Greetings,
It seems that people have an idea about cartoon shows, and they tend to put them at one extreme or the other. We have the ones that are strictly meant for children that can be left on to entertain them as their parents do other things, and then, we have the ones for the adults, where the children have no business watching them at all. Yet, somehow, I think they might be catching a few episodes. But what about the ones that fall somewhere in between? The cartoons that the kids can watch, but that also are interesting for adults. Specifically, I speak of the Justice League series.
The Justice League cartoon series began in 2001 and eventually morphed into Justice League Unlimited, which featured many more characters. This series was extremely well done. The production was great, the writing and the stories were fantastic, but what I loved most of all were the voice actors. So when I heard that they were making another of these animated films featuring most of the cast from the series, I was ecstatic.
In the 2012 film Justice League: Doom, we get back these fabulous actors and their characters: Kevin Conroy as Batman, Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman, Carl Lumbly as Martian Manhunter, and of course, my personal favorite, Michael Rosenbaum as The Flash. Rounding out the League and in addition to those series regulars, Superman is voiced by Tim Daly, who also portrayed him in Superman: The Animated Series, and Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern. Good times. Besides those, we also get a ton of other great actors lending their voices, like Olivia D'Abo, Alexis Denisof, Juliet Landau and many others. So good cast. Does that mean good movie? Let's see.
The plot of Doom is that a guy named Vandal Savage has an idea for a brand new fabulous civilization. Unfortunately, a massive portion of humanity must be done away with. Yeah, if this sounds familiar to you all who are well versed in the comic book stories, it should, since it is basically a story line that was done with Ra's al Ghul as the villain. I knew that, and I don't even read the comic books. I guess since Ra's was in Batman Begins, they didn't want to repeat an appearance.
Anyway, thanks to the Justice League, Vandal cannot accomplish this. Darn. So he has someone hack into Batman's computer system, using something he got from, where else, LexCorp. Why is this a problem? Well, as it happens, Batman was wise enough to devise contingency plans for each of the League members should any of them ever go rogue. It's a good idea, so long as none of this falls into the wrong hands. But, alas, it falls into the wrong hands. This leads to the main focus of the plot, wherein we follow each League member being attacked by these plans by way of other villains. And all the plans have been altered to not only be incapacitating, but lethal. It is done in a very clever way, and each member gets a chance to be shown, which is for what the fans would hope.
But what it comes down to really is that this is story about the cracks within the Justice League and whether or not they can trust each other. Particularly, they question Batman's loyalty, since he was the one who had the plans in the first place. So, through all this, we get to see some great character interactions, exactly what I wanted because that is another thing I always liked from the series. They carry it over well into this movie, like nothing had ever changed. And if anything did change, it was for the better.
So I suppose I would recommend this mostly to fans of the Justice League show, though I bet some of those fans might also find problems with this, such as the omission of Hawkgirl. I do kind of wish she was there, too. Everyone has an opinion. But I think this has a good story and takes us back to the time of the show. And, like I said, it was great to hear that cast together again. So, should these rumors of a Justice League live action film ever become a reality, I certainly hope they take a lesson from this, because if that possible future film is as good as this, I'll be pleased.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
