Average flick that delivers the beat-ups and decent story.
Batman comes upon a bank robbery being committed by the newest incarnation of the Royal Flush Gang; a violent crew who's styles are motivated by the faces of playing cards. After the group is taken down by the Justice League, Batman's secret files are stolen and each member of the Justice League is attacked. -summary
Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and the Flash are five of the most powerful superheroes in the DC universe on their own. Collectively as the Justice League, they are far more powerful than most forces can handle. They have taken down powerful sorcerers, gods, and even cosmic threats. So it made sense that normal people in the group, in this case Batman, would feel it necessary to have an edge to deal with them should they ever go rogue. Justice League: Doom directed by Lauren Montgomery is a retelling of Mark Waid's Justice League: Tower of Babel. If you come into this expecting a faithful adaptation of the original source material then you will be disappointed, as many of the elements that made the original story so epic are pretty much lost. However, if you watch this as its own movie for the sake of cool action, then it's more enjoyable as you get that classic superhero vs. super villain rumble.
The first thing to hit me about this movie that began to immediately put me off was the artwork. The character designs are of the same mold as Justice League: New Frontier, Crisis on Two Earth's, and the Young Justice TV series. And quite frankly, I'm just not a fan of these bland designs that come off way too thin looking. The only character with an intimidating feel was Bane, in fact, I found the villains to be better drawn for the most part, but in the case of lead villain Vandal Savage, his character design resembled Sebastian Shaw from the pages of X-Men too much for my taste. At least the animation was done well enough with some quick paced battles in the form of hand to hand and bright energy attacks. Green Lantern was probably the most interesting here using his wild imagination to conjure various constructs, such as giant punching gloves and slingshots.
The backgrounds use a bit of CG, and there are some nice moments like the raging ultra-violet rays from the sun, and a good close up of the suns flames. The movies visuals are pretty good overall. The voice acting was a throwback to the original cast of the Justice League: Animated Series with Kevin Conroy voicing Batman, Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman, and Tim Daly as Superman who voiced the character in Superman: The Animated Series. There's nothing here I can see myself complaining about.
The plot follows Vandal Savage as he contacts an arch nemesis from each member of the JLA's rogues gallery; Bane, Star Sapphire, Cheetah, Maalefaak, Mirror Master, and Metallo. Together they form the Legion of Doom, and they assemble solo traps for their enemies which were originally created by Batman to defeat each member; by eliminating the JLA, Savage is left to put his personal plan in motion.
When I watch the movie as its own entity, it holds up with the action and drama meshing well enough to create a smooth pace and an entertaining ride. The traps that are sprung on the JLA have a level of cleverness to them and in the eyes of casual fans, I'm sure it will be very exciting; but everything felt by the numbers and the traps were just another gimmick to build up to the high impact showdown by the end. Plus, in animated form, one of the traps were a complete rehash from another DC animated movie. There's just no excuse for that.
Something else that really bothered me about this story was how Batman was written. He comes off way too paranoid here, and I felt the writing team did a poor job fleshing out his true reasoning. Even if I never read the book, I understand that the JLA are very powerful, but the writing team could have used the animated series as its pool source to strengthen Batman's argument, such as using the Justice Lords power trip which lead to the Cadmus Project being created. Now that would have been a great example to back up Batman's stance. The story feels like he has an inferiority complex because they have powers and he doesn't. Batman just doesn't think this way. The book was far more intricate with much better character development all around; such as in regards to Batman's reasoning, in which he used the confrontation with Agamemno as his main motivation, with how the JLA felt betrayed which led to them kicking him out of the group, and even the main villain Ra's Al Gul who came up with a very ingenious plan to throw the world into complete chaos.
I would have also preferred to see the main team from the animated series also. Cyborg takes the place of Hawkgirl, plus Barry Allen replaces Wally West as the Flash. This was clearly to further promote The New 52 but it felt strange to me watching a smarter version of Flash instead of the rambling fool who almost always delivers with the laughs.
Justice League: Doom is far from a bad DC movie. It has some good action scenes and the fast pace helps the movie go by rather quick. If you enjoyed the previous movies in the series, or any of the other DC animated films then you'll more than likely enjoy this. As for whether or not this is for the kids, it has a great deal of action, but I don't recall anything here too offensive.
Pros:Good animation and action
Cons:Feels way too average, fans of the book will be disappointed
