Some critics get out the knives for Justice League

Justice League movie logo

Some critics have gotten out the knives for Justice League, the Warner Bros./DC Comics movie debuting this week.

Rotten Tomatoes is waiting a bit to unveil its “fresh” rating for Justice League. So it’s hard to tell how representative these non-spoiler excerpts are.

Still, it’s clear some critics are feeling no restraint. (One headline: “‘Justice League’ Is a Big, Ugly Mess.”)

RICHARD LAWSON, VANITY FAIR: “The film is, plainly stated, terrible, and I’m sorry that everyone wasted their time and money making it—and that people are being asked to waste their time and money seeing it. I hate to be so blunt, but it simply must be said this time.”

ALONSO DURALDE, THE WRAP: “(I)f you like your superhero battles in deep dark tunnels or under skies purple with alien soot, director Zack Snyder is back with yet another installment that looks the way Axe body spray smells.”

CHRIS NASHAWATY, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: “Some day, hopefully soon, DC will get the recipe right again and duplicate Wonder Woman’s storytelling magic. But today isn’t that day, and Justice League unfortunately isn’t that film. C+”

MATT GOLDBERG: COLLIDER: “In place of disaster, Justice League is a largely bland, forgettable affair that has nice moments scattered throughout and the promise of a better tomorrow, but outside of Wonder Woman, that’s all the DCEU ever really offers: the promise that the next movie will be better. And sure, Justice League is better than Batman v Superman, but that doesn’t make it good.”

GEOFFREY MACNAB, THE INDEPENDENT: “This is surely the most infantile of recent superhero yarns – a film that squanders the talents of an impressive ensemble cast and eschews any meaningful characterisation in favour of ever more overblown special effects.”

To be fair, some critics have liked the movie. Here’s a sampling. Some of these are mixed (or have caveats), but here are complimentary excerpts:

MARK HUGHES, FORBES.COM: Justice League “retains enough of the DNA of the previous (DC-based) films to be recognizable as their successor, while carving out a new space closer to the tone and style of action-adventure superheroism found in Wonder Woman. And it offers average movie-goers the sort of chest-swelling sense of heroism and pure joyful entertainment they love and reward with their hard-earned dollars at the box office.”

OWEN GLEIBERMAN, VARIETY: “The film is the definition of an adequate high-spirited studio lark: no more, no less. If fans get excited about it, that may mostly be because they’re excited about getting excited. Yet the movie is no cheat. It’s a tasty franchise delivery system that kicks a certain series back into gear.”

TASHA ROBINSON, THE VERGE: “And taken as a whole, Justice League is often thrilling and rousing, with few of the outright infuriating twists that have made past DCEU movies so frustrating…For once, the heroes have a relatively black-and-white battle ahead of them, without existential questions about whether humanity deserves saving, or whether they deserve to save humanity. And that lets the characters cut loose in a triumphant barrage of over-the-top carnage that shows them each to their best heroic potential.”