DCAnimatedU Movie Review - Justice League: Doom

Director - Lauren Montgomery  

Writer - Dwayne McDuffie

Featuring the voice talents of - Kevin Conroy, Tim Daly, Nathan Fillion and others. 

Based on - Justice League: Tower of Babel by Mark Waid 

"Tower of Babel" is one of the greatest Justice League books ever written. And if you haven’t read it yet, take a step back and punch yourself in the face. 

You deserve it. Now go buy it and read it. 

Now, Justice League:Doom takes quite a few liberties with its source material. It isn’t just a Batman story anymore. And there’s more than just one villain. 

Is it a good movie? Of course it is. It’s a DC animated film. I’ll be damned if they ever go wrong. 

But how is it compared to the rest of the DC animated films? Not that great. I’d place it somewhere between Superman/Batman : Apocalypse and Justice League : Crisis On Two Earths. Heck, this is director Lauren Montgomery’s worst DC animated film yet. But it is good. It’s helluva lot of fun and very enjoyable.

There’s no Ra’s Al Ghul in this one (there’s the immortal Vandal Savage instead) and they’ve added a lot of villains. Some great ones, and some obscure ones, and (with the exception of Wonder Woman arch-enemy Cheetah and Bane) they’re all brilliantly designed. But Bane is just an embarrassment. It’s as if he’s borrowed Huntress’ costume and painted black over it. He looks like a man in a woman’s costume and it looks all kinds of gay on screen. And his mask makes him look even less intimidating. I’d say it’s the worst Bane design I’ve ever seen bar the one in Batman and Robin. Honestly, the masterful voice acting totally SAVES the character.

Speaking of voice acting, this movie boasts of an amazing cast of veteran voice actors… and Nathan Fillion. Now, Fillion was brilliant in the other animated movies he appeared in, but here, when he has to emote utter despair, he ends up sounding cranky and whiny and very out of character. But he does hold up well in the other scenes. The rest of the cast is nothing less than perfect.

This movie has some really great moments. Watching every superhero getting caught in the traps laid for them is glee-inducing and there’s this amazing scene where Superman falls from the Daily Planet building with a Kryptonite bullet in his chest. The ending, in my opinion, is an improvement from the one in the book, and it doesn’t feel out of place from this continuity created by the DC animated films. For fans of the book: It’s the same ending, but there’s an exchange between Batman and Superman at the end that totally improves everything and is better suited to the dynamics of THIS version of the Justice League.  

I didn’t find any fault in the direction (by the brilliant Lauren Montgomery of Green Lantern : First Flight and Batman : Year One fame), but I have some issues with the script. Now, every script goes through about hundreds of revisions. Even the good ones. But I guess they made this movie off an early draft of the script, out of respect for the late Dwayne McDuffie, because this movie feels like it wanted to have some emotional weight, but it didn’t. The script just didn’t have it. There’s a scene where Green Lantern is depressed because of his inability to save someone, but it falls flat because there was absolutely no exploration of the character in the first act. If Dwayne McDuffie were alive, I bet he would have revised his script a little more, and we’d have gotten a much better movie. 

However, for all its faults, Justice League : Doom is a very enjoyable flick with a lot of brilliant action and an amazing voice cast. Do watch it. (On a huge TV screen with a nice home theater system if possible) Also, it’s the most kid-friendly-est DC animation of late, so… yeah. There are no exploding heads or sleazy red-light districts in this movie. Show it to them little kiddies.

SCORE : 7 / 10

Justice League : Doom releases on 28th February on DVD and Blu Ray. You can purchase it <a href=”http://www.junglee.com/Justice-League-Blu-ray-UltraViolet-Digital/dp/B005SH63KG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330015762&sr=8-1”> here</a>