Starring Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot. Rated PG

The prospect of major DC comic characters finally uniting in Justice League promised to be super, wondrous, flashy, a little batty, hard to compute, and totally tubular—but there's something to marvel at: haven't we seen these avengers somewhere before?

Ultrarich, gadget-enhanced playboy Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is a less flamboyant Tony Stark. A badass, longhaired muscleman wielding a powerpacked tool is a Loganized Thor named Aquaman (Jason Momoa). Peter Parker plays Quicksilver, otherwise known as The Flash (Ezra Miller). Captain America transitions into Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). A permanently suited Iron Man is Cyborg (Ray Fisher). And then there's the musclebound Vision of Superman (Henry Cavill).

When you're late out of the gate against your competition (on a cinematic level rather than comic-book chronology), it's best to deliver the goods in an innovative way to offset similarities. Unfortunately, ingenuity appears to be in short supply in this serviceable but predictable popcorn-muncher.

With the death of Superman casting a pall over the world, Batman is on a mission to round up superpowered heroes to fight an invasion led by Steppenwolf, the Canadian rock band. Oops, sorry—it's actually some superpowerful godlike being (voiced by Ciarán Hinds), leading an army of humanoid zombie bees, who wants to acquire the power to transform the world by collecting a number of energy-filled boxes scattered across the Earth, and make it his own. Because we've never seen a supervillain who wants to conquer the world before. Good times.

However, a problem on the superhero side of things is the overlap of powers and skill sets. There are three super strong guys and a gal, a super fast guy (whose speedy reflexes both Superman and Wonder Woman duplicate), and a guy with lots of equipment (and so much inflated muscle he looks inflexible). In examples like the X-Men and The Avengers, each character was distinguished by a unique power while in Captain America: Civil War, any duplication of abilities was counterbalanced by dextrous fight choreography that offered surprise moves.

Here, battles boil down to one big punch-up: bad guy pounds good guy, good guy pounds back, and so on. Rawr. 

There's also a surprising amount of technical sloppiness. The initial build-up flips through introductions for each character with all the cohesion of channel surfing. Dialogue between Superman and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) contains some real clunkers—and Cavill, like most guys who overdo it in the gym, doesn't offer much beyond looks. While most of the fight scenes feature invigorating cinematography, some sequences—particularly the underwater battles—lack clarity in editing. Holes in basic narrative logic don't help either.

However, there's no shortage of dazzling eye-candy, from Aquaman in action to holy batshit-crazy tech, Batman. In particular, the lightning-enhanced Flash wins the cool-style race against Quicksilver. What's more, Miller uses his charm to successfully traverse the fine line between the comedic and the irritating with his neurotic geek act. While Gadot, Momoa, and Fisher bring their A-game, their constrained screentime and densely packed storylines (particularly Cyborg, whose abilities are reduced to interfacing with computers) limits their impact.  

Hopefully, forthcoming related films will find ways to harness some of these superabilities to boost this universe ahead of an increasingly crowded game.