After last summer’s excellent Wonder Woman, many fans were hopeful that Warner Brothers had finally turned a corner with their DC film universe. Unfortunately, Justice League proved that Wonder Woman was nothing but a happy anomaly in an otherwise endless sea of wretched films. Zach Snyder directed most of it, and infused the film with his signature bleakness. Joss Whedon was called in to finish directing when Snyder left the project because of a family tragedy. Whedon’s ham-fistedly grafted-on one-liners and attempts at levity are painfully obvious.

Justice League was an expensive movie, but it looked cheap. The big bad Steppenwolf (voiced by Ciarán Hinds) was a CGI mess that might have been passable in a video game 5-10 years ago. League member Cyborg (Ray Fisher) was a constantly morphing, humanoid-shaped blob with garish red bits. He’d have looked better if the studio had simply copied the effects from 16-year-old Terminator 2. The endless waves of minions, the weapons, the explosions, the fire effects, the water, pretty much everything looked obviously and horribly fake. You couldn’t get away with releasing a top-tier video game that looked this bad. Continue reading →