<br />Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, has the most pungent line in “Justice League,” a wilted superhero salad from the DC Cinematic Universe. “What are your superpowers again?” the Flash asks him. “I’m rich,” Bruce replies. Vast riches have been heaped on this production, to benumbing effect. The battles to save the world are generic/titanic; the villain is a bloodless bore with a boom-box roar; and the screen, like the ragged story, is chockablock with such underdeveloped overachievers as Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash. Of all the members of the newly constituted League, only the Flash, played by Ezra Miller as a quirkily neurotic post-adolescent, makes it past regret and recapitulation—Superman is dead and humanity is on the skids—to a sense of occasional fun. That’s because he’s fast, and other people, as he notes, are slow. “I’ve never done battle,” the Flash says in a moment of full disclosure. “I’ve just pushed people and run away.”<br /><br />It’s no secret that “Justice League” did battle with itself on the way to the multiplexes. In the wake of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad,” two DC productions that pulled off the singular trick of being both dislikable and profitable, “Justice League” was perceived to be dangerously dark and in urgent need of brightening. This process was undertaken not with dental strips but with rewrites, reshoots and changes of personnel; Zack Snyder directed from a screenplay credited to Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon.<br /><br />The result is an uneasy admixture of convincing depression and ersatz elation. “The good guys lost,” the Leonard Cohen lyric informs us during an early section that mourns the loss of Superman, whose apparent death took place in the climax of “Batman v Superman.”<br /><br />Black crepe with Superman’s emblem hangs from Notre Dame Cathedral and the Tower Bridge. Ben Affleck’s Batman smells fear wherever he goes. Cops can’t cope with a crime wave, smiles seem to have been banished, heroics seem to have been canceled, and the vile Steppenwolf ( Ciarán Hinds, CGI’d beyond recognition) intends to put an end to civilization. That’s when Batman and his sometime friend Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, once again) start recruiting supertroops for the Justice League: Jason Momoa is Arthur Curry/Aquaman, Ray Fisher plays Victor Stone/Cyborg. Soon hope suffuses the script. “These heroes were here all the time,” reflects Lois Lane ( Amy Adams ), “to remind us that hope is real.” (To assure us from the get-go that hope is on the movie’s agenda, a preface shows Henry Cavill’s Superman, in a clip shot by a kid with an iPhone, saying “Hope is like your car keys—easy to lose, but probably nearby.”)<br />“Justice League” is a crowd-pleaser only if you’re part of a comics-obsessed crowd. Yet there’s a fascinating aspect of this film that amounts to a tutorial in acting and directing. It’s the contrast between Gal Gadot’s performance here and in last summer’s “Wonder Woman” (which is already available on Blu-ray and DVD for your delight and enlightenment). How can it be that the same gifted and graceful performer was so wonderful, to coin a word, in the earlier film, and so bland in this one, except as a physical force? And how, by extension, did that earlier film transcend the limits that keep this one grindingly groundbound?<br /><br />Two easy answers: These DC films are by nature dark, and Wonder Woman, who previously had a whole movie to herself, is only one of many characters in this one. Still, every one of Ms. Gadot’s scenes in “Wonder Woman”—literally every one—was enriched by nuance and surprise, while most of the life has gone out of her performance in “Justice League.” (She retains her charm in close-ups that allow for warmth, or when she turns to the camera and says wryly, of her fellow Justice Leaguers, “Children—I work with children.”)<br /><br />The deeper answer is that in “Wonder Woman” she was working with a director, Patty Jenkins, and a writer, Allan Heinberg, who were open, and hospitable, to the notion of buoyancy—to the grace notes, contradictions and firefly flashes of feeling that create a compelling character, a vibrant scene. Movies like “Justice League” are in the business of marketing moods—in this case bleakness and fear, followed by fake hope. Directors—and producers—who make movies like “Justice League” use their actors to do one thing at a time, sell one emotion per close-up, lest too much humanity confuse the plot. The wonder is they’ve gotten away with it for so long.<br /><br /><br />Source: the wall street journal, film reivew<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
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첫댓글Q1. Warm-up. Have you ever seen any movies of DC Comics like ‘Justice league’, ‘Suicide Squad’, ‘The Dark Knight’ and other movies. If you have, talk about the most impressive movie and explain how were you feeling or what could you learn from it.
Q.2 Warm-up. Do you like reading comic books or watching the movies. And do you have any comic books or cartoons which you liked in your young days? What is the cartoon and why did you like that?
Q3. MARVLE and DC COMICS are very famous publishing companies and they have competed each other on their field. Which company is better? And why do you think like that?
Q4. There are many heroes in MARVLE’s and DC COMICS’s books. Who do you think the strongest hero? Furthermore, there has been a lot of talks in the comics universe about which hero is stronger: Superman VS Batman. Who do you want to pick? And Why?
Q5. MARVLE and DC COMICS have earned huge money from their movies and many people love their movies. It is profitable and valuable culture products. Why the film studios in Korea can't make movies like these? What should we do to make those kind of movies?
첫댓글 Q1. Warm-up. Have you ever seen any movies of DC Comics like ‘Justice league’, ‘Suicide Squad’, ‘The Dark Knight’ and other movies. If you have, talk about the most impressive movie and explain how were you feeling or what could you learn from it.
Q.2 Warm-up. Do you like reading comic books or watching the movies. And do you have any comic books or cartoons which you liked in your young days? What is the cartoon and why did you like that?
Q3. MARVLE and DC COMICS are very famous publishing companies and they have competed each other on their field. Which company is better? And why do you think like that?
Q4. There are many heroes in MARVLE’s and DC COMICS’s books. Who do you think the strongest hero? Furthermore, there has been a lot of talks in the comics universe about which hero is stronger: Superman VS Batman. Who do you want to pick? And Why?
Q5. MARVLE and DC COMICS have earned huge money from their movies and many people love their movies. It is profitable and valuable culture products. Why the film studios in Korea can't make movies like these? What should we do to make those kind of movies?