‘Justice League’ Review: D.C.’s Epic Action Showdown is a Wannabe (Avengers) Movie

Zack Snyder successfully delivers a more polished spectacle than "Batman v Superman," but nothing we haven't seen before.

Zack Snyder’s painfully titled “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” had all the worst attributes of modern-day superhero storytelling: unearned gravitas, a bloated running time, and interchangeable CGI-stuffed battles. “Justice League” offers a tepid mea culpa, attempting to liven the material (with a third-act assist from Joss Whedon, who finished the movie when Snyder stepped away for tragic personal reasons).

Taking more than one page from Marvel’s first “Avengers” installment, “Justice League” rounds up the current spate of active D.C. franchise superheroes, and the resulting 119-minute pileup of showdowns and one-liners is an undeniably tighter, more engaging experience. It’s also a tired, conventional attempt to play by the rules, with “hold for laughs” moments shoehorned between rapid-fire action — a begrudging concession that the Marvel formula works, and a shameless attempt to replicate it.

Although “Batman v Superman” combined equally bland dramas about two of the most overexposed fictional icons in pop culture, it stumbled toward a reasonable cliffhanger to kickstart the next installment: the death of Superman. This cataclysmic event, cheaply lifted from one of the comic book’s best arcs, represents a breach in the mythology. What happens when a symbol of absolute power falls? That’s the question “Justice League” uses as an excuse to assemble all of its active D.C. characters.