Justice League was DC’s latest entry in their shared Universe and it did end up failing more or less if you think about it. It was supposed to mark the phase 1 of DCEU and set the stage for JL spin-offs with great elan. But despite a stellar cast and decent script, the movie fell way short of massive expectations. In fact, it is now the lowest earning DCEU movie till now.
The ensemble cast was simply amazing as it included some of the biggest names in the industry such as Batman (Ben Affleck), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Superman (Henry Cavill), Lois Lane (Amy Adams), Wonder-woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Mamoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). It is written by Chris Terrio based on the DC Comics characters.
It was the greatest DC superhero assemble under one roof to take on the monster ‘Steppenwolf’ who have been awakened by the events of BVS. He is the military general of Dark Seid who commands a massive army of parademons and is on a mission to collect all the Apokoliptian motherboxes and restore dark order in the universe.
The movie went through a lot behind the scenes even before the movie’s release as a change in the Director’s chair happened due to Zack Snyder’s tragedy, and the movie went through extensive re-shoots under Joss Whedon as WB ordered many changes in the movie that Snyder almost finished. As a result, the movie was yet another failure on the part of the critics and it did well with the fans yet again. So ultimately, it failed to tap huge amount of buzz & excitement that it created.
But the only silver lining for DC fans is that none of the critics outrightly trashed the movie and appreciated some of the aspects of the movie. Here is one of the most balanced review by Screenrant’s Rob Keyes:
“The good: #JusticeLeague is my favorite DCEU movie. It will make you love its heroes and want to see them team-up again. The bad: #JusticeLeague rushes through a lot and its main story/lore and villain are rather stripped down and forgettable. The future: #JusticeLeague feels like a new start to the age of heroes and succeeds as a launch platform in that, even though some of its newer characters very much would have benefited from origin stories beforehand.”
A month back, things started to unravel about Zack Snyder’s departure, as many reports claimed that Zack Snyder was fired from the movie way before his daughter’s tragic death, and WB used that incident to cover it all up. So, the movie was bound to bomb as there was a lot happening behind the scenes. Zack Snyder’s silence actually proves it all right as he denied doing any sort of press tours or interviews for the movie and he even supported the petition for releasing the Snyder Cut.
WB meddled a lot with the movie, as they got Joss Whedon to make the movie they actually wanted out of Snyder’s existing vision. Even though the movie did not do as well as expected, it was certainly a step in the right direction it did have heart and humor, and it got all its character interactions right. But due to the changes that WB ordered on Snyder’s vision in order to bring the movie down to 2 hours or less, a lot of material that we saw in the trailers was either reshot or removed entirely in order to make it suit more to the shorter time span.
Now, after the release of the BluRay version of Justice League, Zack Snyder has started to open up about the project, as he keeps teasing what his vision intended the movie to have. Justice League was certainly a two-parter till the time Snyder was there, and he also made BvS in the way to set up both the Justice League movies. But with WB bringing in Whedon, it was converted into a single independent movie, keeping the connections to the second movie to a lower scale, and opening many directions for the sequel, and not keeping it limited to a specific one.
Now, the most recent tease Snyder made for Justice League was that his original movie may have actually included DC’s famous Anti-Life Equation. Zack Snyder shot a 3-hour movie and a lot of material was cut out and altered in order to make it fitting to the demands of WB. One of the big story arc that managed to move out along with the material cut was the big flashback sequence. Snyder had shot big war scenes setting up Steppenwolf’s backstory and the entire plot of Justice League.
Now, in this new tease was questioned by David Peña on the Vero True Social app who suggested that the symbols marking the plain of Justice League‘s ancient battle prologue wasn’t random or just for added flair and it did not take long for Snyder to reply as he did not deny this theory and instructed to “Do the math” totally teasing the infamous Anti-Life Equation of the DC Comics’ lore. If this were true, then we could see that Zack Snyder really had some huge plans for the sequel of Justice League, and he was setting up the Lord of Apokolips, Darkseid in the best possible way.
Why we know this is because he added Easter Eggs right from the beginning of BvS, and a part of the whole reason why Darkseid is really interested in Earth and its people is because of the Anti-Life Equation.
Unfortunately, we will not get any of that now, as the sequel to Justice League may already be dead since the first one did not even manage to make any profits at all. But if it does go ahead than Darkseid won’t be featured in the storyline as the post-credits of Justice League showed that Deathstroke was freed from jail by Lex Luthor’s men and he suggested that they should have their own league to take on JL.
Ezra Miller aka The Flash sat for a discussion on the possibility of ‘Injustice League’ and he had this to say:
“The Injustice League. I think I can speak for everyone in the League when I say that we’re extremely excited by the prospect of continuing this journey. We don’t really know for sure, and we’re usually the last people to find out, but … each of the heroes in this movie has specific nemeses, and I think seeing some incarnation of the Injustice League (which includes Lex Luthor, Joker, Deathstroke and more) would be something that DC fans would be pretty stoked about.”
Let’s just hope that the upcoming DC movies do not turn out to be similar to the previous ones as DC has a high failure record when it comes to the DCEU since only Wonder Woman has been able to shine in all aspects.
Aquaman is going to open on December 21, 2018, Shazam! is coming out on April 5, 2019, and Wonder Woman 2 will come out on November 1, 2019. Well, it’s not confirmed yet if Justice League 2 will come out but all DC fans should check out Justice League, here is the official synopsis released by DC and WB:
“In Justice League, fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of meta-humans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions”.
“Once again, Wonder Woman must demonstrate her ability as a fierce warrior. Facing a great enemy, she and Batman join forces to recruit a group of meta-humans to stand against this newly awakened threat. Having formed an unprecedented League of heroes, they set out to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.”
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