Justice League Dark

The beginning before credits is simply great, quite frigthening and well done (I did not like the portrayal of Wonder Woman and even more of Superman, but it is a minor issue). However, after that, all the occultist stuff is too rushed and underdevelopped... Animation is well done, but there lies the feeling that the opportunity to make an unforgettable animated movie has been waisted.

You have probably wandered into this review expecting some kind words about a "good effort" from Warner Animation but, of course, compared to the concurrent zillion-dollar Dr. Strange epic from Marvel, "no cigar." Well, you would be wrong.

For two reasons.

First, in spite of the big budget, and the big Benedict, Dr. Strange suffers from all kinds of narrative problems, and gaps in continuity. Mainly, I think, the result of trying to cram too much into a film -- trying to give a typical Marvel backstory while at the same time trying to present an exciting self-contained thriller.

(Dr. Strange also suffers from following too closely the original arcs of the original comics. And, before you start pounding on the NOT USEFUL key, you should know that this reviewer not only read all the originals in the series but actually SUBSCRIBED to Dr. Strange back in the day, which meant that the nice Marvel people actually mailed me each issue as it came out. In an envelope. The original story arcs were far from Marvel's best, compared to its better-known heroes, featuring the same two villains over and over, Nightmare and Dormammu, each taking turns boring the reader to death.)

Which brings us to this ambitious JLA entry, an attempt to show that the mighty DC library can possibly take on the mighty Marvel library, sort of a David Goliath thing....? Frankly, they nail it.

Part of the fun is the script. Man, is it tight. One of the best I have ever encountered in a "superhero" animation. Early in the story, a hot babe who is actually the essence of Constantine's magic house does a 30 second analysis of Batman and concludes he is mainly pain and darkness.

"How do you manage?," she asks sincerely.

"I HAVE A BUTLER" Batman responds deadpan.

That is one of the best lines of dialog I have ever encountered from DC. You could even hear the guys over at Pixar getting nervous. And, even better, the quality of the writing holds up for the entire film. Wow.

To sum up, the high score is because DC/Warner attempted the impossible, taking on a Marvel live action film with their own animated product at a fraction of the cost, and more or less pulled it off. And because the boyz at DC/Warner understood that sometimes less is more, and wisely kept the other (over-exposed) members of the JLA in the background. And, most of all, because this is an entertaining and engaging film.

I put up this disclaimer before reviewing anything related to comic books and that is, I am not a very avid comic book reader because of it's unavailability here. I keep myself at pace via websites and I am certainly up to date regarding the DC animated movies. Believe it or not, but I've watched all of them.

SCREENPLAY - The story and the dialogues are very 50/50 but thank you DC, for making it R-rated. The banter is pretty good. Especially Deadman and Batman. They have the best punch-lines and Batman's "hmmm" always cracked me up. Without going too much into detail, a part of the movie felt a tad bit like Kingsman. If it's a reference to the comics, which the readers can point out, then it's cool but to me, it felt a bit clichéd. The expository stuff was surprisingly kept at a minimum. There was some of it of course but, I've seen in the other animated movies where everything just comes to a halt and some character is just hurling exposition. The callbacks between Zatana and Constantine sometimes felt over-used. I have watched the T.V. Show of Constantine, so I know what happened in Newcastle but they were ranting about things that happened all over the world. I mean, maybe it's entertaining for the comic-book readers but from a writer's point of view, using the same trope too many times reduces it's effect.

ART-DIRECTION - Let me get rid of the gripes I had about the animation. First of all at around 17 minutes into the movie, Deadman is opaque and transparent even when he hasn't been made visible by Constantine. Second, sometimes the expressions of the characters didn't change with the dialogue. I know it is nitpicking but you'll begin to notice after some time. If that would happen to a live actor, I would call it a wooden performance. Now, the pros. The action sequences were amazing. Especially the second last fight. That really got me pumped up. Earlier there used to be a lot of cut- away's during a fight sequence. The difference here was that each individual fight was done for a longer time before interjecting it with a scene. That increased the intensity of the fights by a notch.

VOICE-ACTING - There were a lot of known actors and actresses doing the voices like, Rosario Dawson as Wonder Woman, Alfred Molina as Destiny and of course Matt Ryan as Constantine. It's so sad that his show got cancelled. It was the only DC character I was invested in, especially due to his performance. Nicholas Torturro was amazing as Boston Brand. I know people will be hypothetically punching me for saying this, but he felt like the Deadpool of the lot. All the others were great as well, no complaints in the voice-acting department.

FINAL VERDICT - At one point I was thinking that what is Batman doing in the middle of all this magic and hocus-pocus. Just then all these magical elements started to deconstruct his character and I was like,"Oh! That's why he is there". It is quite rightfully rated R because there is a lot of violence, but personally, I wanted a little bit more. Maybe I am sadistic but if you agree then give me some assurance that I am not as sadistic as I think I am. Do give this one a watch. I am sure DC fans will, but if you're a fan of animated movies, I am sure this one won't disappoint.

Only writing this because there's no other reviews listed at the moment. A basic summary - We're introduced to the backstories of each character as the generic story/villain plays out in the background until we get a more focused conclusion at the end, with a few connections to protagonists like the etrogan/sorcerer(villain, ritchie,), tho that felt a little thrown in as fan service, it worked. I know ritchie is a old school character from the hellblazer series. So its a great animation to watch it you're interested in learning more about dc characters you were unaware of or didn't know well before. And for avid comic fans i'm sure seeing less appreciated characters on screen, and not done poorly, would be a satisfying thing to watch. Tho i don't know the characters in depth so perhaps they were done poorly to the astute comic fan. But for me, it seemed more fleshed out that other DC films in there treatment of backstory and context for each character. Except batman.. Who was thrown into this film for the sake of it and almost takes this rating down to a 7 for that sake... But his role ended up working. So i can forgive that DC cash grab/afraid will fail without batman approach.

Ultimately, this is the next big DC film to come out since the Klling joke.. Both of which i had high hopes for. And for me, This is the better film of the two by a bit. Perhaps because i expected the killing joke to be really brilliant and it was a mix of batgirl and pretty good. This film fit my expectations allot more. So i expect allot less people to be let down by it, especially DC comic fans.

7.5/10

This movie is an interesting take on the JLD run. I do not agree with everything it does, but I do believe it holds it's own. One complaint people new to the magics of the DCU may have is that Zatana and Constantine seem to have limitless power. Trust me there are lomits, it's just this is a short animated piece, that really doesn't have time to go into that.

If you can overlook that, then this movie will entertain you, but it will fall short if they never do anything with JLD again. Over all the animation is toght, the plot is dense with out seeming to rushed, and they got personalities right.