Zack Snyder's Justice League Review - Part One: Don't Count On it Batman

This Part is a series of introductions to our beloved heroes. We catch up with Bruce Wayne, Diana Prince, Alfred Pennyworth the Butler, Lois Lane, Martha Kent, and Queen Hippolyta and the Amazons. We are also introduced to new characters too. We meet Aquaman and Steppenwolf, who become a big part of this movie as it goes on.

We start with Bruce Wayne as he goes to a remote village to track down a metahuman known as the Aquaman. He finds him and tries to recruit him to join him to fight a war that is coming from far away. Aquaman, aka Arthur Curry, declines to join this alliance and he doesn’t want to involved in the fight. In an attempt to convince to join him, Bruce Wayne reveals to Arthur that he is Batman from Gotham, to which Arthur makes fun of him for dressing up as a bat to fight. Arthur reiterates that he is his own man and only wants to be left alone. Arthur then disappears into the ocean.

Here we have one of the weirdest moments in the film - the village women sing a song to Arthur as he swims away, and one of them picks up his sweater that he left behind and smells it longingly. Does Arthur deliver more than just food to the village?

The story then cuts to our favorite mother, Martha Kent as she is visiting Clark and Jonathan Kent’s grave as she has moved out of the Kent home and is leaving Smallville. We later learn she couldn’t keep up on the payments anymore and the Kent Farm is being sold off.

We are then reunited with Alfred as the story goes back to Bruce Wayne as he returns from the village and meets up with his friend and butler and reports back that he found him (Aquaman), but Arthur refused his offer. They get on their jumbo jet to fly back to Gotham and start planning their next move.

We see Lois Lane (and a quick background cameo of Zack Snyder in the coffee shop!) getting coffee as she goes about her morning ritual of visiting the destroyed monument to Superman. It’s a very somber moment and of course it’s raining. Lois Lane hasn’t moved on, but it’s only been about a month since Superman’s death so we don’t really blame her as she is still going through the grieving process.

Diana takes out some terrorists, because that’s what heroes do.

We then get into some action! We cut to a terrorist group staging a bank robbery, but it’s really the group sending a message as their real intent is to blow up the bank and the hostages. Wonder Woman is close by (I’ve wondered if this is a direct follow up from the end of Wonder Woman when we see Diana jumping off of a roof top and flying away to stop a crime to go help people? The beginning and ending of Wonder Woman are bookended in the timeline to be after Dawn of Justice.) and she is able to intervene and stop the bombing and rescue the hostages. In a scene reminiscent of the warehouse fight with Batman and the thugs holding Martha Kent hostage in Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman takes out multiple bad guys and we are reminded of how amazing of a warrior she is (and that hair flip tho).

Back on Themyscira, Queen Hippolyta checks in on the armory holding the Motherbox and the Amazonians guarding it when Steppenwolf shows up with a group of Parademons via a boom tube to take the Motherbox. We see Steppenwolf in his impressive metallic armor for the first time.

The Amazons stand their ground and shout in defiance - We Have No Fear! (gives me chills every time!) The Amazons hold off Steppenwolf and the Parademons as the Queen escapes the armory with the Motherbox. The armory is sealed and the Queen watches as the armory with the Parademons, Steppenwolf, and her fellow Amazons tumble in to the ocean. But Steppenwolf and some Parademons are able to escape and give chase to the Queen and and the Motherbox. After a brutal chase sequence where we see Steppenwolf mow down the Amazonian resistance, Steppenwolf eventually gains possession of the Motherbox and retreats via boom tube before the full might of the Amazon army can arrive and engage him.

Here we see the fighting strength and heroism of the Amazons as they take on Steppenwolf and the Parademons, but yet the strength and brutality of Steppenwolf is too much even for them and they fail. The Queen realizes they need to light the ancient warning fire, as Steppenwolf has gone back to the world of man to find the other two boxes. While men won’t know what the warning fire means, her daughter Diana Prince will know.

We now move on to PART TWO: THE AGE OF HEROES.