It doesn’t look like there’s been a thread about this yet, so here it is.
I just watched it this morning on my iPod. (Gotta love the new rental feature on iTunes.) I thoroughly enjoyed it.
What did everyone else think?
I own the two trade paperbacks and consider it among my favorite self-contained DC stories. Darwyn Cooke is one of the few great “auteurs” in comics, with a strong appreciation for history without getting bogged down in nitpicky continuity, and as an artist, his sense of design is among the best – you can tell he understands Art and Graphic Design, not just comic book art.
Anyway, I finally saw the movie on DVD last week, and liked it. I wish I loved it, and I think the 70-minute length had a lot to do with that. I think they could easily have made it 90 minutes and kept some of the sequences from the comic that were cut out – the Losers on Dinosaur Island, John Henry’s short career and tragic death, maybe more with the Challengers of the Unknown. That said, they hit most of the high points, and it was beautiful seeing Cooke’s artwork fully animated. I particularly like J’onn J’onzz’s story arc, and I was happy for Miguel Ferrer (apparently a huge comic book fanboy) to have been able to do his voice. In fact, the celebrity voices all worked very well and weren’t distracting. David Boreanaz and Neil Patrick Harris fit particularly well as Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, and casting Lucy Lawless as Wonder Woman was a no-brainer.
Oh yeah, it definitely should have been longer. I’ve not read the graphic novels yet, but it’s on my list now.
I thought it was weaker than the Superman/Doomsday one. It suffered from trying to cram too much into the film and they should have cut things back more than they did to make it into a smoother story.
I almost agree with you here. What annoyed me is that they had Phil Morris voicing King Faraday when he actually plays J’onn J’onzz on Smallville! I don’t necessarily expect continuity between the shows (and God knows, they can’t settle on one voice for the Superman actors - Dana Delany, Anne Heche and Kyra Sedgwick all played Lois lately), but if the voice actor is actually already there…!
I liked it a lot, though like everyone is saying, it should have been longer. I’d watch a six-hour miniseries of it.
I loved the voice casting. I thought Kyle Maclachlan did a great Superman.
We were a bit surprised at the level of violence onscreen. I mean, it was awesome, but they earned their PG-13 for sure. I think my six-year-old cousin’s going to have wait awhile to see this one though.
Eh, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Michael Rosenbaum might play Lex Luthor on Smallville, but he did the voice of Flash in Justice League Unlimited, where Clancy Brown voiced Lex. They actually did a funny episode where the two switched minds and bodies, probably as a nudge and a wink to Smallville fans.
Bruce Timm has my (totally inconsequential) vote for a Watchmen miniseries.
I remember that one. They kept casting Flash as the clown in that series, so it was fun watching Lex/Flash kick everyone’s butt for a few minutes (until he got pwned by Mr. Terrific…yes, pwned, there’s just no other word for it).
It was just odd to not hear Kevin Conroy do Batman.
For the stupid format restrictions (the length is calculated so they could split it up into 3 half-hour blocks with commercials on TV if they wanted), it was remarkably well-done. More time would have allowed them to bring in more good stuff from the comic, and the film would sometimes just blurt out themes the comic developed more gradually and organically, but it still worked.
Much better than Superman/Doomsday. (Which I liked, but…)
I wish it had been longer.
And then there was the episode were Luthor (Clancy Brown) showed up on The Batman, where he also voices Mr. Freeze, but he shuts Freeze p before he can say a word! I thought that was funny…so they’re aware of the voicing issues…it just would have been neat if the live-action J’onn had played the cartoon J’onn. like when Adam West and Burt Ward took over on Superfriends.
Clown? Yeah, sort-of. Thing is, he’s important -because- of that. Watch the final season if you haven’t. I won’t spoiler anything here, but … Well, he’s a lot more important than one might think.
Beyond that, glad to hear the positives on this, sorta sad to hear it’s only 70 minutes, and that a lot had to get hacked out.
They addressed how the Flash approaches his job as a superhero differently on a couple of occasions, not just the Brainiac / Lex Luthor finale.
Among other Flash-centric episodes were:
- Brave and the Bold, focusing on Flash and Green Lantern
- Episode on Apocalypse with Mr. Miracle
- Episode with the Flash Museum
I think Flash had more personality that J’onn J’onzz, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. One problem with the Flash is that sometimes writers need to do dumb stuff to get him out of the way, because he is very versatile and powerful. It is the same problem with Superman. Green Lantern was simply powered-down throughout, with the amount of power he lost being transferred to Hawkgirl.
Well - and wasn’t there the episode where The Flash died in the past, which led to the league becoming more tyrannical and not good. Where Superman lobotomized villains, and they had cool new costumes.
He was the soul of the team, if not the heart.
EDIT - The epidsode was A Better World
I thought Jeremy Sisto did well. I like Kevin Conroy too, and I liked Tim Daly’s Superman in the animated series, but New Frontier is obviously set on what is pretty much Earth-2, so I didn’t have a problem accepting different voices.
Watched it last night; it’s still in my DVD drive, in fact. It needed to be at least 30 minutes longer; hell, I’ll go ahead and say minutes, so it would be a full two hours. I don’t understand the decision to make it so short, as it is clearly intended for adult comic fans, not kids (hint number one: Hal Jordan getting splattered with an enemy soldier’s blood after shooting him. Hint two: [del]Xena[/del] Wonder Woman rescuing a group of Vietnamese women from gang rape and then watching in grim amusement as the former sex slaves kill their captors.)
There was so much clearly missing from this movie. I wanted a better understanding of what the Center was doing. I wanted a better understanding of whether Wonder Woman and Superman were explicitly government agents at the beginning of the movie (as seemed to be indicated by the fact that Superman gave no signs of using the name “Clark Kent” any more). I wanted to know why Batman was a fugitive. I wanted a better feel for the relative ages of the characters, since Kal, Diana, Bruce, and Lois all seemed to have been active during WWII. (Okay, it’s not unreasonable that the former two are either immortal or very long-lived, but given the quasi-realistic feel of the rest of the piece, it was jarring.
But I think about these things too much.
So, is the bottom line that this is worth seeing?
I’d say so. Lucy Lawless voicing WW was quite enjoyable, and the Flash, as usual, rocked.