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It is finally here! The Justice League movie that many DC fans have been waiting for. The movie that will put the “World’s Greatest Superheroes” together on the big screen. While this movie is not perfect, it does have some flaws in it that we will discuss in detail below.

As with all of our reviews, we will keep this short and spoiler free. We won’t give away a lot of details but give you enough to make your choice about seeing it or not. The movie starts off with an odd interview with Superman by a couple of kids after what seems like a fire or some other emergency. The one thing that fans will notice here is the digital removal of Henry Cavill’s mustache. This must have been one of the re-shoots that was talked about. We saw the movie at an IMAX screening, so for me, it was really noticeable. The next thing we see is a newspaper on the ground with a headline about Superman’s death.

We see Batman doing some detective work with the parademons that have been scouting locations around the country. I know, if you didn’t see Batman vs Superman, that last sentence might not make sense. The movie jumps around between characters to give us some insight as to what their lives are before teaming up with Batman and Wonder Woman. It seems that since BvS, Bruce Wayne has been keeping tabs on Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, but has yet to make contact with them.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/ TM & © DC Comics

Obviously, you have seen the new characters by now and amongst them, the Flash and Aquaman are the two standouts. Ezra Miller plays the Flash with a giddiness that mimics younger children being able to play with their older, cooler siblings. He has some of the best lines in the movie, but some of his action scenes seem similar to Quicksilver’s scenes in the X-Men movies.

Jason Momoa’s Aquaman get’s his origin story told in a few sentences with Amber Heard’s Mera. He has that cocky swagger that he does what he wants to do but soon realizes that maybe he will need a little help. I would have liked to see more scenes of Aquaman in action, but there is only so much he can do outside of the water.

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Cyborg, played by Ray Fisher, is the only character that has some heart in the movie. It’s odd to say that even though he’s a robot, but it’s kind of true. Again, this was another character that could have used more screentime or dialogue.

Overall, the movie feels like the first Avengers movie, but with more exposition and rushed origin stories for the new characters. There are some great scenes and some scenes that fall pretty flat. Seeing the Amazonians doing battle on the screen again was pretty great. There is one scene when Wonder Woman is talking about the first battle with Steppenwolf and that scene is awesome seeing all the people that are united to fight him.

Steppenwolf is an ok villain. I know it will be hard to perfectly capture a villain of his magnitude using CGI, but there has to a moment when the directors say “We need to make him look better!” The CGI looks incomplete in some scenes with Steppenwolf and I hope, if they continue to use larger than life villains, they correct the look of them or just ditch CG and use an actor in make-up.

You can tell the scenes that Joss Whedon had his hands on by the dialogue and the way there were filmed. The more humorous scenes have his touch and the movie looks a lot brighter than most of the DC movies that have been released. There are two scenes that come to mind: the team together talking while on Batman’s transporter and the first after credit scene. That after credit scene just feels like it was something Whedon wanted to do for a long time and put on film for the fans.

There are plenty of callbacks to earlier movies that you have to keep your eyes and ears peeled for. These little easter eggs put a smile on my face as I saw and heard them.

Final Thought – DC almost had it with this movie, there were so close. Wonder Woman was amazing and nothing can compare to the Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy. If we had a little more time with some of the characters this movie could have been better. It is still worth watching, but it did feel like something was missing. Also, make sure you stay through all of the credits for the two bonus scenes.

Kid Friendly – If your children have seen any of the Avengers movies or any other Marvel movie, they should be ok with watching this one. I would take my eight-year-old to see it this since she is a fan of Wonder Woman, but my four-year-old might get a little restless during the slower scenes in the movie.

Violence – There is a lot of fantasy violence during the action scenes in the movie. A few times the camera pans away from the violence as it is about to happen. Again, if your children have seen other Marvel movies, they should be ok with this. As far as I could remember, there were not many bad words said in the movie.

Fandads’ Rating – 3.5 out of 5