Justice League: New Frontier
By John • Jan 29th, 2008 • Category: 2 Stars, Comic BookThis is a direct to DVD animated movie, based on the comic New Frontier by Darwin Cooke. It is a silver age story featuring the Justice League battling The Center. Each character has its own separate story, and we jump to each of them throughout the movie.
So in the beginning we just get a series of separate vignettes about each character. At first I was confused because I was looking for the thread that would link them, but that thread is a very thin one, and unfortunately it is not well explained at the end either.
It was cool to see earlier incarnations of famous characters like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The origins of the some of the other characters were modified to fit semi-coherently together.
I am not familiar with the classic DC comics stories that inspired this story, so many times I felt lost. I think this story is more for people who are familiar with those comics and the history of the DC universe. Which begs the question why did they adapt this to a movie?
Rating: 2.5 Stars
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I had pretty much the same reaction as you did. This seemed like a highly edited down version of a longer film. If they aren’t going to explain something, they shouldn’t put it in the movie. It’s all well and good to put in easter eggs for the hardcore DC fans, but it shouldn’t be stuff that leaves everybody else scratching their heads (ie, who’re the guys in the purple shirts? who’s the guy who looks like Hangman from the Watchmen? What’s the deal with Aquaman in the end? What powers does the martian have?) If they’d just stuck with Hal Jordan, Batman, Superman, and the Martian, they’d have had time for other stuff, like a villain that’s something other than a random plot device.
That said, I found a lot to like here. The general style seemed very reminiscent of the JL and JLU shows, which I love. The voice actors were all well chosen. I liked the use of old character designs for Batman and Superman. If you are going to insist on using Wonder Woman, the giant, ultra butch Xena version they had here is a pretty good choice. I liked their Hal Jordan better than any version of Green Lantern I’ve seen elsewhere.
All in all, this was a much better offering than Doomsday, which just seemed like a pointless exercise in trying to be arbitrarily different than the previous animated Superman. I really hope that this direct to video program at DC eventually gives us Bruce Timm’s version of Green Lantern. The upcoming projects I’ve heard about so far (Teen Titans, Wonder Woman, more Batman) don’t sound all that promising.