I have once again taken the bold step of being the first one here to watch and review a new DC movie, thanks to a camrip of passable quality. JL isn't a terrible movie. If you've set your standards low, and/or you're desperate to see any kind of improvement in the DCEU, then you'll probably like it reasonably well. But I can't look at this and see it as anything other than a bad movie. It's not as bad as BvS, but it's not trying hard enough for that to even be possible. The story of an alien invasion should be pretty simple, but they manage to overcomplicate things by giving the audience a crash course on the nature and history of Mother Boxes and the war that was fought long ago to protect them, along with creating an elaborate plan where Steppenwolf has to collect three Mother Boxes so he can transform the earth into a hostile alien planet. First of all, yes, that is a dopey rehash of Zod's scheme from MoS. Was that such a great evil plot that they felt they just had to use it again? Second of all, there was no reason why the story of the Mother Boxes had to be so, well, comprehensive. Mother Boxes are basically miracle technology. That's all we needed to know for this movie, and all the movie needed to provide stakes was one of them. Preferably stakes not involving yet another generic skybeam/portal of doom.
On the notion of the characters. The Flash is atrocious. Virtually every single line out of his mouth is a lousy joke, and he never, ever shuts the fuck up. The few lines he has that could potentially have been funny are ruined by Ezra Miller's delivery. What the fuck is up with the way he talks? That weird, almost singsong cadence that keeps going UP and down from WORD to word? He's going for quirky and charming, but he's just obnoxious and irritating. As I noted earlier in the thread, I liked Jason Momoa playing Aquaman as a goofy dudebro who yells things like "YEAH!" and "MY MAN!" - but those moments are few and far between, and his character spends most of the movie as a surly grump (real original, guys). Surprisingly, I found Cyborg to be my favorite of the newcomers, largely due to Ray Fisher's charismatic performance. He has some real screen presence, and he does more with just half his face than Miller does with his entire flailing, overacting body.
Wonder Woman is cool as usual, although she doesn't have a whole lot to do here. And although this might not matter to some people here, I noticed that there was a lot more male gaze in the camera's treatment of her this time around. Like, there's definitely one or two upskirt shots, and the camera often settles at ass-level when following her around. Superman has a couple of odd scenes to get through before he returns to the team, so to speak, but once he does, I found it jarring just how warm and pleasant he suddenly was. Don't get me wrong, Cavill is great at playing this more friendly Superman, but it's pretty incongruous with his previous characterization. Sadly, Batman stands out as being terrible here. BvS turning out to be shit has obviously weighed heavily on Affleck, and while he was committed in that movie, he phones in a mediocre performance here. He's just going through the motions, and it's obvious he's eager to get out of the role. I highly doubt we'll be seeing Batfleck again, and the fact that Snyder and WB have squandered what had the potential to be a fine run on the character is yet another cinematic crime.
The effects and action scenes are terrible. They're Snyder at his most indulgent and least creative. Constant slow-motion and extreme closeups, incoherent blurs when everything speeds back up. The Flash in particular looks terrible - the above gif of him spazzing out while pretending to run is not an isolated incident. Steppenwolf looks like shit, and I don't know why they even felt the need to turn him into an ugly CGI monster when in the comics he's just a dude with a silly hat. Are they going to do that with all of the New Gods? Cavill's face doesn't look too bad if you aren't specifically looking for any inconsistencies with it, except for the opening scene of the movie (the source of the last image I posted) in which it looks incredibly fake and obvious. On a related note, yes, Batman does randomly turn portly and back again throughout the movie, although it's never quite as obvious as it is in the scene where he meets Aquaman while bearded. The movie is full of awkward green screens, poor lighting giving away the artificial nature of the movie, a hideously ugly, murky aesthetic, and effects that look more at home in a bad video game than a film.
More assorted thoughts. To hear Batman spout Whedon-penned quips is a painful experience, although his lines are nowhere near as bad as Flash's. A lot has obviously been cut from this movie, including what must have been more universe-building about the New Gods and shit like that, along with, I suspect, a payoff to the whole Knightmare scene and Flash appearance from BvS. The end result is a movie that's way too short. Was this all that they were left with after cutting out the extraneous parts left over from BvS? Whatever the case, WB needs to stop making movies like this - waiting to see how test audiences react to their first draft, then frantically cutting and reshooting in the last few months before its release to awkwardly turn the film into something it isn't. That's not trying to make a good movie, that's just trying to limit the damage of a bad movie. They're five movies in, and they still don't have any kind of reasonable plan or strategy for how to make the most of this franchise. They're just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.