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Warner Brothers has just released the first official public trailer for the forthcoming Justice League movie. Previously, only some Comic-Con footage was put together and subsequently released (some of that footage appears here too).
As a huge fan of DC’s Justice League who felt fairly ambivalent about the fate of the DC Cinematic Universe after Batman v Superman: Let’s See How Dark We Can Go, As you might imagine I have thoughts. In no particular order:
• One of my criticisms of many of Zach Snyder’s films is that they’re so focused on the stylized visuals that pacing and plot and dialog and everything else suffers. I think he mostly avoided that pitfall in Man of Steel, but I think Batman v Superman not so much. This is an incredibly stylized, over the top trailer, which isn’t a bad thing, but it makes me wonder if he’s able to rein in his tendencies toward excess or if he went “full Snyder.”
• Clearly, they wanted to show that there’s more quips in this one. “No really, this isn’t as dark as Batman v Superman! Honest! Even though every single scene takes place against a gray or night sky, this is a lighter movie!” The thing is, BvS was so dark that being lighter is an incredibly low bar.
• I think it’s silly that they didn’t at least tease Superman’s appearance. I guess seeing Lois Lane is as much as we get. Yes, I know that they don’t want to give it away for people who saw BvS and don’t know what’s coming. But seriously, Henry Cavil is listed as one of the stars of the movie, all the pre-Justice League art showing the Justice League included Superman, I don’t think a tease would have been out of place. Maybe that’s for the second trailer.
• This trailer has managed to do one thing that is admirable and not easy to do: make Aquaman look cool!
• It doesn’t, however, really give any indication of who the enemy that both Batman and Wonder Woman allude to is. We sort of got an idea from some of the excess crap from BvS (that should have been cut) but it could have been clearer. Maybe that’s for the second trailer, too.
Overall I think the trailer set out to introduce the team members we’re not as familiar with yet, and it did that in a stylish way. I’m still not sure that this movie is going to be as good as I hope it will be, or if we’re looking at another grimdark Batman v Superman, just with extra wisecracks. We’ve got until November 2017 to wait to find out, with perhaps one more trailer before then…
Published on: March 26, 2017
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