PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*
I have not read the Geoff Johns story, JUSTICE LEAGUE ORIGIN, on which this DTV animated flick is based, but since WAR is pretty simple, I imagine that this apple didn't fall far from its tree. Though WAR is certainly more watchable than the egregiously nihilistic FLASHPOINT PARADOX, also from the pen of Jones, the script here also suffers from the author's meretricious attempts to make once simon-pure heroes-- such as the Justice League had been in its Silver Age origins-- into quarrelsome, bad-tempered dicks.
Whereas the heroes of the Silver Age united after they banded together to battle some largely forgettable aliens, these versions-- many of whom sport awful costume-redesigns-- Jones's idea, as relayed by Heath Corson, was that the good guys had to come together to face the threat of Apokolips. The invasion of Earth by these "evil New Gods"-- who seem to exist apart from any influence of their parallel "good New Gods" from the Jack Kirby classic series-- begins slowly at first, with Darkseid's parademons abducting human beings. Batman and Green Lantern, who barely know of one another, cross paths when they both attempt to intercept one of the powerful creatures. They then get the idea that they might find out something about this alien invasion from Earth's best-known alien hero, Superman. Yet almost immediately the first two heroes go out of their way to provoke a fight with the Man of Steel, which makes all three characters look pretty stupid.
When three other heroes-- Wonder Woman, Shazam, and Cyborg-- join the effort, the script finally dials down the whole Marvel-esque "heroes meet and beat each other." Cyborg's origin gets the biggest reboot here, in that his transformation from ordinary human to mechanized cyborg now takes place when the hero gets linked to the technology of Apokolips. This isn't very interesting within the context of WAR's narrative, though it did give me insight as to why there's so much yammering about connections between Cyborg and Apokolips in 2017's JUSTICE LEAGUE.
There's never a major plot-thread to explain why Darkseid wanted all those anonymous humans, but at some point he becomes interested in capturing Superman to turn him into a brainwashed pawn. Darkseid, who in Kirby's epic is a master manipulator, decides to join his parademon legions in a frontal assault upon Earth, and he eventually succeeds in capturing Superman. Batman alone can mount an attempt to infiltrate the Apokolips horde to liberate the Metropolis Marvel, while the other heroes just kind of hold the fort until this plotline is finished.
None of the heroes are particularly well characterized here, and I imagine Johns' original script had nothing more in mind than providing a quick reboot of previous continuities. There are a few sequences that are modestly entertaining, as when the heroes try to blind Darkseid ("Like Oedipus," says Wonder Woman irrelevantly), but most of the fight-scenes are overblown and the humor is childish at best. The film ends with a scene meant to hype the next DTV in the series, THRONE OF ATLANTIS, and that's about it for WAR, except to ask the predictable question:
"WAR! Huh! What is it good for?
"Absolutely nothin'!"
Which prompts me to ask what good are these DVDs for? I've watched a couple of cartoon superhero movies, but they don't seem to do anything for me. I think such things work best as 'shorts' - like the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons of the '40s.
ReplyDeleteBut you don't have a problem with superhero movies done as live-action features, correct? I remember you mentioning that you liked BATMAN 89 but not BATMAN RETURNS. I'd say that because superhero comics were designed to be "installment fiction" they work best as episodic narratives, and that it's a lot harder to condense down such a narrative into a movie of a couple hours, whether live action or animated.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a problem with 'live-action' features if they're done well, GP, but there's been quite a few duffers in that category as well, hasn't there? The thing about superhero cartoons is that they're sort of an intermediate stage between comics and live-action and, in the main (but with a few exceptions), just don't cut the mustard for me.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I like about animated cartoons is that they can bring off pretty much all the "fx" possible in a comic book without stressing and straining, the way a live-action film must. Even limited TV adaptation-- like the superhero cartoons with which I grew up, like "Space Ghost" and "Herculoids"-- can give us SOME of the same larger-than-life effects. The sixties Fantastic Four cartoon is very limited, but it's still closer in spirit to the comic book-- though the "installment factor" may make a lot of the difference.
ReplyDeleteNow, the downside of American animation is that it's aimed at a "ghetto market," where studios can pump out just enough material to satisfy the market's perceived needs. That means that there's not always a lot of quality control because animation has to be done through a studio that organizes a lot of different people's efforts, whereas in comics a given feature is executed by three or four people, whose work is then published by a company made up of many more people.
I'm planning on trying to review as many of these DD Universe flicks as I can find time for, mostly looking for the occasional gems in the woodpile. Right now about the only DC original animation movie I'd recommend these days would be BATMAN: GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT, which is much better than the source material.