Justice League

Director: Zack Snyder

Screenplay: Chris Terrio, Joss Whedon

Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa

Strength: Chemistry

Weakness: Storyline, Direction, Characters

Runtime: 120min

Rating: 6/10

PLOT: In Gotham City, Batman comes across alien creatures that show potential to be a threat to humanity. Meanwhile, in Themyscira, Amazons go head-to-head against the reformed villain Steppenwolf who has come back to Earth to find the three "mother boxes". Bruce Wayne enrolls Wonder Woman in enlisting a team of superheroes to stop Steppenwolf and his dread-eating parademons from destroying the world. They need all the help they can get, because according to legends, when the three boxes come together, they will unleash mass destruction; creating a new world entirely for Steppenwolf's taking.

REVIEW: The long anticipated movie of the year has finally arrived after facing obstacles such as script issues, massive reshoots and a change in directors. Unfortunately, it came out as a disappointment. The film starts off with the world's mourning of Superman's death. Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Godot) recruit Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg to fight off a pending invasion. The movie feels as if it was made only for the comic fans, which is coupled with the common complaint that the storytelling was very rushed. The time constraint of two hours was to be blamed for this, because every character was one-dimensional.

Characterization is where the film really showed its weakness. Cyborg was underplayed and the film didn't serve to introduce him properly. Jason Momoa was brilliant as Aquaman and Wonder Woman was amazing as usual. The scene stealer was Flash with his quirky personality and enjoyable super-speed moments. However, Batman was the most disappointing. Despite his dark persona no one in the movie takes him seriously. And Steppenwolf is basically the worst villain of DC. His character lacked the impact one would expect from a supervillain. The action scenes are as usual and visual effects are pretty average, with the final battle being quite generic. There are plot holes here and there and anyone can predict the ending within the first one hour of the movie. But the ending had a big surprise for DC fans with two amazing post-credit scenes. Overall, Justice League was not the perfect superhero movie. It failed to fulfill expectations but proved to be better than Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice in many ways.

Reviewed by Saqiba Nawshin Junnurine