Above: The latest DC animated film
unveils a very different Justice League. Photo ©Warner Home Video
“Justice
League: Gods and Monsters” has a lot going for it. It’s a fresh story from Alan Burnett and Bruce
Timm (two of the guiding hands in the highly regarded DC Animated Universe),
it’s got a great voice cast and strong animation, and it features a wide and
varied cast of DC Comics mainstays. The
biggest thing it doesn’t seem to have, however, is a reason to exist—at the end
of the film’s seventy-two minutes, I found myself wondering what exactly the
point of its story was.
“Gods and Monsters” is what DC
Comics would call an “Elseworlds" tale—an out-of-continuity story that re-imagines
iconic characters in compellingly bizarre scenarios. A lot of these “what ifs” have proved fertile
ground for exploring questions like, what if Superman’s ship didn’t land in
Smallville, Kansas, but in communist Russia? What if Batman had inherited the Green Lantern
ring? What if the DC heroes were
recreated with Marvel’s Stan Lee as writer?
The
conceit of “Gods and Monsters” is simpler.
In the film,
a more violent iteration of the Justice League works alongside (but not for)
the US government with limited accountability. Superman (Benjamin Bratt) is now the
biological son of General Zod as opposed to Jor-El and was raised by Mexican
migrant farmers as opposed to the Kents; Batman (Michael C. Hall) is Dr. Kirk
Langstrom, here a scientifically-created vampire as opposed to the monstrous
Man-Bat; and Wonder Woman (Tamara Taylor) is Bekka, a relatively minor
character from Jack Kirby’s iconic space opera “Fourth World.”
This trio is not as well-liked as
most superheroes, and they find tensions running high when they’re framed for
the murder of several scientists. This
forces the League to investigate the crimes and improve their relationship with
the world at large before the government comes for them.
Our story is largely divided
between character pieces that define our heroes and the murder mystery pulling
it all forward. The characterizations
turn out to be the strongest parts; familiar in some ways, but different in
others. Superman still carries the
weight of responsibility his powers give him, but has more contempt for
authority; Batman is still trying to pull something good out of personal
tragedy, but is more withdrawn from humanity than ever; Wonder Woman is still
estranged from her homeland in the modern world, but is more guarded,
distancing herself from personal entanglements.
The murder mystery isn’t
particularly strong, but since there isn’t much to it in the first place, it’s
not really a problem. The culprit’s
motives don’t quite in sync up with the rest of the story thematically, and their
scheme ends up relying on a lot of variables to pull off, to the point where
you have to question its construction. Granted,
our villain is supposed to be somewhat insane, but they’re still supposed to be
smarter than that.
As for the movie’s aesthetics,
they’re as good as we’ve come to expect from the DC Animated projects. The voice cast is uniformly strong, with
special mention going to Mr. Hall’s monotone Batman (and the fact he’s once
again playing a character who kills criminals and collects their blood) and
Jason Isaacs as a hermit Lex Luthor. The
action is solid and fast-paced, though it’s still weird for me to see the more
gruesome scenes applied to this style of animation. The score from Hyesu Yang is grand and
operatic and fits perfectly with the movie. It all works, albeit in service to a merely
okay story.
“Gods and Monsters” feels more than
anything like an exercise for the creators; a chance for the newly-returned
Bruce Timm to play around with his toys and hopefully launch a new serial to be
used in future movies. In terms of
world-building, it works, but as a standalone story, it just feels incomplete. If you’ve liked the DC Animated features thus
far, you’ll probably find something to like here. There’s more good than there is bad, there’s
just not as much of it as we’re used to.
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