As the credits rolled at the end of my screening of Justice League on Wednesday night, three dudes in the front row began cheering rapturously. The rest of the audience was silent. Throughout the movie, these guys laughed at most of the sitcom-quality jokes and cheered when Superman or Wonder Woman or one of the other ones made their big appearances. And I wanted to join them. Superhero movies are designed to make you cheer and make you clap. They're made for big emotions and big screens and big action. Although those moments were implied throughout Justice League—obvious spots when the millions of ticket holders who have flocked to the theatres will react like the obedient entertainment consumers Hollywood has trained them to be—the movie simply didn't deserve it.

Those exuberant fans up front at my screening were the supportive fans for whom I have respect and sympathy. DC and Warner Bros. are letting them down. They're letting everyone down who has dedicated their lives to reading—and enjoying—the DC comic books.

I wanted Justice League to be good—as much for myself as a fan of the genre and everyone else who's a bigger one. I wanted Justice League to be good because Wonder Woman was a massive achievement in Hollywood for so many reasons, and this continuation of the DC Cinematic Universe should have lived up to that quality.

But, the simple truth is: DC and Warner Bros. have fucked it up again.

It didn't even take two minutes into the movie's opening sequence for Zack Snyder—who directed most of the movie before stepping down amid a family crisis, with Joss Whedon taking over to shoot the remaining scenes—to return to his most aggressive trademark tic, with Ben Affleck's Batman performing a back flip unnecessarily emphasised by slow motion trickery. Did you know that it's been a decade since 300 and Snyder still has that goddamn slo-mo fetish? The flourish happens quickly once again during the opening credits, when some random angry white dude slo-mo kicks some fruit—which I guess is supposed to signify that people are upset because Superman is dead. Oh yeah: Superman is dead, by the way. But we all know he's going to come back, so it's not particularly interesting that the film is built around the inevitable moment when he comes back and saves everyone's ass.

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With Superman out of the picture, the film's plot follows Bruce Wayne as he builds his Justice League—an origin story of sorts that's not entirely interesting (and the stakes of which aren't particularly high). This poor man's Avengers is Wayne's best effort to defeat Steppenwolf, who is neither the hit band who recorded "Born to Be Wild" nor the Hermann Hesse novel. No, this Steppenwolf is a generic CGI alien form played by Ciarán Hinds, who is on the hunt for three LEGO-style blocks that are described as, simply, "power." (These are really random MacGuffins that give these large CGI characters an excuse to punch each other—in slow motion, naturally.) Steppenwolf also has an army of robo-bugs that make a really obnoxious noise, which you'll simply have to get used to; it's annoying as hell and doesn't stop for the most of the film.

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Wayne pretty easily enlists Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, who just kinda shows up—thankfully, though, because she's the only highlight of this movie (just as she made Batman v Superman a smidgeon less unbearable). Rounding out the team is the existential cyborg (the appropriately named Cyborg, played by Ray Fisher), who, from what I understand, can do anything; The Flash (Ezra Miller), some sort of comic relief whose ultra-fast speed allows Snyder to get his slo-mo rocks off in every scene; and Aquaman (Jason Momoa), a drunken fish bro with a haunted past. But really, Wonder Woman is the only one capable of doing anything against Steppenwolf, which makes me wonder why this isn't just another star vehicle for Gadot in the first place.

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Naturally, this ragtag group of superhumans is nothing without Superman, and so, with very little trouble, they dig up his conveniently still intact body. They throw his corpse into a swamp, and he's unceremoniously revived. As you guessed, he's the only one worth a damn, and in the end they use him to pull apart some of those MacGuffin Blocks, which fixes everything. One thing I will say about Henry Cavill is that I definitely buy that he's an alien from space, because there's something so unsettling about his perfect body and soulless line delivery when he says things like: "Well, I believe in truth, but I'm also a big fan of justice," he says, which borders on parody. (Or maybe it's Kryptonian sarcasm?)

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As clunky as the script is, at least one line stands out as the most believable—and most timely—part of the film. The Flash asks Bruce Wayne a question that we've all been wondering for decades: What, exactly, are Batman's superpowers anyway? Wayne, with the utmost sincerity, replies: "I'm rich." I can't think of another line of dialogue that best represents 2017 in a nutshell.

In the end, the bad guy loses, and the good guys win. Nothing is at all surprising—right down to the Marvel-style post-credits scene, in which Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerbergian Lex Luthor breaks out of jail and suggests that his fellow bad guys start "a league of our own." If Suicide Squad 2 doesn't pan out, at least there's a foundation for Justice League 2: A League of Their Own.

From: Esquire US