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SCFT Review: Justice League! And there will be spoilers

I could not find a big poster of the Justice League film so I had to settle for the seating chart outside my theater

There will be spoilers in this review even though there isn't too much to spoil.

Justice League hit theaters this weekend to disappointing reviews. While the movie if a lot of fun, especially if you are a fan of DC Comics, it can also be confusing.

One of the biggest problems was the decision to introduce three new characters, a villain, the concept of the Fourth World and the New Gods, and a new version of the Mother Box in one film.
I've been only reading DC Comics intensely for around the last two years, so I feel like I could follow some of the more esoteric bits, such as the introduction of the Mother Box. Now,  I always thought of the Mother Boxes as sort of an iPhone that can open multidimensional portals called Boom Tubes which is the only way to travel to the Fourth World.

But in this movie, the Mother Boxes are sort of like The One Ring, there are three of them and when they come together they turn a planet into a clone of the Fourth World Hell World, Apokolips. Now I can roll with the new Mother Boxes but I've only known what they are supposed to be for about two years, and I'm sure most DC fans who have been hungering for this movie can overlook that too but what about people who only are coming to see this for Batman and Superman? I don't know?

One revelation I got from this movie is I understand now why the Simpsons' Comic Book guy is such a bitter loser. One of the great joys of comic book collecting, or any hobby, is to share one's love of that hobby with other people.

I think this movie will be hard to share with non-comic book people because it is so esoteric and confusing.

On the other hand, it isn't terrible. I had a great deal of fun watching this movie. But I found that once the pace slowed for character moments, I found myself getting bored. One of the reasons for this is the movie doesn't have time to both introduce new characters and develop them at the same time.
We meet Aquaman aka Arthur Curry but we really don't get to know him. He lives in water, he doesn't want to join the Justice League, we get to see a battle for a Mother Box in Atlantis but Atlantis doesn't feel like a real place.

Cyborg gets a little more character development, he is easily the most identifiable of the new characters because we can all imagine being in a horrible accident and our lives only being saved because we have to be attached to a machine but that's about the end of it.

Wonder Woman is great, she easily has the best solo action sequence. In fact, I would have been more interested in seeing a movie about Wonder Woman having to fight some doomsday cult who believes the only way to save mankind is to send it back to the dark ages.

Bruce Wayne is fine. He's the reason the Justice League comes together and in a movie like this, at least we don't need much character development. He was fine.

The Flash, sadly but out of necessity, is the comic relief. Near the end of the film I realized that Flash was fulfilling the role of the sidekick, so why not have a sidekick?

Because Warner Brothers has to rush a cinematic shared universe into being. That means there will be casualties.

And while I found Steppenwolf to be a serviceable bad guy and his end poetic, the story his character sets in motion is the greatest causality.

Are they building up for Darkseid War? Well, maybe but the thread they leave dangling is Lex Luther calling on Deathstroke to start "a league of their own." So are they building up to a Legion of Doom movie first?
Is the DCEU trying to lead up to the Darkseid War?
Again, this is not a terrible movie for a comic book fan but I can understand how both DC fans and especially people who have no interest in comic book films could be disappointed.
I can also see how DC Comics fans could take this as a win because there a lot to like here, it has everything but competence, and by that I mean someone behind the scenes to be the "hidden hand" bringing all these characters together.

Links:
Justice League: The Darkseid War Saga Omnibus: http://amzn.to/2zEphtd
Amazon Affiliate link to Comics and Graphic Novels:  https://goo.gl/1uVWPd
Twitter:https://twitter.com/SuperComicFun
SCFT Blog:https://goo.gl/9Y5Ksf
Gab: https://gab.ai/SuperComicFun
Vidme: https://vid.me/SuperComicFunTime
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuperComicFunTime/
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