I've finally been getting around to watching these Direct-to-DVD films, and I've been pretty impressed. "Green Lantern: First Flight" was good, "Wonder Woman" was loads of fun, and I even branched out and watched "Hulk vs. Thor," which was probably the best non-"Spectacular Spider-Man" animated Marvel thing I've ever seen. As it stands, the only DC animated films I haven't watched yet are "Superman/Batman: Public Enemies," which I'm not particularly excited about, and "Justice League: New Frontier," which I don't want to watch until I have the chance to re-read the story. Especially since I have this snazzy Absolute Edition.
But I haven't looked forward to any of these films as much as "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths," which stands as the only one I've actually bothered to pre-order. I was not disappointed. I don't feel like I could be superlative enough in describing it or running through the plot or going over how much I enjoyed the fight scenes and the plot and the little fanservice bits. Like, who Superwoman turned out to be the counterpart of? Totally brilliant.
So rather than gush, I'm going to praise the flick a different way, by going over all its faults. I think you'll see my point.
- So, first, some of the super-speed effects were a little odd, where we saw a bunch of afterimages (specifically of Johnny Quick) instead of various sorts of blurring. The overall effect of that really didn't make him look like he was moving quickly, though it was really just in one scene as far as I noticed.
- It took me awhile to get used to Mark Harmon as Superman. It's not a bad choice, and I think the tone and the drawl it play up both the farmboy and tough-as-nails aspects of his character, but it was fairly jarring at first.
- The sound effect for Superman's heat vision was terrible. Maybe it's just me, but heat vision should sound more like "fsssshhh" than "pew pew!"
That's it. That's the complete list of problems I had with "JL:Co2E." It was a pretty awesome movie.
And "The Spectre" was similarly awesome. I especially liked the '70s cop movie flair to it, complete with washed-out visuals. I think it really added to the kind of EC-style horror that the story seemed to be going for. I can't wait to find out what the next one will be...wasn't "Jonah Hex" rumored at some point?
So, yeah. Go. Buy. Watch. Be happy.
2 comments:
This was the best of the DC Animated cartoons so far (excluding the 90s Batman features). I think the most jarring thing was Ultraman being the capo di capo AND talking like one. I was not sold on Billy Baldwin's voice and it paled in comparison to Woods' Owlman. Harmon nailed Superman as big blue boy scout.
I recently watched it, thanks to Netflix (not on Streaming, though). Loved some of the lines.
Superman: "You brought the cavalry?"
Martian Manhunter: "I brought the marines."
Batman: "There is a difference between you and me: We both look into the abyss. You blinked."
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