About that Justice League trailer

In my previous post, I called the trailer for the upcoming Justice League movie "lackluster". Tim Knight from HeroPress left a comment that summed up my thoughts fairly well.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Post-Wonder Woman's box office success the trailers and marketing have re-positioned her front and centre, but it can't make up for the fact - even with the increased humour (in the trailers, at least) - this looks like a retread of BvS with a faceless mass of CGI 'parademons' for our heroes to smash. I strongly suspect this will tank critically and its strong opening weekend will drop off dramatically once word-of-mouth gets around!

Exactly. The reason why I think the trailer is lackluster is because it's little more than a confusing mass of random scenes strung together with little to no coherence. You get no real information about the movie's plot and you don't even see Steppenwolf, the antagonist. Somebody put this trailer together and decided that including a shot or two of the antagonist was a "bad" idea. Wow.

Just to drive my point home, here's the trailers for Justice League and another movie that's coming out next month, too - Thor: Ragnarok.





The difference is startling. With Thor, we know who all of the major characters are, including the antagonist, Hela. We have know what the plot is and a very nice sampling of what's going to happen in the movie, with some nice smashy bits added for flavor.

What makes it even worse is that this isn't a movie that's coming out six months down the line. Justice League hits theaters next month. And this is the best that Warner Bros.'s marketing department has to offer to convince people to fork over like eight or nine or how many dollars to watch this movie? Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I have to agree with Tim's prediction on Justice League's box office earnings. It'll debut near or at the top of the box office, then slip down once the reviews start coming in. Some people might deride websites like Rotten Tomatoes and movie critics in general for "hating" on DC's movies, but there's going to be a lot more who will heed their words and buy a ticket for something else.

And maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe what DC and WB need to motivate them towards fixing their malfunctioning cinematic universe is for Justice League to bomb. They're already making changes to "fix" the problems, but its all for nought unless they're willing to break the DCEU down and start fixing from the inside out.