Review of Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) by Matthew B — 29 Mar 2008

Before I even start with the review... Neil Patrick Harris as 'The Flash' ? I don't want to say "holy shit, I never would have thought of that BUT that is perfect! Bravo casting director, bravo", BUT, I kind of just did, didn't I? Blew my mind. Oh, and Lucy Lawless as 'Wonder Woman'? Obvious. The woman played 'Xena' for a whole lot of years, which is basically ancient 'Wonder Woman' without bullets bouncing off of wristcuffs or flying or an invisible jet or a lasso or all that.

Onto the review...

The story takes place in the 50's, and starts off with an introduction to the "villain", which goes by the name "the core" or "the center", whom has observed the Earth and thought that whole 'humans developing and becoming the dominant species on Earth' thing was not all that great, so it sets off to destroy us so that our concepts of murdering everything on the Earth, including ourselves for joy and money and such don't ruin the world; if you kinda think about it... wouldn't IT doing that to US be the exact same thing as we've been doing? Didn't think that one out too well when they made the story ('they' being the author of the graphic novels). While this story is being conveyed to the viewer, there is this man painting what "the center" is telling us, which leads to him writing down the last words that "the center" speaks - atleast for awhile - in a book, closes it shut, grabs a pistol and blows his head off, all from the point of view of the guy who was painting. That book later turned out to be a CHILDREN'S NOVEL, so I found that to be bleak that such a story - not to mention the author of which BLEW HIS FRICK'N HEAD OFF BECAUSE OF - would be in a children's novel, and a little hard to believe to say the least.

Going on from that, the movie is basically a semi-Justice League story like the cartoon of the same name, with a villain to defeat with one specific, outlandish way to kill them (probably could have killed him some other way, but they never presented another option and didn't have time to come up with another one, seeing's how the damn "center" was tearing across the world destroying up shit!). Few differences here, though; the 'League is not together; a bunch of key members haven't even BECOME heroes yet, like "The Martian Manhunter" and "Green Lantern"; its the 50's, so no super fighter jets and space battles and ray guns - although one hero who isn't even named in the movie, but which I assume has one elsewhere and is probably popular aswell, has some sort of raygun himself, so I dunno if they're that common, as a lot of the soldiers that were in the film had 'tommy guns' and pistols and machine guns, so I assume no...

The story is also an origin story for "The Green Lantern", and to a lesser extent and emphasis, "The Martian Manhunter", as the movie takes place over a period of time where they aren't out and about kicking in heads and such. The movie focuses a HUGE amount on that "Green Lantern" story, and by doing so, the more popular heroes like "Superman" and "Batman" and "Wonder Woman" are pushed aside to make more room for ol' Hal Jordan, who was greatly voiced by David Boreanaz... Speaking of "Batman" and "Superman"... "Batman" had the worst voice actor for him, as he was some old guy that made "Batman" sound like he was ancient, and his costume - which after reading more about "Batman" 's costume designs over the years on IGN - is the original design from the first comic about him for the start of it, which looked ~horrible~ all animated and shiz. His costume later changes to one from the 50's - 60's (look at Adam West's portrayal of "Batman" and you have the general idea) and that's not much better, but the costume change is explained by "Batman" himself as "I mean to scare criminals; not children"; bit ~too~ 'kid friendly' if you ask me... Oh, and "Robin" was in this and all he did was bounce around and get told to do homework... LEAVE THE BASTARD CHILD OUT NEXTTIME! "Batman", too, does nothing, as all he did in the end fight was get attacked and he repelled it by an electrical shock. Joy. I know the man is used to working alone, but give him ~SOMETHING~ to do in the team. HOLY NAGGERS I almost forgot about "the Batcave"... Its basically the size of a medium-sized garage. No gigantic cavern / auditorium of bats, just some place where the "Batcar" (yes, they used Adam West's car aswell...) is parked, with a newspaper slide machine inplace of the supercomputer that "Batman" usually uses.

Superman's role in this is to.

*SPOILER*.

Save Hal Jordan at some point.

*/SPOILER*.

And to get his ass beat - oh, and gather the 'League' together to fight "the center"; It isn't explained ~how~ exactly he gathers the 'League' together, but he just does, so screw you viewer (is what I think the director / writer / etc said at some point).

Nice animation, loved the set in the 50's as the 50's is teh bestest, and superb voice casting (*cough* with the exception of "Batman"... furkoes *cough*), and decent enough story, but at 1 hour and 14 minutes, it was short in some regards and overly long in others, as the Hal Jordan plotline took up a lot of that screentime. I'm just glad that they didn't include "The Joker" that they pictured at the end of the film, as he was shit. Utter, utter shit. "Riddler" looked okay, though.

Was a lot like "Superman: Doomsday" in that it did something at the start which lead to the end, and how it got there was a lot of talk and chaos.