Review of Justice League: War (2014) by Lewis M — 02 Mar 2015

To be brutally blunt: Justice League: War is probably not a movie you'll enjoy if you aren't already familiar with most of the cast, with the exception of Cyborg, who gets his origin story in this particular story anyway. While the New 52 comic continuity is a reboot, Justice League itself leaves the development of individual heroes to their individual comics for the most part, leaving the Darkseid story arc at the beginning of the Justice League *series* to focus on its own rather basic inter-dimensional invasion plot while featuring a lot of bombastic action sequences and witty banter. Infofar as loyalty to the comic story it's adapting, the major change this movie makes to the Darkseid arc is leaving Aquaman out of the equation entirely (Aquaman makes his debut here in the comic), and inserting Shazam (who wasn't involved in Justice League's opening New 52 arc at all).

While lacking in familiar voices for the cast that would present a familiar feel for those who enjoyed DC's previous animated offerings, the animation is a notch shy of top-notch and the performances are quite good. Other DC movies have had better action than this one, and more fleshed-out plots, though. Puzzlingly, though the first in line as far as animated "New 52" movies go, this one doesn't really try to establish itself as a starting point in the new continuity. It feels like a movie that should have happened after Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Shazam all had their own individual animated movies.

Nevertheless, the flaws didn't ruin the experience for me; if you're already a DC fan it'll probably be a blast to watch. Can't recommend it to newcomers, though. Dip into some other DC media first.