Brikar

"Justice League: The New Frontier" (2-disc special edition)
Starring: David Boreanaz, Miguel Ferrer, Kyle McLachlan, Lucy Lawless
Written by: Stan Berkowitz and Darwyn Cooke
Directed by: Dave Bullock

MOVIE
A cartoonist paints the ominous history of the Centre. Upon finishing it, he picks up a pistol, and blows his own brains out. At the tail end of the Korean War, fighter pilot Hal Jordan is shot down and forced to kill a Korean soldier up close and personal. At the Gotham Observatory, a dying scientist apologizes for bringing a hideous Martian to Earth, marooning him accidentally.

The first three scenes of this PG-13 Justice League offering feature human characters dying - two from gunshot wounds and one from a heart attack. Despite the colorful 1950s period setting, this is a darker JL story than we're used to. Bloodier than last year's "Superman Doomsday," "The New Frontier" is also a huge step up in terms of storytelling and performance. The formation of the Justice League set against the backdrop of 50s-era McCarthyism and Red Scare works near-perfectly.

The problems with this movie are twofold, however - Firstly, much like "Superman Doomsday" before it, the movie is simply too short and is forced to streamline its dense narrative quite a bit. As a result, the movie feels like it needs another ten or fifteen minutes to be a truly awesome film. Instead, it's merely a very good one. Pacing is an issue - the movie seems to build slowly over time and then suddenly rushes into its climax. Secondly, while the cast is almost uniformly excellent, David Boreanaz sticks out like a sore thumb. There are a number of times where he utterly disappears into the role of Hal Jordan, but there are also a number of times where his voice sounds just as unnatural coming from that character as it did in "Smile Time".

A third problem is one I have personally and I don't think I can truly fault the movie for it as much as I can my own personal preferences for the character. My usual complaint about Justice League stories is "Not enough Batman". But here, I have to say "Not enough Superman". The final, climactic battle against the Centre is Batman leading the Air Force in a massive dogfight while Wonder Woman and the Army defend the beach. The Flash, Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern all have parts in the plan, but Superman is effectively removed from the entire last act of the movie.

I understand that this is essentially Hal Jordan's movie, but there's no reason that Superman should have to sit out the biggest battle sequence.

But I digress. The animation here is on par with what you'd expect from a direct-to-video DC Universe movie. The final battle is badass enough to make me wish this were a live-action, $200 million blockbuster, but I'm happy with what we get here. Watching the League fight crazy monsters and dinosaurs is just as cool as you'd hope it would be.

VIDEO
Clean, sharp, colorful - no complaints. As a modern animated feature, its essentially a digital feature, so there are no scratches or dirt or film stutter to worry about. Very nice.

AUDIO
The 5.1 Surround is more effective here than it was in "Superman Doomsday", which I felt was a bit underwhelming. Any problems I have aren't really with the mix so much as the sound design itself. Some of the sound effects here are just kinda lame. The exact sound of the Stargate opening and closing is used here without any alteration whatsoever, so those of us who recognize it will really recognize it. But bass is solid, with lots of activity in the rear speakers during action sequences, so I'm not gonna complain.

EXTRAS
By now you guys should know I don't often listen to commentaries, but let it be known there are two: one with the filmmakers, and one with comic writer Darwyn Cooke (I do plan to listen at least to that one at some point).

Beyond that, there are a couple of excellent documentaries. The first is a history of the Justice League throughout its various print and cartoon incarnations. It features the usual talking heads from DC, in both comics and cartoons, but is genuinely very insightful and fun.

Next is "Legion of Doom: The Pathology of the Supervillain" which is equally fascinating.

There's a ten minute sneak peak at the next DC animated feature, "Batman: Gotham Knight", which is obviously timed to coincide with Nolan's "The Dark Knight" this summer. This one looks to be the first real departure for these animated features, as its' very much a Batman anime. Really looking forward to that one.

There are also three episodes of Timm's "Justice League" show.

SCORE
MOVIE: A-
VIDEO: A
AUDIO: A-
EXTRAS: A
OVERALL: A

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Closet Racist

I'm watching it on glorious Blu-Ray tonight!

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Arik

Batman (of the second half of the movie) was a pansy. Superman (as you pointed out) was effectively removed from the last part of the movie. I didn't like Hal Jordan and, not knowing the story of the JSA, I felt that I was watching the second half of a two part story. Some of it was explained, but I didn't really know what was going on.

The art is stylistic and cool. I liked the period designs, especially the opening credits.

Batman didn't have a presence. Neither did Superman. Neither of them felt as big as they are.

The scene with Robin in it was just embarrassing.

I'd give it a B-. If I would have known it was a "Green Lantern" movie, I'd have passed.

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Brikar

I generally hate the Green Lantern. What saved it for me was that this was all about Hal Jordan and he only appears as GL at the end.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Closet Racist

My buddies and I watched it last night. Having not yet read the comic I have no real prejudice against it (yet). Does the comic explain who or what the "center" is? I wouldn't be against someone posting spoilers...

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Brikar

I also hate Frank Miller's "All Star Batman and Robin", but in the latest issue, he absolutely pegged my hatred for Green Lantern.

"Yellow. Has to be the lamest goddamn weakness I've ever heard."

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"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Bean

Yeah, i seems like something that'd be way to easy to take advantage of, yet it seems GLs enemies rarely do it. And when they do, he always seems surprised, like yellow is as rare as kryptonite or something.

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The Lensman

In regards to Batman and Superman....that's pretty much the way it happened in the comic, which was far better. I'd say the movie captured the presence they had in the comic fairly well. The comic focused, IIRC, mainly on Hal Jordan and Martian Manhunter.

As far as the JSA goes, the comic has a couple of newspaper clippings that kind of explain what the deal was, and there was a police battle with Hourman (which you see in the opening credits of the movie, but without any further extrapolation, renders it meaningless)
but that's really about it. I think later in the comics, the mystical heroes of the JSA talk about returning but are said that their time is over.

I like the Alan Scott GL best, followed by Kyle Rayner, then Hal.

I thought the movie explained it? The Center is an ancient form of life that predates humans. It's so big that life has grown on it, in some cases species thought extinct still live on it. In the comics it is introduced to us as a sort of "Monster Island" just after WW2. At this stage it's just a mysterious island with dinos. Much later is the reveal the island itself was alive. The movie briefly alludes to this in one of the brief newspaper or magazine pages collected by either Batman or MM. They did a lot of visual cues like this to include elements from the comic that they couldn't fit in. Since those things are done quickly, it sorta lost the impact of what they were trying to do by doing that in the first place.

Yellow was never a weakness for Alan or Kyle, and yes.....it is retarded. Alan's weakness was wood, but it was the 40's and it's still better than yellow. Although I think it's been retconned like this: Alan was kicking some criminal ass as GL, and a bad guy took him by surprise and KO'd him using a wood club or something. As such he *thought* he had a weakness for anything made of wood....and so he did. It was all in his mind.

Currently the GL's can overcome the yellow weakness, and yellow has been retconned, as has green, to represent an aspect of the emotional spectrum across the cosmos.

The Sinestro Corps books prophesized several more Corps coming. Each being focused on a specific emotion. Green is willpower, Yellow fear, Red is rage, Orange avarice, Blue hope, Indigo I forget, Purple love.

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Arik

I'm sure it was faithful to the comic. and, I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the comic half as much as I've enjoyed some of the other things the DC/Warner Bros. Animation teams have come up with.

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