As I sit here watching the live action Justice League, I find myself asking “How could they possibly screw this movie up?”. It’s not terrible but I think we all agree it could have been so much better. And what’s more frustrating, they already had an animated blue print that would have been so easy to bring to the big screen.
If you have never seen the animated movie Justice League: War, do yourself a favor an watch it this week. It’s everything DC fans wanted in Justice League and more. The villain is better, it includes Green Lantern, and they didn’t need to bring Superman back to life. I get that they wanted to link Superman vs Batman to Justice League but it wasn’t necessary. Simply recreating Justice League: War to live action movie would have been a box office monster that would have allowed for countless follow-up movies.
Justice League: War is exactly what the live action Justice League should have been. Let’s start with the villain, the live action had Steppenwolf, who the hell is Steppenwolf? I’m definitively not a diehard comic fan who knows everything, but I like to think I know enough to not be surprised. The only Steppenwolf I know was a band from the 70’s who wrote “Born to be Wild”. He wasn’t even the bad guy, he was the henchman doing the bad guys work aka Darkseid. Other the other hand, War actually had Darkseid, arguably the worst Villain of them all. Consider him the Thanos of the DC Universe. What better way to bring the Justice League together than fighting the worst of the worst.
Now let’s talk about the Justice League cast, for some reason the live action DC Universe was focused on bringing on Aquaman. Could’ve have been because the Green Lantern movie was a huge bomb and they had plans for the Aquaman movie, but still, how do you leave out Green Lantern. You have an alien force attacking the Earth, wouldn’t it make sense to have the one alien on the Justice League (other than Martian Manhunter). They also have Shazam in War which would’ve have lined up perfectly with his own movie that was released after the fact.
And lastly, yes we know Superman “dies” at the end of Batman vs Superman, but the way they bring him back to life in the light action Justice League is just strange. They couldn’t think of a better way to wake him? It seems like an unnecessary subplot to could have been avoided. How about, you have his body laying in rest at the Fortress of Solitude, and Batman created a way to expose him to a extreme amount of the suns radiation. There, solved it, less creepy, and more in line with how he garners his strength.
So what happened, what clown allowed this movie to be green lit? You had a perfectly good movie that required small tweaks to the script that would have been a box office smash. Not only would have it made the studio more money, but it would have set up the release of Shazam and the other DC projects perfectly. Instead they have Zack Snyder doing re-writes and re-shoots so they can release his version 3 years later.
