By Zack Downing, Staff Writer
This decade has been the renaissance of superhero films, and no type of superhero film has been bigger than the group ensemble. Marvel’s Avengers destroyed the box office, and DC is finally taking its turn with their characters.
The first trailer for the much anticipated Justice League film has been released, and DC fans are hoping the film can both live up to the hype surrounding it and reach the success that The Avengers did before it.
So, what is the Justice League? In the most basic sense, it’s a group of DC Universe superheroes banding together to fight the world’s forces of evil.
A range of different characters have been in it, but the movie will showcase the main ones: Wonder Woman, Batman, Cyborg, Aquaman, and The Flash.
There are two notable absences from the trailer: The Green Lantern, who likely isn’t making an appearance due to the flop of his standalone movie, and Superman, who’s dead in the current movie timeline.
The Green Lantern isn’t expected to appear at any point, but there is a lot of speculation that we haven’t seen the last of Henry Cavill as Superman, and that he’ll come back in the film.
The new trailer shows every superhero doing what they do best, including the first big-screen appearance of the under-appreciated Aquaman.
Ezra Miller gets his debut as The Flash, a new rendition of the superhero apart from the CW’s series. Cyborg is also new to the cinematic universe, the first African American DC superhero to hit the movies since Steel.
Not a lot has been released about the film’s plot, but we do know the evil the Justice League is battling.
A villain named Steppenwolf is on a mission to retrieve three “Mother Boxes,” which are super-powerful, physics-warping artifacts. In the trailer, we see the enemy’s army of humanoid winged minions, known in the comics as “Parademons.”
The action in the trailer looks fun and visually impressive, promising fights on a scale as large as comic book movies have ever given us.
The atmosphere of the movie seems to contain the mix of dark themes and light comedy that DC has grown accustomed to, a trend that has both tripped up and enhanced their movies in the past.
One piece of information about the movie has gotten some fans excited, but lots worried: Justice League is said to clock in at 170 minutes, nearly three hours.
It’s true that ensemble movies require a lot of plot and backstory, but Marvel made The Avengers great with a shorter runtime. Some fear the long runtime will either lead the film to be too boring or too complicated.
Zack Snyder’s previous film, Batman v. Superman, also came with a long runtime and was heavily criticized for it (and many more things, for that matter).
However, people were generally satisfied with Ben Affleck’s performance as Batman, and a good story could easily turn into a great film with the actors and direction at hand.
We won’t know the true quality of the movie until November, and that’s a long while away.
Until then, the hype will grow bigger, and more info will be discovered about the Justice League.