality of the film and was also accompanied with subplots of the movie that didn’t line-up. This could be because the editors had to scrape together what they could in this rushed, cluttered, unfinished, Frankenstein-esk film.