Justice League Trailer #1 Thoughts

Warner Brothers/DC Comics has released the first full trailer for Zack Snyder’s highly anticipated Justice League.

Yeah, it’s a trailer. And it’s pretty much how I expected it to look. That means I continue to be very apprehensive about this movie and everything I’ve seen trying to ignite any hype about it has fallen flat for me. My head continues to shake and my arms remain to be folded.

After having seen this DC Expanded Universe get worse and worse one the course of what’s it been now, three movies, my expectations for Justice League have pretty much bottomed out. It’s a shame that I can feel so disinterested in a movie about the Justice League, but that’s the one thing that Warners, DC and Snyder have managed to do – not inject me with any kind of excitement or longing to see the next upcoming DC adventure, but have complete indifference to the latest installment in their expanded superhero universe.

So, from this trailer we see Snyder continues to do that dark, glum visual aesthetic that he’s brought to these DC movies since he arrived. I have never liked it. It just looks so monotonous and unexciting.

In fact, his DC movies have gotten even more drab looking since Man of Steel. That movie looks like a Technicolor wonder compared to Batman v Superman and now how Justice League looks to be.

Also as expected we’ll get all those artificial looking scenes with our heroes bouncing, whizzing, running and flying all around in. Out of the trailer there are only a handful of scenes that look to be taking place on real actual sets – the Flash’s pad, Aquaman in that fish cabin, Wonder Woman fighting in a building. The rest of it looks like CGI video game environments with overly busy frames. Something’s always flying around in them, whether it’s lightning, Parademons, sparks, smoke, water.

It kind of starts to look like you’re staring into a blender running on full blast with the occasional obnoxious sol-mo hero pose to break things up.

They heard the criticism that these DC movies haven’t been “fun” enough. Now they’re trying to reassure everyone that this movie will fix that (No, no this time we’re really fixing that! We promise!)

They show the characters trade one-liners with one another and putting a bit more levity into their interactions. None of the lines are particularly funny to me. Bruce Wayne saying his superpower is that he’s rich is not exactly a great knee slapper. Aquaman’s line, “Dressed as a bat…I can dig it.” got no reaction out of me.

Oh, I think they also might have wanted to counteract all the uncaring, murderous deeds done by their heroes in the previous movies too. Instead of this group killing citizens of the world, here they make it clear to show that Aquaman and Cyborg save and protect some people. It’s like they wanted to really get it across that these folks are good guys and we’re shown a ‘hero moment’ from both of them. No branding the necks of criminals in this flick.

They’re really trying to make Jason Momoa’s Aquaman a badass. Perhaps forcing it too hard. I haven’t been crazy about most of the designs of these characters and he’s not working for me. Putting him on top of the Batmobile yelling, “YEEEAAAAH” – I never dreamed I would see Aquaman do that.

There was one snippet of him fighting and I couldn’t tell if he was supposed to be on land or underwater. It’s those murky visuals of Snyder again.

Cyborg looks like he’ll be the least popular hero out of this roster. He looks to be very uninteresting in both character and design. If I had to hedge my bet I’d predict it will be his action figure more than the others that will sit on store shelves gathering dust. In fact his character poster…..looks so terrible. What kind of pose is that? It looks embarrassing.

Ezra Miller’s Flash could possibly become a hit. Although his costume, again I don’t like. Not sure why he’s all armored up. He looks so stiff, like he can barely walk in that thing let alone run.

What’s funny is how that one earlier clip we saw was him complaining to Bruce Wayne he’s sitting in his favorite chair. I thought, well in that armor he probably can’t sit down, so what’s he going to do with a chair? I’m not sure Flash should have more armor than Cyborg.

Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck look fine. Gadot’s Wonder Woman looks good and will probably be the best one out of this group. Affleck is trying out more cutesy one-liners. I guess he’ll be ok. I really don’t have any feelings about his Batman. He fills the suit in between the effects of Batman swinging around.

One funny thing is how they’re still trying to keep it a secret of Superman’s return in these posters and trailers, like teasing everyone with the surprise, even though everyone knows he’ll be showing up in this. The biggest hint at Henry Cavill’s resurrection back into the Snyder-verse is a shot of Amy Adams who will return in her miscast role as Lois Lane.

I’m not sure why they would really bother including Superman in this anyway or why folks are anxious to see him again.

Snyder has done nothing with the character up to this point, so other than Supes being a required member of the Justice League, I don’t think there’s any more reason they should bring the guy back. Snyder had two movies to create a likable, new interpretation of Superman and hasn’t managed it.

It’s not like I’m excited to see Cavill’s Superman return in this or expect now they’ll manage to make me admire and care for this Supes. The most they’ll probably do with him is give him a new hairstyle, a new costume, have him cause massive damage and pose alongside the others. If that’s the case they can keep him in his grave.

As we’ve seen from the previous DC films, when quality can’t be attained, then the next best thing is to rely on hype to sell the movie and use that to get things trending and draw fans into the theaters. And sure enough fans are already drumming up enthusiasm from this trailer. They’re being dazzled by the idea of a Justice League movie, trying to be optimistic and convincing themselves that this one, this movie this time, will be the redeeming one. It appears the previous Snyder DC excursions have been blanked out and only a few people have noticed any kind of pattern to this.

I don’t even think it’s as good a cut of a trailer as some of the other DC films had. Then with that cheesy Beatles cover song….I’m not sure what there is to get so pumped up about it – other than it’s finally a chance to see a Justice League movie – whether it’s good or not. I don’t understand how any skeptical fans can think that with this movie the filmmakers are really finally bringing their A-Game to it this time.

I’ll wait until I see the actual movie. Oh sure I’ll see it eventually no matter how awful it looks – and so far based on this trailer, this looks like it’s going to maintain the status quo quality of the previous fiascos of the DC Expanded Universe. Justice League looks like it will be in the same vein, so I suppose if you enjoyed the previous entries in this franchise it should make those happy.

However, if your one of those who have been hoping for more than what we’ve gotten from this from this DC Expanded Universe, I wouldn’t get too excited about this entry. I would love to go see this and be shockingly surprised and end up loving it. And maybe at the very least it could be a little better than the last two DC movies, but I’m not banking on any of that.

I’m remaining realistic for Justice League based on my past experiences with this franchise and Snyder – I’m expecting over-the-top explosions, confusing action scenes, an incoherent story, paper thin characterizations and a bunch of macho posing. That’s pretty much it.

I hope I’m not setting myself up for further disappointment.