Justice League: War

“Who the hell is Bruce Wayne?”

     So like the comic book universe DC has decided to re-vamp their direct-to-video animation division as well.  Why they would do that, I have no idea, as far as superhero animated films go, their catalog is far superior to Marvel. From “Justice League: New Frontier” to “All Star Superman” to the epically awesome “The Dark Knight Returns” DC has proven that their kung-fu is the best.  The first of this new “shared” universe of films “Justice League: War” is much like its comic counterpart where the heroes don’t know each other but are forced to work together to save the world.  It looks okay, has some interesting moments, but a weak storyline and even lesser attention paid to the iconic characters, this film stumbles a bit out of the gate.

 It begins with a mysterious group of aliens that are taking random citizens from Metropolis, and Gotham and Batman (Jason O’Mara) is on the trail.  Followed closely behind is Green Lantern (Justin Kirk) who upon their first meeting don’t really get along.  Such is the same as when they encounter Superman (Alan Tudyk) who is about as much a jerk to Lantern and Batman as they are to him.  When they discover that the aliens have “take-over” on their mind in order to pave the way for their ruler, the evil Darkseid.  It doesn’t take long for the rest of the heroes to get in on the alien smashing act, Wonder Woman (Michelle Monaghan) who is working closely with the government, The Flash (Christopher Gorham) a cop, Shazam (Sean Astin) the boy turned super-god, and Cyborg (Shemar Moore) a star athlete in the wrong lab at the wrong time.

The animation is okay, the voice-work is hit and miss, but as I said the plot is not one of the better ones, even when it was on the page it didn’t work too well.  The biggest change from the original storyline by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee was dropping the red-headed stepchild of the Justice League: Aquaman, and replacing him with Shazam.  Which would have been alright if they had decided to go with his origin instead of Cyborg, personally I would have rather seen what happens when a boy is given the power of Superman and has to deal with if he really wants to be a hero or not than the footballer with daddy issues.

Plus I know they usually go the PG-13 route mainly because of the violence, but does every character have to say something like “Damn”, “What the hell?”, “Pissed-off”, and the schoolyard sin “Shit”?  They don’t need to go full-on adult to entertain, I would most likely let my kids continue to watch the classic Saturday morning “Super Friends” than this version of the JLA, but worst of all what made me a little sad to see was that a good portion of the action beats near the end mimicked the ending of the film version of “The Avengers”.

The action is fun to watch, Superman and Batman are entertaining, but it does feel disjointed with Green Lantern doing his best Ryan Reynolds impression, and the Flash’s humor taking a backseat to Lantern’s.  There is good in the “Justice League: War” some of the dialogue is decent but then they were taken directly from the comic book.  But in the end it mostly comes across as a pale version of what is possible from this superhero team and more importantly from these proven filmmakers.

--Robert L. Castillo