Justice League: War – The Animated New 52
Starting with 2013’s Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, the DC Animated Universe began a new continuity to keep similar to DC Comic’s New 52 reboot. While the DCAU’s continuity isn’t as tightly tied together as the comics they are based on, the animated features are revisiting some important moments. Justice League: War tells the story of one of the most important moments – the creation of the Justice League. JL:W was released digitally this week (it will be released on DVD/BluRay on February 4th) and I jumped to watch it, having been eagerly awaiting this flick for quite some time now.
“AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!”
“Damn it, Hal, that’s the wrong movie again!”
The plot focuses on an invasion of planet Earth by Darkseid and his parademon army. Spread across the country, superheroes, which are fairly new to the world, begin meeting up to fight the threat. Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Batman, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and Cyborg all end up working together to find a way to beat Darkseid and save the world. There’s also a subplot that serves as the origin story for Cyborg, which I enjoyed because it fit neatly into the storyline.
The pacing on Justice League: War is a little weird, especially in comparison to The Flashpoint Paradox, which was quite well paced and plotted. There’s way too much time spent on just fighting parademons, and while the animation is pretty good for action sequences, with no forward plot momentum except the occasional new superhero showing up, the story really suffers. I would have way more preferred more characterization and character interaction time and somewhat less FIGHT ALL THE PARADEMONS; there’s some great set up with Victor Stone and Billy Batson in the beginning that could have been fleshed out more, and there’s a really adorable bit with Wonder Woman discovering ice cream that was an excellent example of the kind of characterization they could have shown.
Justice League: War really is a decent, even good movie, but with some seriously cringe-worthy moments. There are pieces of dialog that blow my mind and not in the good way, more in the way where I’m amazed somebody thought this would be a good idea to put in a script. When Captain Marvel (a.k.a. Shazam, a.k.a. 12 year old Billy Batson) excitedly tells Cyborg “You’re the bomb!” I just about wanted to get in my time machine, travel back 12 years and stop that saying from ever being something that adults would think is something young people still sincerely say in the year 2014. It’s not. In fact, I’m pretty we never said it sincerely.
The sound from the depths of my heart every time he was on screen: YAAAAAY
The DCAU usually has excellent voice acting and JL:W is no exception. While like any 20-something who grew up with Bruce Timm’s DCAU, the only Batman that really sounds like Batman to me is of course Kevin Conroy, but new Batman Jason O’Mara does a decent job. O’Mara doesn’t try to go ultra Christian Bale gravely, which is an improvement over other recent VAs. Alan Tudyk brings a pretty good Superman, who is a little bit of a jerk in JL:W (he’s new to the planet and to this idea of other superheroes and it shows pretty hilariously) and Sean Astin makes a suitably adorable Captain Marvel. Really of the main cast my only issue lies with Michelle Monaghan as Wonder Woman – her voice is great and really suited to the part, but it really sounds like she’s trying too hard to be this great Amazon war leader. I can’t decide if this is bad acting or if it’s subtly trying to demonstrate Diana overdoing it to prove herself in the world of men after leaving Paradise Island. While I hope it’s the latter, I strongly suspect it’s the former.
The animation in Justice League: War is pretty fantastic for any and all action sequences. However there’s definitely some effort lacking during the ‘in-betweening’ frames – characters’ faces will occasionally flip the hell out while in motion, which is SUPER disconcerting when you’re trying to focus on what really are some appealing character designs. As iconic and nostalgic as Timm’s DCAU style was, I don’t mind the more realistic proportions and detailed faces in this New 52-style DCAU. A few fans have pointed out that art assets are being reused – such as a living room background that showed up in The Flashpoint Paradox, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse and now Justice League: War. These movies look great but DC and Warner Brothers really need to be aware that if they’re going to market this stuff for an older audience (and they definitely are, judging by the amount of swearing – somebody actually says “whore!” in this DCAU film!) then they need to realize we’re going to be a lot more observant of corner cutting.
His face is as big as at least two Supermans! I don’t understand!
Nitpicking aside, I really did enjoy Justice League: War. It’s a good direct-to-digital/DVD flick with generally good portrayals of some great DC heroes. I definitely recommend it and it’s made me pretty excited for what’s next in this new DCAU.
Now would someone please explain to me why Darkseid is like 15 feet tall in this movie?
