Plot: After being inspired by Superman's selfless act, Bruce Wayne along with Wonder Woman recruits a number of people with special abilities to face a dark force.

Despite the success of Wonder Woman, a new DC film string brings a whole heap of nerves from me, the audience and its hardcore fans.
It's safe to say that the road to getting to this point has been pretty bumpy.

A lot of studio executive power has forced changes into the majority of their films, that it has completed ruined the viewing experience.
We started with Man Of Steel, and while it was not exceptional, it was still good enough I felt.

Then came 'Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice'. Some nice action, but a story that was incredibly messy and went off down strange tangents that virtually made no sense. 'Suicide Squad' was a big let down. I saw so much potential in this, and yet it managed to inflict itself and become a disappointment. 'Wonder Woman' came out earlier this year, and it is universally seen as DC's best film. It is well told story with many interesting and well-written characters, and it became a pretty action-packed and fun viewing experience.

Now we come to the franchises first team-up feature that is supposed to be a culmination of the studios first phase. Fellow superhero franchise studio Marvel did a great job in 2012 with 'Avengers Assemble'. I'm afraid, the the errors of 'BvS' and 'SS' have returned.

It's a great big rush at the start trying to fit everything in. Thankfully, the fun value keeps this moving despite the obvious problems this has with its telling of the story and its editing.
The action set-pieces were fun to watch, especially one halfway through. The team comradery was working enough for me and despite many forced jokes that on the whole fell flat, it ended up being passable entertainment.

The ratio of good performances from bad from the cast, managed to get a positive out of me. Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck remain to be the great choices as Wonder Woman and Batman.
Gadot shows great leadership in this, and it will take quite an effort to topple her performances in any future DC films.
Affleck is doing some solid work in this and his chemistry with Jeremy Irons as Alfred is still fun to watch.

I was pleasantly surprised by what they did Ray Fisher's character Cyborg. Going into this, he was easily the least known superhero and therefore the one we cared the least. Plus the CGI on him looked awful in the clips building up to this. But not only did the design of him looked better, the character was given some good development and came off as fairly interesting and pretty integral to the team.
I was not impressed by Jason Mamoa's efforts with Aquaman. We got very little about the reasoning for him being there, his history and the character came off as a bit of a dick. An under developed dick may I add.
Ezra Miller as The Flash was incredibly annoying by the end. His introduction gave some promise. But every gag fell so flat and his general creepy presence might it either comfortably or annoying when another forced comedic moment was cringe worthy. Dare I say it was almost on a JarJar Binks annoyance level?
The villain voiced by Ciaran Hinds was very forgettable, non-threatening and even more disposable then most of Marvels antagonists.
Amy Adams and Diane Lane were pretty irrelevant, and while it was nice to see J.K. Simmons in this as Commissioner Gordon, he was also given very little to do.

There is an appearance of one character that I won't mention to avoid spoilers. But all I'll say this, their entrance and opening exchanges were extremely odd and creepy. But on the whole, it was ok at best. There is been a fair amount of discussion on CGI on this particular character. It certainly looked noticeable for the most, and it did look great. It reminded me of the mouth movement of youn-Jeff Bridges in 'Tron: Legacy'.

I noticed in the credits that Danny Elfman did the score for this. You can certainly hear hints of the his 1989 Batman theme, which was cool to notice. I also heard bits of John Williams' Superman theme done differently. As for the score on the whole, it was romping, pretty enjoyable and it might be the films strongest aspect.

I wasn't too impressed however by the visual effects. There is a high amount of CGI infested scenes, and too much of it looked cartoony in its look and sub-standard.
I always go back to Jurassic Park. That came out in 1993, and that will forever looks as real as practical effects. How can some studios show that we're going backwards with this technology?

So while it is clearly as messy in its attempt to make a coherent story as 'Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice' and 'Suicide Squad', the fun value and memorable enough characters makes this a better viewing then those two.
I just want the studios to stop messing with every directors vision and quit rushing everything to get us into the landmark team-up features. I know this one had some changes that were highly unfortunate and out of their hands. But it still had too many high-powered people poking their opinions in to add or remove certain things that just ruined the flow of the story. It might not matter to the people that have read the comics and are aware of the graphic novel. But how are you supposed to introduce these characters to the general audience and make us care for them?
If I see more and more the same mistakes, then I can see this franchise die sooner than you think. Don't be surprised if we see an 'X-Men: Days Of Future Past' type of movie where everything is erased and we begin a re-boot.

As expected, DC have given in and basically copied Marvel's way of post credit scenes. There is one early on in the credits that supposed to be funny, but isn't. However, I was intrigued by the one at the very end of the credits. I'll be intrigued to see where that goes.

Rating: 7/10