Plans, Plans, Plans...They Always Have Their Plans

I haven't done much on the DC Universe Animated Original series. Well, besides the one blog on the possibility of Flashpoint becoming a movie. I'll get into a more detailed blog about the series someday, and I hope to do all the other films in the line as well. Today, I want to blog about the latest in the line, Justice League: Doom.

Normally I'd start off with a little history on a comic book hero or team, but I want to meet my workload (it may be self-imposed but if I don't set some boundaries, this blog would be updated with much less frequency) of three blogs per week and there's a lot to cover with a team book. Next time I read a JL comic that I want to review, I'll do it then.

But in brief, it's DC's big superhero team, usually with seven main members. The most common line up involves DC's “Big Three” (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) one of the various Flashes (usually Barry Allen or Wally West), one of the many Earthbound Green Lanterns (most commonly Hal Jordan, Kyle Raynor or John Stewart), the Martian Manhunter and the seventh alternates depending on medium and continuity, though usually it's Aquaman or Hawkgirl.

Though in the current DC comic continuity, Martian Manhunter is part of Stormwatch and Cyborg takes his place.

This movie is based on the story arc entitled Tower Of Babel. In the arc, Ra's Al Ghul steals plans that Batman had created in case the Justice League ever went rogue or were brainwashed into committing evil acts and the process was irreversible. Ra's used these against the Justice League in order to keep them occupied while he undertakes his latest diabolical plan. To distract Batman, Ra's abducts the corpses of his parents, thus keeping Batman from helping his fellow leaguers.

I have read the story, and it's fantastic. It's one of those “Why did no one think of this before?” kind of stories, the plans themselves are brilliant and Ra's goal (scrambling all languages into nonsense to bring about war) is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect from one of Batman's greatest (and best written) enemies. I highly recommend the story.

The movie plays out much the same in terms of basic concept. However, besides being condensed to a large degree, the movie makes many alterations:

• It drops Plastic Man and Aquaman (a pity, his was my fave plan in the comic. Not because the character sucked but because it was just so brilliant. It involved being exposed to Scarecrow's fear gas to make him hydrophobic) and Cyborg steps up to bat (everything's coming up Cyborg these days!)
• Instead of Wally and Kyle, the film uses Barry and Hal in their place.
• The methods used to dispatch of each member of the league differs greatly (I'd go into great detail here but that's a lot to cover and I will be mentioning a few later on anyway).
• Vandal Savage is the main villain in the film, as opposed to Ra's Al Ghul.

So, despite the changes, I really enjoyed this movie. There hasn't been a bad DCUAO film yet. Or even an average one. The animation is as solid as always, filled with rich, detailed characters and colour schemes.

Voice acting-wise, many members of the DC animated show Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, which is always welcome. I love that show in both incarnations and to hear Kevin Conroy (Batman), Tim Daly (Superman, though Tim actually did the Superman voice for the character's own animated series only, with George Newbern filling in), Susan Eisenberg (Wonder Woman), Carl Lumbly (Martian Manhunter) and Michael Rosenbaum (Flash, though on the show itself, it was Wally West and not Barry Allen, which is a minor quibble I have with the movie, as it feels so odd due to how different Barry and Wally are as characters) again is like greeting old friends. Even recurring or one-shot characters in the show have their voice actors come back (Olivia D'Abo as Star Sapphire and Alexis Denisof as Mirror Master).

Even Nathan Fillion's back for another round as Hal Jordan (he voiced the character back in Green Lantern: Emerald Knights), which adds to the awesome. Bumper Robinson as Cyborg is a great addition, too.

If I had to single any one performance out as being the best, as unfair as it seems since most of the voice actors are pretty much the definitive voices for their respective roles, it's Carl Lumbly. The Martian Manhunter is given a drink which has magnesium in it (magnesium being poisonous to Martians in the DC universe), which causes him to catch fire and the fire cannot be extinguished. It should be noted that not only is fire the major weakness for Martians in DC, it's MM's greatest fear. So, it's a two-for-one combo of physical and mental pain. Carl's anguished screams, constantly filled with panic, they are amazingly done. It is that and that alone which makes it my favourite performance of the entire movie.

If I have one major gripe (besides the substituting of Vandal for Ra's, which isn't terrible but disappointing), it's that the changes in the plans, while not boneheaded or anything of that nature, are a little more simplistic or head-scratching compared to the original story.

For simplistic, there's Superman's. In the comic, Superman gets exposed to red Kryptonite (a substance that causes random transformations to Kryptonians, usually lasting 24 hours or so), which causes his skin to go transparent, which causes him to undergo a sensory overload and nearly overload on solar power. In the film... he gets shot with a Kryptonite bullet. Granted, the comic's plan may be a tad complicated to explain but the Kryptonite bullet goes too far in the opposite direction. I mean, that would imply that no one in the universe of that movie (most if not all of the movies in the DCUAO line are set in their own universe) has ever tried shooting Kryptonite at Superman. I would have thought that would have been one of the most basic plans.

Now, for a head-scratcher plan: Wonder Woman's involved being infected with nanomachines that alter her vision and hearing and make her perceive everyone around her as the Cheetah (voiced by Claudia Black), Wonder Woman's arch nemesis. In the comic, she is trapped in a virtual reality battle with a seemingly unbeatable opponent. While the plan in the movie isn't such a bad one, there's a slight flaw: isn't Wonder Woman listening to the people around her, to what they're saying and noticing how they're NOT attacking her? Most of the random civilians just say things like “Look, is that Wonder Woman?” I mean, Wonder Woman's not stupid, she should be able to figure out “Something's wrong here. Hold off on attacking until I can make sense of the situation”.

Still, these don't stand in the way from another fine effort from the DCUAO. 4/5