This review may contain spoilers for Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

I didn’t expect my weekend to consist of me sitting through an entire four-hour movie of pure action. Well, four hours and two minutes if you count the time I spent watching the credits roll, hoping for a post-credits scene—there wasn’t one. 

Zack Snyder’s Justice League came out a couple of months ago, and it was immediately on my list of movies to watch. I tried to find time to squeeze the movie into my schedule, as I normally wouldn’t have time to watch a movie as long as this. But what better way to spend time with your family than watching a movie together?

The opening scene starts with the Amazons in Themyscira as one of the “Mother Boxes” begins to glow with power. As confused as I was at first, I had to keep watching to figure out just exactly what they were.

From there, the movie was split into six parts along with an epilogue to follow. I thought this was brilliant and well thought out because it had each character’s perspective tell a different story of the same battle. With six different characters—Wonder Woman (Diana Prince played by Gal Gadot), Batman (Bruce Wayne played by Ben Affleck), The Flash (Barry Allen played by Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Arthur Curry played by Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Victor Stone played by Ray Fisher), and Superman (Clark Kent played by Henry Cavill)—the movie follows the team experience of attempting to save the planet—yet again.

For some unknown reason, the movie was rated R. Now, sure, heads being sliced off and warriors getting impaled may not seem like an “E for everyone” experience, but the only mature audience scenes were due to the violence and profanity, which most people have been exposed to in the real world already. 

As scenes played out, I quickly gathered enough information to make predictions on what would happen next or the exact motivation behind the characters actions. 

I appreciated that while it may have been 90% action along with gruesome defeats, there were notes of humor laced in scenes that lightened the mood immensely. For example, Barry Allen’s opening scene of applying for a job to walk dogs soon turned into a funny moment that ended with his power being revealed. 

This was also all too relatable as he was portrayed as a socially awkward kid that still gapes at secret locations the public normally wouldn’t see. For me, his natural personality, despite having unique superpowers, made him one of my favorite characters.

As the movie progresses, the characters strive to gain more power to use against the enemy, Steppenwolf, who wants to destroy the planet and take control—as one does. Bruce Wayne starts gathering his team, the Justice League, to help stop Steppenwolf and his army from getting just what they want. 

Though there was previously a Justice League released in 2017, this one was much more in-depth in terms of the characters’ personal lives and their own stories. 

Each character had their own fair share of hardships that only served to make them stronger. Though it may have been due to my fuzzy memory of the previous single movies about each character, I found myself quite confused throughout the movie; however, most of these confusions were cleared up as the movie progressed. 

I also enjoyed how each character had their own personal song that played as they appeared in the battle scenes. These theme songs matched perfectly to their abilities, such as the ancient Lamentation music as Wonder Woman ran through the room to finish one of the many fights. 

The epilogue of the movie confused me the most as it was an entirely different scene with different energy than what was previously displayed the hours before. In fact, it had completely different characters, like Lex Luthor, and dialogue that didn’t match up with what was going on just three minutes before. I was still puzzled as to how this tied in with the movie but figured it was setting up for the next movie that might come.

I felt that as great as this movie was, Snyder had thrown all his ideas into one movie to make it extended. It was well thought out with references to past movies, but there were parts that could have been better explained or even added to a different movie. I was constantly wondering how much time was left and how many scenes would occur before the finale.

Nonetheless, I loved this movie. As it ended, I was surprised that the hours had passed as quickly as they did. I probably wouldn’t watch it as a spur-of-the-moment film, as I would need time to prepare for the prolonged movie, but I would recommend it if someone was looking to kill time.