Justice League

Hey, its been a while. I've been busy reading different sorts of books and playing a lot of music. But I finally got around to seeing to the Justice League movie. It was quite an enjoyable two hours of cinema. Here's why.

The movie takes its time with gainful setup. The movie doesn't meander anywhere and it seems to have a purpose for most scenes. The beginning of the film features Batman looking to assemble his team (like an Overwatch team) of superheroes with powers (which he lacks, but has resources and leadership abilities) to defeat this new threat called Stephenwolf but honestly it doesn't matter who they're fighting, they just need an excuse to kick some ass.

Batman is portrayed in a smarter light in this movie as opposed to Batman V Superman where he came across as a violent maniac. Gal Godot is sexy and straight to the point, just as you would think an Amazonian warrior would act. The Flash is nerdy and quite green here. Cyborg is disillusioned with his mechanical body but otherwise quite nice. And Aquaman is a strong dude with a lance. There's the team, now fight! Superman gets raised from the dead to help defeat Stephenwolf and he's the most emotionally expressive character in a sense. He picks up Batman once he's revived and says, "Do you bleed", an ode to the Batman V Superman movie where Batman says that to him and hits him with a kryptonite lance. That was a nice Easter egg. 

The action scenes in this movie are quite good. Its nothing we haven't seen before in superhero movies but it is quite thrilling. My favorite part was probably when Superman was fighting the Justice League team when he was revived because he didn't know who he was or where he is, he was just raised from the dead, like Jesus Christ or something. Batman played God in this movie and it worked out for him but I have my doubts about some sort of after effect happening-Bizarro anyone? They ended up reviving Superman with this thing called a Motherbox, some kind of multidimensional box that contains "deep power", or whatever they want to say it does.

Superman was portrayed in the most human light in the film. Hell, Batman even remarks, "He's more human than I am." After he realizes who he is Lana Lane (Amy Adams, whom I love because of her performance in The Arrival) comes and they go to his childhood home on the farm. They talk and catch up. Lana says she wasn't strong when he died. They kiss and hold each other. Its the most emotional scene in the film. Superman eventually realizes he has a job to do and takes off. But that scene made the movie more interesting and contrasts with the darkness of the film, a feeling a hope that wasn't present before.

It should also be noted that the film portrays a dark atmosphere. This is not the Avengers, where everybody is laughing and joking around with each other. There's jokes here but they're a little forced and not quite that funny (nobody in the audience laughed at anything). The opening song of the movie has a woman singing, "Everybody knows the world is over, everybody knows the good guys lost." Its the perfect music to setup this dystopian superhero adventure. In essence that's what the movie is. Its not meant to be the best Justice League movie, its just meant as a stepping stone for other DC movies to come, hopefully featuring more superheroes (Martin Manhunter and Green Lantern please) and the Justice League fighting more interesting enemies (after the credits there was a scene with Lex Luthor talking about forming his own team of bad guys).

Although the plot was exceedingly simplistic its reasonable to say its to be expected from this sort of action superhero movies genre. What this movie does better than the first Avengers film is that it keeps your attention on the different scenes and animation techniques, something I looked at with great detail. In Avengers there's so much fighting going on that you forget that there's even dialogue sometimes. In this movie dialogue is used in a smarter and more effective way.

The good guys have won for now. But can they withstand the onslaught of the enemy team of ragtag super villains? We'll find out in the next film.

Suicide Squad

So I finally got around to seeing Suicide Squad with my friends. Because my friend works at Amc Theaters I got to see it for free. I've been seeing all the summer blockbusters for free. Special shoutout thank you to my friend!

The movie got a lot of bad press in the gaming community and a lot of people told me personally that they didn't like it as well. I thought it was great fun! Nothing too serious-I could compare it to Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy in the sense that both are fun action movies with comedic undertones. Let me tell you about my favorite scenes and what I liked about this film.

When the super villains are being introduced by Amanda Waller we see glimpses into their past and what makes them tick. This was especially great because I didn't know who Deadshot or Captain Boomerang were. For Deadshot we see a scene where Batman comes to take him in-in the presence of his daughter. Deadshot decides to go peacefully instead of shooting Batman, because of the love for his daughter.

For Harley Quinn we see that she was an Arkam Asylum psychiatrist designated to the Joker, played by Jared Leto. She finds herself falling in love and becoming obsessed with the Joker. Their relationship was a strong one. Joker tried to get Harley to kill herself in one scene (by having her jump in a pool of chemicals) but instead we see Joker jump into the chemicals and save her. Although he was crazy enough to give her electric shock therapy he truly loved her.

Jared Leto was great in this movie. He portrays the Joker less as a psychopath and more as a crime boss. There's this scene where he's sitting in his room and all around him are all these knives placed carefully in position. He showed a wide variety of emotion for the Joker. It was hard to know to expect because I think of the Joker in the movies as Heath Ledger Joker and its to compare to that. But in a sense I think he did a great job.

My favorite character in the movie was Katana. She's this Japanese woman with a sword that contains souls of all the people the sword has slain. She wears a mask and had on this cool leather jac ket and outfit. She even only spoke in Japanese, a nice touch. She's pretty unknown in the DC movie universe so it was cool to see that they featured her. She was an ally to Waller that worked for the government and was there to make sure none of the super villains got out of line.

The story was fun but probably not the most engaging. Basically Enchantress (this witch) gets loose and creates this megaweapon designed to wreck havoc on the Earth-and it does! The Enchantress creates this army of like black goop head-men that the Suicide Squad have to kill in order to get to her. Once there, they have to deal with her brother-this demonic entity thing. Thankfully, they had Diablo ( ese, villain, shoots fire) turn into his true form and he was able to push it into a corner where they used explosives to take it down. His improved form was this giant fire monster. It was pretty cool.

I liked how they portrayed Harley Quinn as super crazy but also sexy. It was like a peep show with her. In addition, I think Katana was pretty cute too. The movie at least had a few cute girls. The movie is light-hearted enough for families with kids to enjoy and has enough action to keep the super hero fanboys watching. For me the movie was a solid 8 out of 10. Not amazing or a must see. But a fun addition to the DC catalog. They finally know what they're doing with their movies. Can't wait to see more from the franchise. I would be totally down for a Katana movie about her origins story.