dramafreak42

When I watched this the first time, I was knocked on my ass. Upon re-watch the next day I was completely blown away. The groundwork laid in the first 45 minutes for where she goes at the end is monumental, and takes on almost entirely new meaning once you've it through and understand why she tells the jokes she does at the front end.

This special is funny, but it is also genuinely important. And for many viewers, it may make you uncomfortable. It should. It made me uncomfortable. But the things it made me uncomfortable about are things that I SHOULD feel uncomfortable about. This is not a niche special that should be preached to the choir. This is an astoundingly well constructed and built up story that needs to be heard. By everybody. Everybody.

Let me be clear before I get into my problems with this: when it's actually telling the story of The Little Prince, this film is almost flawless. The stop motion animation is beautiful and simple, wonderfully evocative of the original illustrations. It's presented plainly and allows the moments to stand and simply display their power. However this is probably about 15% of the movie, and the rest of it is so pleased with itself it made me sick.

I don't inherently have a problem with alternations or even adding material to an original work. However what they've done here with the framing story is purely masturbatory in nature. The novella "The Little Prince" is a poetic and metaphorical tale about love, life, death, and even faith and belief. The movie "The Little Prince" is about how brilliant the story of the Little Prince is. I'm not even being a jerk about it, that is literally the plot of the film.

A young girl living an overly regimented life in a caricature world that feels like a child friendly version of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, encounters an eccentric old man who tells her the story of the Little Prince. And then it's about how that story affected her and changed her life. This movie is so insanely proud of itself that after it had burned through all the actual plot of the novella, probably less than an hour in, the remaining 40 minutes just drained away any goodwill the thing had from me with every passing second.

The only thing that keeps this from being as appalling an adaptation as say the animated Lorax film, is that at least the makers of this one seem to actually understand the message of the original work. However they're so delighted with themselves for understanding it that they won't stop banging on about it, literalizing every metaphor from the original work in a bizarre attempt to show how well they get it. And they do get it, but the prolonged pat on the back the film gives itself made it insufferable for me.

To say that I've become disenfranchised by the DC Animated films would be a bit of an understatement. Ever since Justice League: War, they've just been a mess. There was the one bright spot of Assault on Arkham but otherwise they've just been dull action movies that don't do the characters justice. Thank goodness WB brought back Bruce Timm, who was one of the primary creative forces behind the Batman and Justice League animated series that kicked off DC animated projects being good in the first place. The result is the best DC animated film since New Frontier.

Gods and Monsters can be said to be the first true Elseworlds story that's been done in animation. Sure there's been some parallel world stuff (Crisis on Two Earths) and plenty of out of continuity stand alones (like the aforementioned New Frontier) but they've still kept the characters pretty close to the standard versions we all know. None have really tried to craft a completely new vision of what these characters are, and that's what this story does. It makes the wise choice of having different characters taking on the mantles of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman rather than actually trying to muck about with Clark, Bruce or Diana. Instead Superman is the son of Zod, Batman is Kirk Langstrom (better known as the Man-Bat in the main DC universe) and Wonder Woman is one of the New Gods (such as High Father and Darkseid.) Their backstories are explored just enough to give a good picture of these versions without ever bogging down the narrative itself.

Like any good Elseworlds story, this is an "all bets are off" take where any prior knowledge of the main DC universe can add some weight when characters like Victor Fries or Dr. Sivanna get name dropped, but nobody is exactly the same as their standard representation. All of the voice work is solid, and each of the primary characters (and even some of the secondary ones) are given the chance to stretch a little and show some dimension.

The action is also a huge step up from what we've gotten lately. Most of the DCAU films based on the New 52 continuity have had well done yet rather mundane action sequences. The problem is that those films are trying for a more realistic version of fights, which isn't what animation is good for. Animation is good for over the top stuff that couldn't be replicated by just two actors and a fight choreographer, and that over the top stuff is what we get here.

I don't think I can recommend this highly enough for anybody who has found the recent output of DC animated films to be sorely lacking. This is a return to form, it's a top notch story, it's a fun and engrossing new take on characters and it's the kind of thing I hope we see more of in the future.