Plot summary: A heroic Lex Luthor from another world pleads for The Justice League to help overthrow the tyrannical Crime Syndicate, evil versions of The League.
Why This?
My favourite self-imposed feature for writing these reviews is justifying why I even bothered.
With Justice League coming to an end and Justice League Unlimited on the horizon, Bruce Timm originally revealed a straight-to-video movie called ‘Worlds Collide’, which aimed to bridge the gap between the two series. Unfortunately Warner Bros. had other ideas and shelved it indefinitely, considering turning it into a comic book instead. Despite long-since missing the relevancy window (given JLU aired from 2004 to 2006) Timm did keep fighting for it, with a newly reworked movie called Crisis On Two Earths releasing in 2010.
The key word there is reworked, with them stripping out almost everything that directly ties to either show, but spiritually, there’s enough raw framework to make it worth a look, especially given my aversion to starting new shows/seasons on Sundays.
What remains in tact is The League is down to six core members (with Hawkgirl having quit) and building a new Watchtower (to replace the one Batman crashed into the Thanagarian bypass.) Plus an explanation of how Wonder Woman got her invisible jet, which is identical to the one she has in JLU. However we’ve got Hal Jordan instead of John Stewart, Aquaman is restored to his original look and Martian Manhunter looks a little different. Plus different voice actors and whatnot.
Notes and Trivia
Release Date: February 23rd, 2010
Directed: Sam Liu & Lauren Montgomery
Written: Dwayne McDuffie
Animation: Warner Bros. Animation
Music: James L. Venable & Christopher Drake
You may recall in ‘A Better World‘ that The Justice Lords were originally meant to be The Crime Syndicate, but Stan Berkowitz’s pitch for them drifted so far from that group it was decided to make original designs instead. The real Crime Syndicate are here in all their ‘glory’ though.
J’onn shares memories of The League’s past, including a battle with Starro the Conqueror, the team’s first ever adversary in 1960. An unnamed version of Starro appeared in ‘The Call‘ fighting a future iteration of The League.
Billy Baldwin was twice in the running to play live action Batman in the 90s, but lost out to Val Kilmer and George Clooney. He finally gets his wish!
The evil Martian Manhunter, J’edd J’arkus, sports a wildly different look, based more on the Martians in John Carter of Mars.
Vanessa Marshall almost won the role of Wonder Woman in the DCAU, but the producers preferred Susan Eisenberg’s more youthful exuberance, given they were going with a Diana only just entering the world of man.
Recap
A Lex Luthor from another world travels to our own, pleading for The Justice League to help against The Crime Syndicate, their evil counterparts oppressing his Earth.
Everyone but Batman accompanies Lex for a series of encounters with The Syndicate, shutting down parts of their operation and beginning to restore public optimism.
Learning of the Multiverse, Owlman becomes intent on destroying it, but Batman convinces the other villains to help thwart his plot.
With their ranks depleted the Syndicate are arrested, the heroes of the two Earths part ways, and Batman officially brings aboard new members to expand The League.
Best Performance
James Patrick Stewart is a lot of fun as Jester in the opening, though it’s a really short part. He’s far more annoying as Johnny Quick, and whether that’s on purpose or not, it takes him out of contention.
Chris Noth certainly isn’t Clancy Brown, but he does a decent job, especially carrying the opening 10 minutes. The movie kind of relegates his importance after that, and his work suffers for it.
Billy Baldwin could not be less interested as Batman even if he’s got the vaguely correct rasp to his voice. He absolutely butchers the impeccably written “We both looked into the abyss, but when it looked back at us, you blinked.” Maybe some of that is sound mixing or the consequence of him (presumably) recording over the phone.
James Woods is a huge piece of shit but he’s also clearly far and away the best actor in this thing. A nihilistic Batman hellbent on wiping out all life everywhere could be hammy as hell, but Woods keeps it a buck, grounding him in a deep sense of cosmic weariness. He has seen the ‘truth’ of reality and it’s left him despondent. There’s no mania, just calm, simple explanations of a deeply grim set of calculations. Honestly, just watch all of his scenes.
Review
The opening with Alt Lex and Jester, both sporting higher tech than we’re used to, on the run from The Syndicate, and Jester ultimately making the sacrifice play, is pretty darn compelling as an opener. Just a very slick way to start the movie off, complete with a good title sequence, between the mirrored character models sliding back and forth, and the general graphical treatment. The bigger issue is it perhaps promises more than it can make good on…
For example, the movie makes it seem like ‘Good Lex’ is going to be a vitally important part of the script… but he just kind of fades into the background after the first 15 minutes. I loved him getting himself arrested in order to get a meeting with The League, and then Superman scanning his body to find his heart is on the wrong side, and ‘our’ Lex is still locked up across town, verifying his story. But from there he’s just giving barely-necessary exposition about the structure of The Syndicate, and then bickering with Batman a little. He doesn’t even get a big farewell or anything at the end! He either needed to be killed off in the middle for shock value, or they should have wrapped his story up properly. Shouldn’t he be starting a new Justice League in his world to mirror Batman’s recruitment drive?
Whoa, man, Deathstroke is President! And he cows to The Syndicate! Wild! His daughter (Ravager in the comics) ends up as J’onn’s romantic interest, which is like… fine? They’re cute together in their three scenes, but he opts to leave her despite having Diana’s blessing to stay and be happy. Big fan of the telepathic memory swapping sequence though, among the most stylish depictions of his powers I’ve seen. On the subject of The Wilsons, the reliance on nuclear deterrence as the only thing keeping The Syndicate from outright conquest of their world feels entirely unnecessary. Sure, there’s a whole thing with the people no longer fearing them and then slowly starting to believe in justice again, but they don’t do enough with that, so in a film that ends up feeling bloated, why not just have them totally in charge?
I will say that the action is solid throughout. Wonder Woman fighting Evil Vixen is fun, mostly in the creative ways she shifts between different animals to evade Diana’s attacks. Flash gets a sort of sonic boom after-effect that I’m a big fan of, and just generally seems more capable than the Wally we’re used to in the DCAU, handling a half dozen villains solo. Love him running Evil Canary across the water and then just… dropping her. One issue is that it starts to feel similar to Public Enemies after a while, wherein they absolutely plough through evil counterparts at such a high clip that it begins to feel weightless. Likewise, Batman bringing five new members into The League while the regulars are busy in another universe should feel like a huge deal (the original aim of the movie, in fact!) but just comes across as wanting to smash more action figures together to end the second act.
Overall I’d say the film opens extremely well, gets dull after the first foray against the Syndicate, and then has the very memorable final standoff between Batman and Owlman, which is extremely well written, animated and performed. The film becomes tedious whenever Batman, Owlman or to a lesser extent Martian Manhunter aren’t on screen. That’s not great given I suggested axing J’onn’s entire portion of the film for time!
Rogues Roundup
The Crime Syndicate (Brian Bloom/James Woods/Gina Torres/James Patrick Stewart/Nolan North)
I think I’ve made my feelings on evil clone versions of heroes pretty clear from The Justice Lords, and honestly the Syndicate end up barely being any different. They’re a bit more explicitly evil (though the Lords were more evil than Bruce Timm claimed), and I really do not enjoy any of their character designs compared to the slick look of the Justice Lords.
I’m going to broadly ignore the lesser generals that barely even get speaking lines, and most of who only get names in the script. Some are fine, but they’re mostly just fodder. Although all that being said their hierarchy resembling a mob is theoretically interesting, with the Big 6 referred to as Family Heads, and the more powerful secondary members designated as Made Men, and everybody else reporting into them and competing to be given more powers.
Johnny Quik and Power Ring barely get a look in, and Ultraman and Superwoman are just generic strong villains, which is unfortunate as Ultraman is ‘the boss of bosses’. Superwoman nonchalantly cracking Batman’s rib with her fingers was dope though.
Luckily Owlman is interesting enough in his own right to carry most of the movie; a deeply depressed version of Batman whose fatalism is so severe he endeavours to destroy the entire multiverse (including himself) because he deems it the only move left to make after having learned every conceivable choice has played out somewhere. I also like that he does all of this against the wishes of his own allies… it would just be nice if anything they were doing in the interim were interesting, but instead they feel like noise next to the only legitimately interesting character among them.
The Matt Signal 
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