Plot summary: In an alternate reality, The Justice League act with swift, deadly force, polarising public opinion of them, which isn’t helped any when they become embroiled in a murder mystery.
Gods and Monsters
While the DCAU ‘ended’ with the conclusion of JLU, Alan Burnett and Bruce Timm remained involved as producers for DC animation, working on over a dozen animated films as well as various shorts. Warner Bros eventually approached Timm about doing a new Justice League cartoon but assured him they did NOT want more of the same, which led to him doing radical redesigns of the characters and coming up with a new status quo. This kind of creative freedom is the best way to coax Timm into doing anything (see him wanting to do Superman instead of more Batman, and going out of his way to stress Caped Crusader is not just more BTAS.)
Timm mocked the New 52 for barely being any different to what came before, wanting to instead emulate the radical changes to The Flash and Green Lantern in the Silver Age, moving from Jay Garrick and Alan Scott to Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. He actually felt they were still playing it safe with their final product so Lord knows what he’d do if you truly gave him no limits.
Despite his feelings, this is a true ‘Elseworlds’ in every sense as The Trinity are different people entirely with radically different backstories, and virtually every supporting character is tweaked in some way to match. It’s a world where the Justice League take proactive and lethal action, mostly stamping out crime.
- Batman is Kirk Langstrom (aka Man-Bat), who has become a vampire as a side effect of curing himself of cancer. He only feeds on criminals but struggles with his bloodlust.
- Superman is the son of Zod, raised on Earth as Hernan Guerra after being found by immigrants instead of the Kents, giving him an extremely hardline world view.
- Wonder Woman is Bekka, a New God who married Darkseid’s son, Orion, to broker a peace with Apokalips, only for New Genesis to use it as an opportunity to slaughter their foes without her blessing.
In addition to the film itself there was a decent amount of tie-in media, which I’ll be reviewing tomorrow as I found I had more to say about it than I expected.
Notes and Trivia
Original Release Date: July 21st, 2015
Directed: Sam Liu
Written: Alan Burnett (story & screenplay) and Bruce Timm (story)
Animation: MOI Animation, Inc.
Music: Frederik Weidmann
Batman’s voice actor, Michael C. Hall, battled Hodgkin’s Lymphoma himself and is in remission. Unclear if they attributed the same disease to the character in the film on account of casting Hall. They’re obviously also doing a ‘killer of killers’ thing like Dexter, but that had to be locked in place long before they started casting.
‘Project Fair Play’ consists of Mr. Terrific, The Atom, Steel, S.T.R.I.P.E., Dr. Light (heroic version), Bumblebee, Silas Stone (Cyborg’s father), Stephen Shin (as played by Randall Park in the Aquaman movies), Will Magnus and the villains, Mr. Freeze, Professor Hamilton, Dr. Sivana and T.O. Morrow.
The solution to the crossword clue Magnus ponders aloud, ‘Vincent Price movie, five letters’, is Laura. The film features a love triangle much like the dynamic between Kirk, Tina and Will.
This was the last work of the legendary casting/voice director Andrea Romano before she retired.
Wonder Woman was originally just going to be the daughter of Zeus, but then the comics did exactly that so it wasn’t different enough anymore. Then they toyed with using different characters from Themyscira, before Timm drew a design that inadvertently emulated the style of Jack Kirby (one of Timm’s biggest influences), which sent them down the New Gods path.
Alan Burnett hit a huge wall trying to break the story, feeling there were too many holes and things that needed explanation, while Timm felt he was overcomplicating it, so they brought in Geoff Johns to help. Timm claims it only took an hour to plan out the entire movie once Johns met with them. Burnett suggested putting Superman’s origin in the cold open and then deploying flashbacks for Batman and Wonder Woman at key points rather than having to front load it with too much exposition. What really made it click for Burnett was the Murder Mystery aspect.
Recap
On an unstable Krypton, Jor-El and Lara prepare to launch an incubator ship off-world, but General Zod intervenes and inputs his DNA in place of Jor-El’s, sending his baby to Earth.
Raised by hispanic immigrants, Hernan Guerra becomes Superman. He, Batman (Kirk Langstrom) and Wonder Woman (Bekka) carry out a raid on a criminal hideout, slaughtering everyone inside. This annoys Steve Trevor, their government liaison.
Scientists Victor Fries, Ray Palmer and Silas Stone are each brutally murdered by a trio of creatures that look more than a little like a the Justice League.
Batman discovers files on ‘Project FairPlay’, with Lex Luthor, the three dead scientists, and his old friend from college Will Magnus among its members.
Kirk tugs at the thread, eavesdropping on a meeting between the remaining FairPlay members. The three assassins arrive and slaughter everybody but Magnus before The League chase them away.
Superman seeks out Lex Luthor who confirms FairPlay aimed to figure out how to kill The League with backing from Preisdent Waller. He also reveals Zod’s hand in the downfall of Krypton.
With the frame job reported on the news, Waller declares war on The League. Superman and Wonder Woman go outside to fight the army, who carry advanced weaponry…
Unaware they’ve left Batman alone with Magnus, the one behind everything! Magnus plans to use The League’s tech to implant nanites in every human on Earth to create a ‘peaceful’ hive mind.
Luthor stops all the fighting outside by revealing the truth, having been spying on The League for years. They battle and defeat Magnus and his Metal Men, with Magnus taking his own life.
In the aftermath, Wonder Woman and Lex Luthor leave for her home world, while Superman proposes they stop killing and start doing more to help humanity.
Best Performance
It may shock you to learn that the most accomplished actor in the film gives the best performance, as Michael C. Hall accounts for a big chunk of what I like about this film. I don’t have strong feelings about Batman’s redesign one way or the other, but from the first time I saw it a decade ago, I latched on to Hall’s work. He sounds so weary and sleep-deprived at all times, fitting this gaunt, pale and depressed take on the character. He has a very dry wit about him, but it doesn’t feel quippy, but rather like gallows humour. This dude has all but given up on life, but somewhere in there is a good man who wants to help the world. Him reassuring the diminutive robot Tin he’ll ensure nothing happens to it feels very in keeping with the DCAU Batman, and Hall nails it. He lightens his demeanour enough to convey the contrast between the younger, pre-transformation Kirk to the current Batman. He also rises to the try-hard technical dialogue that drowns so many actors.
The other two leads, Benjamin Bratt and Tamara Taylor are perfectly fine but nowhere near as good as Hall. Likewise C. Thomas Howell and Jason Isaacs are solid as Magnus and Luthor but not really worth talking about to be honest. The movie is generally stuffed with decent voice actors, which is nice.
Conversely I think Paget Brewster makes sense as a casting for Lois Lane in theory, but there’s not quite enough life to her performance. She understood that they wanted to lean heavily into the outspoken and sceptical side of the character even more than usual for this world, but it becomes a bit monotonous. Bruce Thomas and Khary Payton sure aren’t Michael Ironside and Edward Asner.
Review
I’m going to say a bunch of broadly negative things so feel the need to stress up front that despite everything I do like this film more than I dislike it.
Two key things dominate the discourse for this film: The redesigns and the ‘darker’ tone.
Let’s start with the latter because I feel like it has to be addressed up front and then we can move on. There is an inescapable feeling of them trying a little too hard to be ‘gritty’ and ‘mature’. Superman mockingly speculates Amanda Waller would feel “orgasmic” about their actions. I’m far from a prude, but that smacks of ‘we can say this, so we should’ rather than it being the best dialogue choice in that moment. He also calls Lois Lane a bitch, and they decided he should be a sleazy Lothario (more on this in the tie-in reviews), which feels… racist? Classist? Something! Wonder Woman is overtly suggestive throughout as well, but at least that is done more as flirty banter, minus her offering a night with her in a wager with Steve Trevor. All of these choices feel like a lazy ‘this ain’t for kids!’ mentality, courting edge-lords.
Oh! And did you know The League kill people in this continuity?!? They sure wanted you to know all about it, establishing the characters’ outlook early and often and giving it a fair bit of lip service in promotion of the film. Alan Burnett outright stated it was important to them that the characters could kill, with Bruce Timm going a step further with a gross diatribe about the obligation cops have to kill to protect the innocent.
“That’s what soldiers would do. That’s what the police would do. So I’m gonna have my superheroes do that too.”
Bruce Timm
He tried to justify it by citing instances where these characters killed in their early days, decrying comics ‘growing up’ in other ways but sticking to what he feels is an outdated rule about killing. NOW, I’m not actually precious about killing in comics, but I do think when you absolutely insist it happens or worse, cite it as a key selling point of your thing, then you’re no different to those people who are disappointed when something they expected to be Rated-R gets a lower rating. This seems to include Timm himself as he talked about being pleased when the decision was made to change it from a series to a film as he could push for a higher rating. Their absolute glee at telling you these guys kill is just such a Red Flag, and they don’t even need to draw attention to it whatsoever because there are plenty of solid action scenes throughout that can stand on their own merit.
The other piece of business is what they’ve done to all these characters. I would call the results mixed. Some of them are good (Wonder Woman), some are bad (Superman), most are just fine (Batman).
Superman is awful. How am I ever supposed to root for someone with that hair and goatee combo? He’s wearing jackboots for goodness sakes! That’s a supervillain! I understand Timm liking the leather duster mimicking the movements of his traditional cape, but it’s all giving ‘white guy with a katana’. Beyond the visuals, they completely fail in their mission statement because they did a double change. Alan Burnett talked about using the new origin story for a nature vs nurture debate, but when you change BOTH his nature (he’s the son of Zod, not Jor-El, though maintains the same mother to be fair) AND his nurture (he was found by poor immigrants, not the Kents), what are you really saying in the end? This is a completely different guy, unlike something like Red Son, where he’s genetically the same person, but landed in the Soviet Union. Batman and Wonder Woman are different people too, but they maintain far more essence of their characters.
It’s one thing to say ‘this is a darker world’, but it is kind of weird to me they seemingly didn’t care much about Superman being remotely likeable. Early on he pitches conquering the world as a way to end war and make people more productive. It actually makes it a little shocking when he briefly behaves more like Clark Kent and is deeply saddened by the deaths of Silas and Victor Stone. But that’s only a few minutes before the aforementioned “What a bitch” line about Lois. They try to pull off a dramatic personality 180 upon learning that Zod was responsible for Krypton’s destruction. I get that this shatters his belief his dad was a brilliant man, but his pro-killing stance comes from his upbringing on Earth, not the scrambled video he saw that made him think Zod was a hero. (They beat Superman (2025) to this by a decade!)
While I’m mostly indifferent about Batman as a Vampire (mileage will probably vary a lot on his suit design), he’s the best written of the three characters, anchored by an excellent performance by Michael C. Hall. It may be Kirk Langstrom instead of Bruce Wayne, but he’s still a melancholy antisocial detective and his scientific background fits nicely. They replace the trauma of his parents’ murder with a struggle to keep his thirst for blood under control, though that’s more subtextual in the film itself and they play with it way more in the comics.
The sequence of Batman sneaking into Silas Stone’s office followed by the flashback to how he was transformed in the first place is probably my favourite stretch of the film. They’re able to quickly set up a nice relationship dynamic between besties Kirk & Will, and Tina, who dates Will but there’s clearly something between her and Kirk. Throw in the desperation to cure lymphoma by combining the boys’ respective research and the tragic outcome of his transformation – complete with the obligatory ‘what have I become?’ moment – and you’ve got yourself 5 minutes that I think would work for basically anybody. Plus not for nothing, but “Crazy Ivy’s bringing her homegrown” was a great line.
Wonder Woman is my favourite of the three new designs in a vacuum because I’ve become a big New Gods guy over the years. I think white is an underutilised colour in superhero costumes and her Kirby-esque sword with a Mother Box built into the hilt to allow her to teleport around is very cool. She’s more feisty than Diana, but they keep her on/off relationship with Steve Trevor in place. Unfortunately all of her dramatic weight is in the past, versus the men who get to wrestle with difficult ideas throughout (even if I dislike Superman’s arc.)
Luckily, that flashback was fun for me, and I was particularly tickled by Mister Miracle and Orion remaining with their biological parents into adulthood. There’s obviously some shock value to New Genesis being the ones to break the truce and slaughter Darkseid and company. Bekka legitimately falling for Orion (who gifted her that badass sword as a wedding gift) makes it a real gut punch, trying and failing to save him from the fate of his kin. But I can understand this scene not working as well for people who know less about this corner of DC. I also think it was a bit contrived, as Bekka dwells on her past in response to Steve Trevor saying she “belonged to someone once”, the culmination of a broadly unnecessary scene where she was sent by Superman to find out what the government know. I say unnecessary, because Batman’s already working the the case, Lois reports it on the news in the very next scene, and Superman has already made it clear he doesn’t give much of a fuck what President Waller or the public think.
Moving into the film itself, I think there are perhaps some structural issues in places. For example, we move very abruptly from Superman bringing Silas Stone to the Justice Tower for unknown reasons, to two scientist murders in a row, then some Kirk Langstrom/Will Magnus/Tina flavour text, and then back to Stone telling his son about his meeting with Superman (you know how much we all love to be told instead of shown) before he completes the loop by becoming the third murder victim. Superman and Wonder Woman investigate Stone’s death of their own accord on account of their recent meeting, but Batman has to be sold by Magnus on looking into Palmer, despite him ostensibly being an old friend. I dig the murder mystery aspect and framing The League, don’t get me wrong, I just think they could have strung these early events together a little more elegantly.
Then as I say, Bekka’s flashback feels a little obligatory because she’s underwritten in the present. Lex Luthor has a pretty interesting background act, transitioning from a G-Man (with a full head of red hair) investigating Superman’s crash site, to the head of Project Fair Play, before becoming a recluse living on a space station. Them functionally turning him into Metron was pretty funny given how the end of JLU plays out. Unfortunately they also reveal Lex was sitting on vast knowledge of Kryptonian technology that could help humanity which he withheld for absolutely no reason as he’s not ‘evil’ in this version.
The closing stretch of fight scenes was pretty good, with the army wielding Cadmus-style weapons that let them hurt Superman, leading to all out chaos as The League fight for their lives. The Superman vs Metal Men brawl is brutal, Batman injecting some poignant words into his personal standoff with Magnus worked well, but I thought it was a little weak to leave Wonder Woman to fight Platinum. If you felt generous you could claim she’s more powerful than her triplicate ‘siblings’ who Superman fought by himself, hence keeping her close as his pretend wife for years, but really it was just ‘the girls have to fight’. Bekka using a Boom Tube to jettison Platinum into the damn Sun? Pretty cool. The line “Fry, bitch!”? Less cool. Again, a little try-hard.
For all my criticisms of it being too edge-lord and Superman’s weak redesign, I think overall there’s something intriguing here, but we would have needed to see where they went with it next to know if this is simply a solid self-contained story, or a universe with legs. Actually, I guess I can partially answer that one when I tackle the tie-in media tomorrow. In any event, it would have been cool to see their takes on the likes of Flash, Aquaman, Hawkgirl etc. and I’m shocked they didn’t debut at least one of them as a final teaser. I like the art style (obviously) and they pull off a number of fun, visually engaging fights, particularly the Metal Men’s rampages. The voice acting is better than the average one of these direct-to-video movies. There’s a lot here!
I would fully understand if either the redesigns or ‘darker tone’ put you off, but as I said at the top, I actually do like this thing despite all its flaws.
Rogues Roundup
Will Magnus and the Metal Men (C. Thomas Howell/Dee Bradley Baker/Grey DeLisle/)
If you’re remixing so many beloved characters it makes sense to also flip the morality of the usually heroic Magnus and his bizarre creations to be the villains of the movie.
In general I don’t find mirrored/evil versions of heroes to be very interesting. However I can give a pass to the Metal Men for several reasons. Firstly they have a bit of a T-1000 thing going on, silently hunting their victims (the Wonder Woman knockoff relentlessly stalking Ray Palmer was legitimately tense) and taking on a visual style all of their own while still borrowing elements of the Trinity. They’re also just the muscle to Will Magnus’ ‘main villain’, and most crucially, they’re utilised effectively in the plot, framing The League to worsen public opinion on the already controversial heroes. I like when the villains are woven directly into the narrative like that rather than just being there for fights. Plus they merge into a single mega-powered entity to fight Superman and that’s pretty cool.
They set Lex Luthor up as the red herring, wielding his ‘normal’ character history and putting him at the head of Project FairPlay, but the astute would treat Magnus being the lone survivor with suspicion. The rules of Scooby Doo strike again!
Magnus is revealed to be almost comically evil, again subverting expectations in the opposite way to Luthor. Him casually saying he accidentally killed his wife in a heated argument years ago – because he knew she was in love with Kirk – and then replaced her with Platinum is delightfully creepy. Like… is he fucking his obedient robot that pretends to be his wife? I’m not sure if the “even after I turned you into a monster” line was meant to mean he deliberately did it to Kirk to put Tina off him. Fucked up if so!
My only critique of what’s an otherwise fine double act is that his master plan to enslave humanity feels very out of left-field. That’s too extreme of a ploy to earn the moment of him ‘suddenly’ realising how far he’s fallen and taking his own life.
The Matt Signal 
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