Justice League
I fucking LOVE Rotten Tomatoes! Not only is it the best source for movie reviews but when the Tomato Gods finally make Cinemavenger an "approved" critic and list me on their site it will literally change my life. That said, nothing is sacred, and no one is innocent. The way Rotten Tomatoes handled Justice League has earned it an Andre the Giant vs. Danny DeVito beatdown.
Like a Tourette's-suffering poker player who yells "cunt scab!" every time he picks up a good hand, bad movies have a tell. No advanced screenings for critics = fucktrocity. The studios' logic is that the inevitable bukkake-like outpouring of negative reviews will be held off until after the movie rakes in as much opening weekend cash as it can.
Rather than admit defeat by refusing to screen Justice League in advance, Warner Bros. wrote a brand new page in the Dick Moves Manual and had Rotten Tomatoes - in which it owns a significant stake - not release its Tomatometer rating (39% as I write this) or post any reviews until today, the Friday Justice League opened. WB and RT can claim this was for RT's new Facebook vlog, "See It/Skip It," all they want, but Cinemavenger is calling bullshit. Bullshit!
The minute Justice League starts to unspool, you can tell it's going to hurt more than a no-Novacaine root canal. Actually, you could tell even before that at my local multiplex. Every seat should have an ass in it for the first night of a mondo-budget tentpole like this, yet the theater I was in was barely half full. Eso no es bueno para una pelicula grande.
The people who stayed home were the lucky ones. I'd've bet that it couldn't've been possible, but Justice League is worse than Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad. It's one giant leap backward from the only good, modern DC movie, Wonder Woman.
How do you throw $300M at a flick - a bunch of which was obviously courtesy of Mercedes Benz based on the every-other-scene product placement - and have it end up this shitacular? Everything on screen looks dollar store cheap. The villain, Steppenwolf (voice of Ciaran "Release The" Hinds), is 100% really bad CGI. Which means the League - Batman (Ben "Dover" Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal "Waiting For" Gadot), Flash ("Better Than" Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason "Drogo" Momoa), Cyborg ("Original Famous" Ray Fisher) and Superman (Henry "Beefcake!" Cavill) - is fighting a cartoon. Zero dramatic stakes. Zero fucks given.
If there were any justice in the world there wouldn't be any Justice in the world.
November 17, 2017