La Ligue des Justiciers: Nouvelle frontière

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.

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

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

This wasn't exactly what I wanted out of a Justice League movie. It was made over 10 years ago, but still, some of the stuffs were pretty flat - even by the standards of the genre over 10 years ago. The movie called "The Dark Knight" which came out a couple of months later did set the bars way too high for the genre in general, so if you watch it today it seems to be way below the line it actually is.

There is little to no dynamics between any of the characters. All of them seem to be in a different movie of their own, forcefully crammed into this single movie. All the characters are introduced, except for Wonder Woman, by showing the most generic things they do. The best part of this movie was Hal Jordan becoming Green Lantern and his origins was, for me, the best part of the movie. Although it was the best part, it did feel incredibly shoehorned into this. The Flash has his own plotline, that was quite good too, but it felt that this storyline was shoehorned into this movie as well. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman - THE TRINITY - don't have much to do in this, Superman is just shown to be too strong (which we already know), I barely remember what Batman did and Wonder Woman was just doing nothing in the movie. Aquaman literally has a few seconds of appearance in the movie.

It wasn't a Justice League movie but a Green Lantern Origins + a Flash movie with the cameos of the other popular characters. But on the whole, whatever they did, was passable and entertaining enough for a single viewing. My main problem was with the villain. He felt like he belonged to the list of generic MCU villains. He was undercooked and didn't feel like much of a threat. But he was supposed to. There are scenes which show what he can do. But all we know is that he wants some apocalyptic stuff to take place. So, we know what he can do, but not exactly why he is doing what he is doing. He is just a blant and dumb supervillain wanting the world to end, quite comparable to Apocalypse from "X-Men: Apocalypse" (2016). None of the plotlines meshed together to form one coherent storyline for the movie. I like it more than DCEU's live action Justice League movie (not the Snyder Cut), but that's just because it wasn't so ill conceived and rushed.

One more thing, Batman's voice sounds kind of weird. I don't want everyone to be Kevin Conroy but this is one of the oddest Batman voices ever.

Rating : 6.3/10, Grade : B.

"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