Liga da Justiça: A Nova Fronteira

Superman gets his butt kicked.

That's almost good enough for at least five of the six points I gave this one. It seems like they were just ramping up and then they had to rush the ending. They're trying very hard to tell a compelling story but they smashed like six movies into one.

Props for a small appearance of Green Arrow. Check it out if you're a Lantern, Flash, or Martian Manhunter fan. All else can skip this one and watch Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut or The Dark Knight. Good for a kids cartoon, though. Splices of John Kennedy giving Barry Allen a medal was a pretty awesome touch, too.

This reimagining of the Justice League sees the eponymous superheroes inserted into a cold-war ready 1950s America and puts much more emphasis on its lesser known members, to the point that the 'big three' are actually pretty sidelined. 'Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)' spends a lot of time setting up its characters to make them feel believable in its world, with some given lengthy origin stories and others shown as being well established already. The issue is that this set-up both runs too long, eating too much run-time without being focused enough to feel properly 'worth it', and essentially leads straight into a disappointing finale - all but missing out the second act. This final movement sees an ominously foreshadowed but ultimately bizarre and unthreatening 'villain' face our protagonists in a battle that should be much more entertaining, and less silly, than it is. 6/10

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) is a movie in my DVD collection that I recently rewatched on HBOMAX. The storyline follows an initial concern that a secret invasion from Mars has taken place and been kept under wraps by the government. The actions and experiments by the government lead to a new menace that will take super heroes and the armed forces to work together to save the Earth.

This movie is directed by Dave Bullock (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and contains the voices of David Boreanaz (Valentine), Neil Patrick Harris (Gone Girls), Brooke Shields (The Blue Lagoon), John Heard (Home Alone), Lucy Lawless (Xena), Keith David (requiem for a Dream) and Jeremy Sisto (Wrong Turn).

The animation wasn't outstanding but was entertaining. There are some great sequences like the air dogfight scene, the random splashes of villains and the depiction of the characters and Martian Manhunter was great. The depiction of the era was also good. The injection of American pride was a bit too much but the ending was still good and worthwhile.

This is far from DC's best animated or Justice League film but it is still entertaining and worth a viewing for fans of the DC Universe. I would score this a 7/10 and recommend seeing it once.

My main gripe with this movie is the development. It's alright for a movie to be fast-paced but it's another story when the development seems to fall short. And for a origin story for the Justice League I expected a bit more. 75 minutes just doesn't seem like enough time to compact a origin story such as this into a movie form. Maybe that is where the animated TV show comes in. However still, reviewing this movie on it's own merit, it just isn't all that good or immersive. It seems like a taste test or a teaser for comic book fanboys, but as a movie as a whole it falls short of it's potential. It's a movie that is super fast-paced and yet felt slow...That really isn't a good thing. I also had a problem with the voice overs for some of the heroes. Yeah, that maybe a unfair complaint to some, but Batman's voice just didn't fit.

5.5/10

"The Justice League: The New Frontier" has some exemplary roots. The original comic miniseries is one of my very favorites. It's a great story, sure, but Darwyn Cooke's art is what really sells it. Thankfully, the movie takes a lot of inspiration from that, his post-war Americana especially. and the cast is impressive; seriously, some of the names on that list.

My problem is it's too damn short. New Frontier told a far-reaching story in two separate volumes. This should've done the same instead of jamming it into 75 minutes. I mean, really, if WB could stretch The Dark Knight Returns into two movies, this should've been a no-brainer.

6/10