Critics are full of shit. I actually went to Rotten Tomatoes just to make sure that the few reviews I noticed were not outliers. It is rate 36%, the worst of any film opening this week. That includes "Wonder" which has nothing to do with the female lead of "Justice League" but its title seems to allude to the fact that a film finally features a child who is sufficiently ugly to be related to Julia Roberts.

Quick disclosure here: I have like, NO eye for aesthetics. My opinion about such matters is not only un-sought by people of my acquaintance, but actively rejected. I am sort-of color blind and my mother and sister generally seem mildly surprised when I show up for an event in clothes that, in their words, match. When people express admiration for someone's new car, I have no idea what they are even talking about. Statistical performance specs mean much more to me than the shape or color of the chassis. I would rather see a floor plan of a building or a room than a photograph. I have no idea what people mean when they complain about the appearance of a film, or details of the CGI. I have seen articles bitching about CGI where they will have two side-by-side stills from the films in question as if that is some sort of definitive proof, and I have no idea what I am supposed to see. I liked the visuals of Jurassic World much better than I did Jurassic Park. I liked the visuals of the Amazing Spiderman movies much better than the Tobey McGuire trilogy. I could not point to any one thing and say "this was better" anymore than I could explain which notes I prefer in Beethoven's 9th to a Taylor Swift song.

With all that in mind, I hope you get that if you're down with the legions of internet denizens who are put off by the "Frank Miller" aesthetic (I know he draws comic books, and I read, and enjoyed, 300 long before the movie came out, but I have only the vaguest idea what people mean by it regarding the movies), or whatever you think about the running visual style of the DC movies, I am completely unable to comment on that. Maybe it sucks, but I didn't notice, to a profound degree I hope you grasp now. I'm a little better with music, but I don't really notice that, either, unless it's a piece that stands out, like a memorable theme song or a well-deployed piece with which I am familiar. For instance, I liked the use of the Immigrant Song in Thor 3, in both trailers and film, but I am glad they saved the cover of Come Together you hear in some trailers for "Justice League" for the credits.

I like story and character and action scenes and humor and explosions. And that's why the DC movie universe includes my favorite portrayals of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash, which includes maybe a handful of things in print, but most of the better known movies and TV shows. And while I am generally not unsympathetic to book purists, those are actual literature. Saying a movie is not true to the comic book, or doesn't capture the subtleties, is like making the same comparison between a skin mag and a porno film. In each case, the periodical and the performance are fulfilling the exact same purpose. So I am genuinely sorry if you're as appalled at Superman & Zod knocking over half the buildings in Metropolis as I am at seeing clever or empathetic residents of Westeros transformed into stupid one-note cutouts who only say or do what a bunch of half-bright writers think will most effectively move the plot towards the spectacle that is the centerpiece of episode 9 or 10, but your complaint has much less merit. I sincerely doubt you can really say there is a definitive version of characters whose exploits have been continuously depicted over three quarters of a century, by dozens of different writers and artists and editors. And how much good stuff can there be if each series of movies keeps going back to things like General Zod or Phoenix? If comic fans have beaten to death the point that Superman and Batman have mothers with the same name...too bad. Most of us were only vaguely aware of that because it was the first time we'd ever seen them in the same movie, and it's not the same kind of extraneous knowledge as the absurdity of the Iron Bank siding with Cersei because they're invested in the slave trade.

Okay, enough with the disclaimers. I hope you get now that I simply don't have the same knowledge base that inspires a lot of the negative reviews, and am unaware of the aesthetic issues that put many of them off. Don't blame me if you hate it for those reasons, because I am A: incapable of warning you about them and B: probably am not indifferent to the problem as well.

We're basically where we left off at the end of "Batman Vs Superman". Superman's dead, everyone's sad and the world is going to shit, with lots more crime and bad stuff going down, and it seems to be connected to the emergence of a new threat, possibly related to Batman's weird post-apocalyptic dreams of the prior film. So he and Alfred and Wonder Woman try to find Victor Stone, Aquaman and the Flash, because Lex Luthor had intel that they exist, along with news about the bad guy and the magic boxes he is looking for. Coincidentally, those are connected to three members of the League, and might be Kyptonian in origin as well. So it's a scramble to both recruit and play defense against Steppenwolf, who, while he could be said to be born to be wild, does not ride on a magic carpet at any point in the film. By the way, Barry Allen and Arthur Curry are Flash & Aquaman's real names, and Victor, from the credits, is rather unimaginatively called "Cyborg". If you think that's bad, Aquaman's countrywoman is named "Mera". She lives under the sea and her name is three letters short of Mermaid. What would the second Atlantisian woman be named? Never mind, there isn't one. Yet. Amber Heard plays her, which suggests there will be an Aquaman movie in which "Mera" will play a significant role. I guess the fall of 2017's theme is "movie premises so dumb, Entourage thought of them first". I have seen at least one movie each, about Pablo Escobar's cartel, forest firefighters and Aquaman, so...

Anyway, Victor the Cyborg was killed in an explosion but his father (Joe Morton, who was on Smallville [in an episode with Amy Adams, no less] and in Terminator 2, playing a very similar character) used alien technology to try and 6 million dollar man him, but it keeps going on its own. So Victor can fly and transform his body into weapons (down to synthesizing components for 3' long missiles) and hack computers and operate machines by touching them, but because of the uncontrolled and not-understood nature of the technology, he is saved from being some sort of plot-breaking genie who could actually solve all their problems. Flash is all on his own, without the benefit of Star Labs, because they work in Metropolis under Dr. Stone now, but he's got the same backstory, so I guess Wells found a different job. His dad is still in jail for killing his mom, even though Barry doubts he did it. He apparently got hit by the lightning, which he says is the simple version, but we don't get into that (GOOD! Don't care. Don't need details. Uncle-Ben-murders-Kents-finding-rocket-baby-Waynes-in-alley has been done to death. Struck by lightning is something we don't need to see, and adding more fake science stuff to give Flash more plausibility just highlights the implausibility). The interesting thing I felt they did with Barry is make him the awkward geek of the team, rather than saddle us with a Cisco or the usual loser nerd who is pathetic and stupid but the writers love him. That plays into his lack of confidence, is developed realistically from his powers' nature, helps to limit him and also lampshades a problem with applying his powers to superhuman combat. There is one moment where he is trying to help his teammates contain a powerful foe who is matching them in strength, and he's zipping around the periphery looking to flank the enemy, and there is a sudden butt-puckering moment when he and the audience realize that the bad guy is tracking his speed and is, if not as fast or faster, capable of operating on his level. Suddenly he's no longer the guy who can always avoid the danger, he's just a frail kid devoid of combat training, against an enemy who was matching strength with Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg. I like it a lot better than Grant Gustin's version (which, don't get me wrong is fine for what his show is supposed to be, but we've got better people in "Justice League" to play the role that Flash does in his TV world). Aquaman is a kind of swaggering barbarian warrior type (for which Jason Momoa has proven his chops) whose backstory is sketched in the least, but isn't as alien as, say, Diana was on her emergence from Themyscira. He seems to have been the son of the Queen of Atlantis by a human man, and abandoned by her to be raised by his father, and he's somewhat bitter towards Atlantis on account of this, despite Atlantis being largely represented in this movie by someone who looks a lot like Amber Heard. He may or may not be able to talk to fish. Batman is just as curious about this.

And that gets me to the characterization aspect I liked the best. The camaraderie and group dynamic. There isn't really one, like they were constructed to play specific roles or balance one another. Instead, its a bunch of isolated and alienated individuals who come together and find something of value in it. Barry leaps at the invitation to join, because by the nature of his superhuman speed (and required accelerated perceptions) feels completely cut off from ordinary people. Aquaman has his own issues of alienation, and while it's not explored at all, that product-of-two-worlds thing has been done to death, and even previously in this very movie series, so it's not like we need to have the (sorry about this) "fish out of water" story spoonfed to us again. Victor is introduced as hidden away from everyone but his father, whom he sort of resents and blames for his condition, and who understands it no better than anyone else could. Batman is Batman, we know the deal. Alfred is always bitching about Batman's (lack of a) social life, and the importance of having teammates was the central theme of the Lego Batman Movie. And while Diana always seems to have her shit together, Batman points out that she didn't handle having mortal friends live up that term all that well. And the central motivating premise, despite all the talk about big threats, seems to really have been Superman. He was awesome, they all admired or respected him from afar, and now that he's gone, they have to step up, and his absence, more than the threat of Steppenwolf and his motherboxes is the real factor in their first joint, premeditated mission with all five aboard.

Spoiler whiteout :Superman comes back, of course,
and that's like halfway through, and of course he shows up at the very end to save them, you probably figured that out. But for all the brooding grimness of MoS & BvS, that's REALLY alleviated when he's with the team. With a bunch of peers, even though he totally saves their asses and is pretty clearly established as the most powerful of them by a comfortable margin, he has shed that whole "god" issue from BvS and seems more loose and comfortable. There are probably more moments of him having fun than in the other two movies combined.

You can absolutely see why a cartoon version of this team was called "Super Friends". They might be playing this up as an assemblage of gods or heroes, Argonaut-style, but their interactions alone (maybe not the visuals) make the Avengers seem like grimdark nineties stuff and the group dynamic of various Marvel teams (even Guardians of the Galaxy) resemble the Forsaken by comparison. They aren't as quippy as the other guys, or not in the same style, but the stakes of their arguments seem more real and their actions seem to demonstrate more genuine respect and feeling for one another. It's kind of weird, because they don't have the ordinary or super-charismatic members everyone seems to think are necessary to be the glue of a team. It's more like a group of equals, which is how real world friends work. This isn't a football team, where everyone has a specific role. The various characters who could be considered the "glue" don't unite the group by empathy or charm, but by being so awesome the others kind of roll with it.

As far as the villain goes, he's not much of a character. They have scenes to establish his power, and he has the requisite army for the heroes to beat up, which is exactly what the Avengers had. Steppenwolf is not Loki or even Ultron, he's more like the guy with the hammer in Guardians of the Galaxy in terms of rankings, but that's not important, because that's not really the antagonist. Arguably the antagonist in this story is the absence of Superman, because that's the thing the good guys struggle against. Steppenwolf is just a problem that can be solved by getting to McGuffin and doing the thing to it. They don't beat him by clever or well-coreographic brilliantly improvised teamwork, they just dive in on a leap of faith that they can make it, because there is no one else and they have to do it. They don't follow an ingenious, they ignore the plan to save people, and that's pretty much the extent of their teamwork too - "Oh hey Teammate X is about to get hammered/having trouble with Y, I'll give him a hand" seems to be the extent of their strategy, which really gives some humanity to a group of individuals characterized by their distance from humanity.

I liked it. It wasn't quite the action spectacle of BvS, but it was more fun and had more heart. I really want this DCU thing to keep rolling. Not Suicide Squad though. Whatever that was supposed to be, it was like they took sniper-quality aim at my worst expectations of a comic book team-up movie. Aside from Bruce Wayne, there is not a single element from Suicide Squad in there.