La Ligue des Justiciers: Nouvelle frontière

Synopsis: This animated feature is set in the 50s during the era of cold-war paranoia with a population that doesn't trust superheroes and a government that doesn't trust anyone. There is a malevolent force which has watched humanity grow in strength and violence and it has decided it has to eliminate it. Also included in the plot are shortened versions of Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern's origin stories.

This film's setting is really used to great effect and the heroes have a classic Golden Age look about them (though their attitudes remain anachronistically modern, especially Wonder Woman). I'm sure there references to many of the other DC characters that I'm just not very familiar with.

Overall the main story was fairly routine. There may have been just too many characters and the story tried to do too much. Aquaman got one line and I don't think Green Arrow even got that. Even though I liked it I think it's going to mainly be one for the comic book fans

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.

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.

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

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.