In an Avengers flick, when Iron Man cracks a witty one-liner joke, it feels natural because his onscreen character, since ‘08, has always been a wisecracking smartass. When a Batman who we were introduced to in a fairly dark, grim ‘VS’ flick, who is sullen and grumpy and rage driven and who KILLS PEOPLE, does it, I still laugh at the quip, but also I’m weirded the heck out.

This surreal, artificial lightness is at the heart of what makes “Justice League” so indescribably awkward. From a marketing perspective, it’s easy to see that DC is very late to the party when it comes to making a hero ensemble movie. Knowing that DC would essentially have to play catch-up to Marvel in a game Marvel had invented, I had hoped, with the darker, more serious tone of Snyder’s lead-up films, that having a cinematic launchpad so distinct from what marvel had already done would’ve yielded an ensemble movie just as distinct.

Sadly, what we got was a passable, yet stale and uninspired Marvel retread, with a main villain whose tremendous amount of imposing build-up resulted in a comical nobody incapable of carrying a movie, or posing enough of a real threat for the heroes to even take him seriously. Marvel villains for the longest time have been notoriously flat and unimaginative characters, and yet Steppenwolf manages to disappoint even those standards.

If a lacklustre villain, a poorly airbrushed Superman, and a Stand-up Comedy Batman don’t leave enough of a bad taste in your mouth:

The Flash unironically runs like an idiot. It’s bizarre.