Justice League’s top 7 hilarious and heartfelt moments

LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 04: Actors Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck, Ray Fisher and Henry Cavill attend the ‘Justice League’ photocall at The College on November 4, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images)

Justice League may not be a cinematic masterpiece, but it isn’t trying to be. Instead, it just has a heck of a lot of fun.

Warning: Mega spoilers for Justice League below.

Here’s the deal: against all my wildest expectations, I actually enjoyed Justice League.

This was one of the funniest DC movies I’ve seen — which, given their pretty serious emotional palette, isn’t exactly saying much. But I’m not here to take potshots. The DCEU has had its fair share of cinematic duds, and no matter how justifiably people’s expectations are lowered, many viewers walked into Justice League with their minds already made up that it was going to be a wreck. Admittedly, I was one of them.

And listen: it’s not an incorrect assumption. Justice League is a bit of a hot mess. The villain is remarkable only for the fact that he shares a name with the Canadian rock band, the fight scenes are generally eye-gouging, and the dialogue has moments where it’s so painfully stilted you have to wonder whether the writers are from planet Earth themselves.

But at the heart of what could have been another mediocre superhero movie is a team dynamic I couldn’t help but love. Rather than being a humorless slog, Justice League had a ton of genuinely funny moments (and plenty of unintentionally funny ones too). Its message about everyone overcoming the difficulties of current world-events might have been pretty ham-handed, but that kind of blunt-force-trauma optimism was almost welcome in a movie that embraced its corniness rather than trying to overcome it.

As I sat in my comfy theater seat and marveled at the fact that I was actually enjoying the movie, I realized something. Justice League felt more self-aware than any of the DCEU movies to precede it. It felt as if it knew that it would be premiering in theaters full of smug jerks like me, self-assured in the film’s failure before they’d even seen the opening scene.

(Though to be fair, the opening scene was laughably bad. Found footage of Superman forcing a pained smile while trying to be cute with children? So awkward.)

And so it seemed DC stopped trying to prove people like me wrong. Or at least, stopped trying to prove that they could craft an ensemble superhero movie to rival the Avengers in tomato-y freshness. It didn’t really try to be groundbreaking. Instead, it just had fun. It didn’t take itself too seriously. And ultimately the result was a cast of characters almost endearing in their occasional weirdness, and a movie which made me laugh out loud at multiple points that were actually meant to be funny.

So let’s dive into all the best parts of the DCEU’s latest installment, in all its unexpected glory.