You shouldn’t have to wait 30 mins for a film to get interesting- Zack Synder’s Justice League

(Spoilers) I gave the recent ‘Zack Snyder’s Justic League’ release 30 mins, which is quite generous when you only live once. I get the impression lots of B-List type actors like Diane Lane and Michael McElhatton were very well paid to do not very in terms of dramatic weight and thematics. These days running on spectacle just isn’t enough for me. I feel like life is not made for sitting and eating popcorn. I was bored, so I stopped watching, it’s as simple as that. Life is too short. There are zillions of life experiences, books, films etc to enjoy. I was bored because the film was hopping from location to location without any particular nuance. The plot seems to revolve around a baddie and his minions coming to Earth somehow, but why should the audience care? Great comic-book films like ‘The Dark Knight’ hook you from the beggining with an interesting premise and captivating characters. They are concise yet profound at the same time. This 4-hour long Justice League felt like it was trying to be everything by throwing lots of characters and events at me without anything sticking, which ends up in it feeling like nothing. It was like it was trying to make up for the DC universe not being crafted into an interesting overarching plot before this film, which the Marvel movies did brilliantly over several years and films.

The little ‘sending the world back to the dark ages’ London subplot was interesting and I was looking forward to seeing where it led, but a superhero (Wonder Woman) who happens to be watching the events unfold comes and saves the day generically. I wanted to see what attacking the capitalist financial system would look like- would the world have to lose something to find something? Did the terrorists want to alleviate climate change by halting the global economy for example? Where was the nuance? I usually give films more than 30mins but I don’t think viewers should have to wait so long to be interested. The creativity and intrigue in films like ‘The Dark Knight’ enrich you from the start- a new villian like the Joker is introduced in an exciting way.