Justice League of America - TV Pilot - Review
I watched this over the past two days with my boyfriend and, to be perfectly honest, I expected it to be awful. I mean so terrible it wasn't even funny.
To my surprise, I found something that was actually a half-way decent superhero film.
First off, I know one of the reasons I thought it wasn't bad was because I expected it to be worse. If you go to watch it thinking "it might not be bad" then you'll probably hate it. Watching it with someone else was a good thing too. You know the sort of films that you watch with friends purely to take the piss and they're never as good on their own? (Me and my friends watched The Faculty for this reason) This is one of those. Get some mates around, eat a ton of sugar, and laugh yourselves silly.
Secondly, if you're one of those people who hate characters being messed around with, don't watch. I only really knew Flash and Green Lantern, so I'll start with them.
Flash - this is Barry Allen in pretty much name only. This Flash is unemployed, has a messed up metabolism, and seems a little young. That all speaks of Wally West rather than Barry Allen. However, this being mid-to-late nineties, Wally West was the well-established Flash of the current comics and Barry Allen's resurrection was nowhere in sight. I can see why they chose to use the name and personality they did (there would've been less of a character difference if people then wanted to start reading Flash stuff). There was also the early nineties live-action Flash series that may have had an impact on this too (I haven't seen it so I can't really comment).
Green Lantern - it's not Hal Jordan (yay!). Instead we have Guy Gardner, who is Guy Gardner in name and costume only. He's a software salesman with woman troubles and has previously been in some sort of relationship with Fire. He's definitely a little more bold than the others, but otherwise isn't much of the "you have the ability to overcome great fear" sort of Green Lantern.
I only vaguely know of Atom, Fire, and Ice, but I'm fairly certain they're different too. I felt the Martian Manhunter was the closest to what I know and was played quite well.
It doesn't have well-established characters like Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, which the general public know of. I assume this was because they couldn't get the use of these characters. This does mean that the general public aren't going to realise if, say, Green Lantern isn't quite acting like himself. That gave them a little more freedom to mess with characters without an average viewer saying "hey, that's wrong". For example, for all I know Fire could've been portrayed correctly.
Ok, let's use wikipedia's 'common complaints' to judge the next bit:
Plot holes - Aside from the Justice League completely failing to give Ice any sort of protection when she outright said the bad guy knew she knew who he was, I can't remember anything that made me go 'hang on a minute?'. There were plot *points* that would've no doubt been picked up on later, if they'd managed to get the rest of the series made (eg Guy's girlfriend's love of Green Lantern, but not so much Guy Gardner).
Poor special effects - No. Just *no*. Maybe it was because I was watching it on youtube, but I thought the special effects were really good for the time. I'm talking being able to stand up *today* good. Ok, there was one point when Green Lantern's rope clearly went through the bad guy when he was tying him up, but otherwise they were *good*.
Bad costumes - ok, ok, they've got me there. Green Lantern is blue. Both Atom and Flash don't look like they can move, which for Flash is going to be a problem. Flash's lightning-bolt belt looked like it was badly stuck on cardboard. Fire's (and what we saw of Ice's) costume wasn't bad. The Martian's was actually quite well put together, though him mostly standing in shadows may have helped.
League members deviated heavily from their source characters - I've already mentioned this. Maybe I've seen too much controversy over DC's reboot recently, but I have to say a bit of a shake-up of some characters isn't necessarily a bad thing. They weren't going for a huge planetary-wide protection that the Justice League is usually portrayed as, it was a much more local, one town for all thing. Shifting the characters to fit with this was necessary for the writers.
Critics have also said the movie tried to be like "Friends with superpowers" - See above comment. It doesn't help their case when they have moments like the one when Flash ends up moving in with Green Lantern and Atom, but mostly I felt the style actually suited what it was trying to pull off (unless it was trying for something much bigger, in which case it failed).
Critics felt Stiers' weight affected his portrayal of the [Martian] - No. That shouldn't have been an issue for people. Maybe they were looking for something to complain about when he was acted and costumed quite well, I don't know, but I didn't think it was really a problem.
There are plot points that were never fully resolved and other moments like the bad guy readying an escape at the end, but they were hoping for a series and would've picked those up and tied them off at some later point (I hope). I'm fully prepared to bet one idea was going to be giving Flash a girlfriend who turned out to be evil. We also clearly have an odd love-triangle between Guy Gardner, Guy's girlfriend, Green Lantern, and Fire, which I'm sure we would've seen more of.
I'm not sure if it was a nineties thing or a series thing, but when Flash had a moment of angst, it was *appropriate*. He didn't start sobbing about how he's a miserable failure who can't do anything right, then later have a clear 'this is him doing something awesome so he gets his self-esteem back' moment. He just had a short depressed line or two after just being thrown out of his apartment and being forced to live off his friends' charity, in which I think anyone would've said something similar.
It was odd how the film was interspersed with snippits of 'interviews' with the characters and I'm not sure how that would've stood up over a series. Maybe they just planned to do that with the pilot and drop it afterwards. I guess we'll never know. It wasn't really annoying, but they could've cut them and not lost much in my opinion.
In conclusion, it's a laugh and you should watch it with a few friends. Just don't expect it to be the greatest Justice League film ever made.
To my surprise, I found something that was actually a half-way decent superhero film.
First off, I know one of the reasons I thought it wasn't bad was because I expected it to be worse. If you go to watch it thinking "it might not be bad" then you'll probably hate it. Watching it with someone else was a good thing too. You know the sort of films that you watch with friends purely to take the piss and they're never as good on their own? (Me and my friends watched The Faculty for this reason) This is one of those. Get some mates around, eat a ton of sugar, and laugh yourselves silly.
Secondly, if you're one of those people who hate characters being messed around with, don't watch. I only really knew Flash and Green Lantern, so I'll start with them.
Flash - this is Barry Allen in pretty much name only. This Flash is unemployed, has a messed up metabolism, and seems a little young. That all speaks of Wally West rather than Barry Allen. However, this being mid-to-late nineties, Wally West was the well-established Flash of the current comics and Barry Allen's resurrection was nowhere in sight. I can see why they chose to use the name and personality they did (there would've been less of a character difference if people then wanted to start reading Flash stuff). There was also the early nineties live-action Flash series that may have had an impact on this too (I haven't seen it so I can't really comment).
Green Lantern - it's not Hal Jordan (yay!). Instead we have Guy Gardner, who is Guy Gardner in name and costume only. He's a software salesman with woman troubles and has previously been in some sort of relationship with Fire. He's definitely a little more bold than the others, but otherwise isn't much of the "you have the ability to overcome great fear" sort of Green Lantern.
I only vaguely know of Atom, Fire, and Ice, but I'm fairly certain they're different too. I felt the Martian Manhunter was the closest to what I know and was played quite well.
It doesn't have well-established characters like Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, which the general public know of. I assume this was because they couldn't get the use of these characters. This does mean that the general public aren't going to realise if, say, Green Lantern isn't quite acting like himself. That gave them a little more freedom to mess with characters without an average viewer saying "hey, that's wrong". For example, for all I know Fire could've been portrayed correctly.
Ok, let's use wikipedia's 'common complaints' to judge the next bit:
Plot holes - Aside from the Justice League completely failing to give Ice any sort of protection when she outright said the bad guy knew she knew who he was, I can't remember anything that made me go 'hang on a minute?'. There were plot *points* that would've no doubt been picked up on later, if they'd managed to get the rest of the series made (eg Guy's girlfriend's love of Green Lantern, but not so much Guy Gardner).
Poor special effects - No. Just *no*. Maybe it was because I was watching it on youtube, but I thought the special effects were really good for the time. I'm talking being able to stand up *today* good. Ok, there was one point when Green Lantern's rope clearly went through the bad guy when he was tying him up, but otherwise they were *good*.
Bad costumes - ok, ok, they've got me there. Green Lantern is blue. Both Atom and Flash don't look like they can move, which for Flash is going to be a problem. Flash's lightning-bolt belt looked like it was badly stuck on cardboard. Fire's (and what we saw of Ice's) costume wasn't bad. The Martian's was actually quite well put together, though him mostly standing in shadows may have helped.
League members deviated heavily from their source characters - I've already mentioned this. Maybe I've seen too much controversy over DC's reboot recently, but I have to say a bit of a shake-up of some characters isn't necessarily a bad thing. They weren't going for a huge planetary-wide protection that the Justice League is usually portrayed as, it was a much more local, one town for all thing. Shifting the characters to fit with this was necessary for the writers.
Critics have also said the movie tried to be like "Friends with superpowers" - See above comment. It doesn't help their case when they have moments like the one when Flash ends up moving in with Green Lantern and Atom, but mostly I felt the style actually suited what it was trying to pull off (unless it was trying for something much bigger, in which case it failed).
Critics felt Stiers' weight affected his portrayal of the [Martian] - No. That shouldn't have been an issue for people. Maybe they were looking for something to complain about when he was acted and costumed quite well, I don't know, but I didn't think it was really a problem.
There are plot points that were never fully resolved and other moments like the bad guy readying an escape at the end, but they were hoping for a series and would've picked those up and tied them off at some later point (I hope). I'm fully prepared to bet one idea was going to be giving Flash a girlfriend who turned out to be evil. We also clearly have an odd love-triangle between Guy Gardner, Guy's girlfriend, Green Lantern, and Fire, which I'm sure we would've seen more of.
I'm not sure if it was a nineties thing or a series thing, but when Flash had a moment of angst, it was *appropriate*. He didn't start sobbing about how he's a miserable failure who can't do anything right, then later have a clear 'this is him doing something awesome so he gets his self-esteem back' moment. He just had a short depressed line or two after just being thrown out of his apartment and being forced to live off his friends' charity, in which I think anyone would've said something similar.
It was odd how the film was interspersed with snippits of 'interviews' with the characters and I'm not sure how that would've stood up over a series. Maybe they just planned to do that with the pilot and drop it afterwards. I guess we'll never know. It wasn't really annoying, but they could've cut them and not lost much in my opinion.
In conclusion, it's a laugh and you should watch it with a few friends. Just don't expect it to be the greatest Justice League film ever made.