Originally Posted by
Ascended
I voted for "Very good, enjoyable and engaging" but I'm actually somewhere between that and "Alright, but a bit of a disappointment."
I had extremely low expectations going into this. I loved Man of Steel and Wonder Woman, felt Suicide Squad was a solid "C" grade, and will never forgive BvS for how it treated Clark and the title fight (and no amount of rationalizing has changed my stance on that, sorry Vanguard!). I didn't even want to see this; my wife and son dragged me to it.
However, in regards to the cast, this movie mostly did right by me. Every single scene Clark had was a total catharsis.....they handled him so well I could almost forget what BvS did to him for a moment. Diana was perfect, as she's been since she debuted. I seriously cannot say enough good things about Gal Gadot in this role. She has defined Diana for the modern world. Bruce was handled well, and there's some hint at the deeper psychological currents running through him after his many, many, many mistakes in BvS, without drowning the audience in it.
Of the new cast, I think they did beautifully with Cyborg. I was the most concerned about him, as he's not a household name like Flash and Aquaman are. And I wasn't sold on his visual in the trailers either. This movie totally proved me wrong and treated Vic really well, and there's a super quick little something right at the end concerning his "costume" that really, really pleased me. If his comic were handled as well as he was here, the sales would be a lot better. Aquaman was excellent, especially for a version of Arthur who has yet to take the crown of Atlantis, and Amber Heard's appearance as Mera was as spot on as such a small cameo can get.
Barry.....Ezra Miller did a great job with the role he was given, but I still maintain that the movie didn't use Barry Allen the character, but rather took all the general assumptions about who the Flash is, regardless of who is under the mask, and tossed them all into this movie's character who just happened to be named Barry. There are aspects in Miller's Flash that I do recognize as Barry, and he's absolutely a highlight of the film with some of the best lines (most of them actually) but that guy wasnt the Barry Allen I recognize.
Steppenwolf is......interesting. The voice acting is superb; far better than I expected and the visual is solid. But he, along with the plot, are about as thin as your average Marvel movie.
Pacing was actually pretty good, considering the run time and all the stuff that got cut out. It fit together a lot better than BvS did and I think an extended cut for JL will make this movie infinitely better.
My greatest disappointment here is that the whole thing felt like a Marvel movie. There wasn't as much humor as I had feared, but it tries to capture a similar tone and approach as the standard Marvel film, and while that works well for Marvel and I love those movies, I really liked that DC was trying to do something different and dig into a different, more nuanced psychology with their films....until their mistakes with BvS caused them to over-correct into the other extreme.
I'm satisfied that this movie was as good as it was ever going to be, but I wish it had been deeper.