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Justice League is a loud, frenetic, overstuffed mess … but it’s not a total disaster

JUSTICE LEAGUE (Zack Snyder). 121 minutes. Opens Friday (November 17). See listing. Rating: NN

Justice League is a mess but not a disaster, making it an improvement on the shrieking void of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.

Picking up more or less where that one left off – with Superman (Henry Cavill) dead and the world out of hope – this new chapter finds Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) recruiting new faces Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to battle an extra-dimensional menace who goes around destroying worlds and remaking them in his evil image.

The bad guy, Steppenwolf, is a sort of giant goblin played in motion-capture by Ciaran Hinds. He’s been pulled in from DC’s New Gods mythology, and he’s awfully one-note as villains go, but at least his presence explains Bruce Wayne’s bizarre dream in Batman V Superman – even if nothing from that sequence actually happens here.

Steppenwolf shows up and runs around the planet assembling the three Mother Boxes that will trigger Armageddon, which serves to bring our heroes together and hatch a plan to bring Superman back from the dead. (It’s not a spoiler: Henry Cavill gets second billing in the opening credits and appears in the film’s first shot.)

That stuff’s dumb and loud and pointless, and entirely in line with producer/director Zack Snyder’s earlier DC films. What’s different this time around is the sense that Justice League actually understands who its heroes are and how they relate to each other when they’re not punching space monsters. Although it’s the shortest of the five DC features, it’s the only one of the present-day movies that seems to breathe, letting moments hang and allowing for the possibility of comic relief.

I suspect this is mostly the work of co-writer and uncredited co-director Joss Whedon, who replaced Snyder when a family tragedy took him off the picture earlier this year. Whedon clearly wrote every line that comes out of The Flash’s mouth, as well as a few other scenes, and I’d lay odds that he set up Wonder Woman’s first action scene as well – it understands her powers and her personality in a way that Batman V Superman didn’t.

I am not at all sure who wrote Bruce Wayne’s scenes, or why Ben Affleck seems to be trying to undercut his own performance in them. Maybe he really doesn’t want to keep playing the character, or maybe he just thought he’d try a gruffer, angrier version of Bruce Wayne. But it’s at odds with the one we saw last year, and a lot less interesting.

At least Jeremy Irons gets a little more to do as Alfred this time.

Look, at this point you know what you’re getting. It’s a DC movie – it’s loud and frenetic when it doesnt need to be, overstuffed with peripheral characters who don’t matter and action sequences that barely register.

But when it remembers to be quiet and let its characters actually talk, Justice League hints at better movies that might still come out of this franchise.

Also it has Wonder Woman, and she’s great. Go see it for her.

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