I know I’m turning into a bit of a broken record regarding the continuing series of animated DC Universe DVDs, but I can’t really help it.  I’m really enjoying the direct-to-DVD series so far, and I certainly understand that I should count my blessings that these unique and well-made animated projects exist at all.  But I’m still waiting for one of these new animated films to truly hit the ball out of the park.  These films are great, but none yet rival, say, the animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm from 1993.

Which is not to say that the latest animated film, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, isn’t a lot of fun — it certainly is!  Based on a variety of different comic book story-lines, this film has some fun with the idea of alternate universes existing parallel with the main DC universe.  Lex Luthor flees one-such alternate world, where alternate versions of the Justice League members have banded together to form the Crime Syndicate and take over the world.  Luthor — actually fighting on the side of good in that universe — determines that his world’s only hope lie in heroes from another universe entirely — our Justice League.

It’s a pretty familiar set-up, but what follows is a fun, tightly-paced action adventure in which Superman, Batman, & co. are forced to confront darker, more ruthless versions of themselves.  There are some nice character beats, and several terrific action sequences.

The voice acting — as is par for the course in these Bruce Timm-supervised DC animated productions — is top-notch.  Hark Harmon (NCIS, The West Wing) is Superman, William Baldwin is Batman, Chris Noth (Mr. Big from Sex and the City) is Lex Luthor, and Vanessa Marshall is Wonder Woman.  Portraying their adversaries are Brian Bloom as Ultraman, James Woods (so many great movies, including Casino and Once Upon a Time in America) as Owlman, and Gina Torres (Zoe from Firefly) as Superwoman.

Despite those great actors, though, I must confess that I miss the voices from the original animated Superman, Batman, and Justice League TV series.  It was GREAT having those core original actors (Tim Daly, Kevin Conroy, and Clancy Brown) back for the last DC animated DVD, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (read my review here), and I missed them in this installment.  This was particularly the case because this film isn’t a direct adaptation of a specific comic book story — in fact, of all the DVD films, this adventure feels the most like it could have been an extra-long episode of the Justice League series.  This isn’t a surprise, because on the special features it is revealed that writer Dwayne McDuffie had originally written this adventure as a Justice League episode!  (Attentive viewers can clearly see how this adventure could have fit between the 2nd season of Justice League and the start of Justice League Unlimited – we see the retrofitting of the Justice League’s satellite headquarters, we see the main team make the decision to incorporate other heroes into the League, etc.)  So all the more reason for the original voice actors to have been used.  Oh well.

The word Crisis has a strong meaning in the DC universe.  It has come to indicate important, universe-shaking adventures.  Crisis on Two Earths, while a fun film, doesn’t quite live up to the weight of the Crisis title.  In many ways, it feels like a tease for a greater adventure to come.  (Even the title – Crisis on Two Earths, rather than, say, Crisis on Infinite Earths — the famous DC universe-wide crossover series from 1986 — indicates that this adventure is something of a prelude.)  I do hope that the story-lines begun this film are followed-up on in future DVDs.  It would be absolutely amazing, for example, to see Bruce Timm and his talented team of collaborators take a stab at adapting the seminal Crisis on Infinite Earths series.

Hope springs eternal!

I should also comment that the DVD has some decent special features.  There’s a fun documentary called DCU: The New World which spotlights several of the big DC crossovers of the past few years.  (Though I thought it was a little bizarre that the doc didn’t spend too much time talking about the classic Crisis story-lines, on which this DVD film is loosely based.)  But the best special feature is an additional short film featuring The Spectre.  Done in a really snazzy, almost-retro style, this extra feature was a TON of fun.  Props to the filmmakers for choosing the always-great Gary Cole (Crusade, The West Wing, Pineapple Express) to voice the title character.  I hope to see more of these additional short films, spotlighting other DC Universe characters, on future DVDs!

OK, we’re getting closer!

We’re now six films into DC Comics and Warner Bros.’ exciting new endeavor to launch high-quality direct-to-DVD animated films masterminded by Bruce Timm, one of the key creative forces behind the amazing Batman: The Animated Series from the 90’s.  In my review of the fourth film, Wonder Woman, I wrote that I enjoyed the effort but that I was disappointed that, to that point, the DVD series wasn’t turning out as I had hoped.  I wrote:

The original announcement had seemed to indicate that the series would focus more on adaptations of classic comic stories as opposed to this sort of one-off origin story that isn’t based on any specific source material.  This is the sort of thing that most of the live-action super-hero films do, creating a new story that is sort of a “melange” of various bits of story-lines and background from the many years of the character’s history.  It’s not what I was hoping for from these DVDs.  (To my dismay, the preview included on the Wonder Woman disc seems to indicate that the next DVD, a Green Lantern adventure, will be exactly this same type of not-based-on-anything-specific tale.)  Where is my epic animated adaptation of The Great Darkness Saga?  Or Batman: Year One?  Or Kingdom Come?  How cool would that be?

Other than my philosophical support of its premise, is Superman/Batman: Public Enemies actually any good?  Well, it definitely is, though like the rest of these new DVDs it does not match the heights of any of Bruce Timm’s animated DCU series (Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, etc.).

The story is simple:  Lex Luthor has been elected President of the United States.  He uses the discovery of an enormous fragment of Kryptonite that is on-course to impact with Earth (to what would be sure to be devastating consequences for the planet) as an excuse to issue a warrant for Superman’s arrest.  Batman quickly gets involved, and the two heroes find themselves on the run from a whole host of super-villains eager for the bounty Luthor has offered.  They also find themselves hunted by a number of heroes who feel a moral imperative to obey the orders of America’s commander in chief.  Meanwhile, there’s still the little matter of finding a way to avert the impending impact of the Kryptonite meteor.

This DVD, as with the original comic books, is pretty much action-action-action.  The animation is, for the most part, really gorgeous (probably the best effort since the first one, Superman: Doomsday).  The animation teams on these DVDs seem to be more comfortable with large action sequences than with intimate dialogue sequences (which is probably why I feel Superman: Doomsday and Public Enemies are the most successful ones, as they’re also the most action-packed).  These guys are AMAZING at choreographing enormous super-hero/villain action sequences.  There’s a lot of fun eye-candy here, and the pace of the story is pretty relentless.

I have really enjoyed how, for each of these DVDs, Timm and his team have created new designs for all of the characters, in an attempt to match the style of the artists of the source material.  Ed McGuinness has a very distinct style of drawing, and I was really surprised and impressed by the way the animation maintained a lot of the flavor of his original work.  Not everything is perfect — there are some instances where what worked in a still drawing doesn’t translate to a moving image, such as the early scene where Captain Atom and Major Force confront Superman.  As the two characters walk towards Superman, one can see that the animators had trouble making their enormously-muscled arms (a distinct McGuinness characteristic) move along with their bodies.  Also, while I found most of the character-designs to be really top-notch (especially the tweaked looks for Luthor and Batman), I was appalled at the hideous depiction of Amanda Waller.  She’s always been a heavy character, but here she was absurdly obese!  Yikes!  I also wasn’t wild about the over-simplified look of Power Girl’s face, with her enormous bird-like eyes.  But these are small quibbles — over-all, as I wrote, the animation is top-notch.

The best feature of this DVD is the return of the classic voices from the original DCU animated series: Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption) as Lex Luthor, Tim Daly as Superman, and Kevin Conroy as Batman.  As far as I’m concerned, those three actors ARE those characters.  There have been many other great actors who have taken a swing at those roles (both in live-action and in the other DC animated DVDs), but no one can beat those three.  (PARTICULARLY Kevin Conroy’s Batman.)  So it was an ENORMOUS delight to have those three all return for this installment, and the film gives them a lot of opportunities to riff off of one another.  (I was further pleased to see several other voices from the original animated series return to reprise their roles, such as CCH Pounder as Amanda Waller.)

So what’s not so good?  Primarily, it’s that the story upon which all of the exciting action hangs is rather weak.  I understand that it’s popular, but Loeb and McGuinness’ original comic-book storyline is far being one of my favorites, and the DVD shares many of its weaknesses.  While the set-up is cool (how would Superman and Batman react if their worst enemy actually was elected, without fraud, to the highest office in the land?), the story quickly devolves into silliness.  By the time one gets to the end, in which Lex has donned his green and purple super-suit and an enormous Superman/Batman robot arrives out of nowhere to save the day, the adventure has veered into total lunacy.  Over-all, Timm and writer Stan Berkowitz have done a good job at trimming away many of the indulgences from the original story (such as the go-nowhere subplots involving the possibility that Superman villain Metallo was the one who shot Bruce Wayne’s parents, and the appearance of the Kingdom Come Superman from the future), but the disappointment of the third act’s story was exactly the same thing that bugged me about the final issues of the original comic.

I also would have enjoyed a lot more fleshing-out of how exactly Luthor got himself elected President.  There’s a great montage that opens the film that sets this premise up, hinting that tough economic times created desperation in the country’s voters, but after a clip of Luthor on a news show declaring his candidacy, we jump right to the announcement that he was elected President.  I would have liked to have seen a lot more info on how he sold himself to the country, how he convinced people to disregard his criminal past, etc. etc.  It’s key to the story that we buy into the notion that Luthor was legitimately elected, and I think more time needed to be spent on fleshing out that idea.

(True, none of that was present in the original comic, but that’s because this story came after several years of storytelling in DC’s various Superman books that DID explore the story of Luthor’s candidacy and eventual election.  Most readers who read those six issues of Superman/Batman in 2003/4 had read those other comics, so Loeb and McGuinness didn’t need to spend too much time on the set-up.  This DVD, on the other hand, needs to stand entirely on its own, and I think they would have been well-served to have taken a little more time to sell the premise.)

I also would have liked to have seen a little more time (even just a scene or two would have sufficed) to explain exactly why certain heroes agree to work for Luthor.  The dilemma of a super-hero having to decide whether his/her respect for the office of the President outweighs his/her personal feelings about the office-holder is an extraordinarily rich hook for the story.  But I felt those juicy issues were quickly swept aside (by the original comics, and even more-so by the DVD movie) in favor of moving on to more action.  This leaves me totally confused as to why heroes like Hawkman and Captain Marvel, for instance, choose to stand against their former colleagues Superman and Batman.  This DVD is the shortest of the six animated DVDs so far (it’s a brisk 67 minutes), so it’s not like they couldn’t have added in a few extra minutes fleshing out some of this character motivation and back-story.

(Speaking of Hawkman and Captain Marvel, by the way, brings me to yet another issue I have with both the DVD and the original comics: I think the drama of Superman and Batman having to fight against other super-heroes would have been much richer if they’d been facing off against other of the DCU’s big guns like Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, as opposed to B-listers like Captain Atom and Black Lightning.)

I’m getting into a lot of niggling complaints, now, and I really shouldn’t.  The DVD really is quite solid.  It’s just that I have extraordinarily high standards for animation, and particularly for the DCU animated projects.  (This is primarily because Timm & co. set the bar SO HIGH for themselves with all of their terrific work on the Batman, Superman, Batman: Beyond, and Justice League TV series!)   Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is a very entertaining and enjoyable entry in the new DVD series, and superior to the last three DVDs.

It’s great… but I am still waiting for the SPECTACULAR.

Two rather high-profile new direct-to-DVD animation projects have been released recently — but are they worth your time and hard-earned dollars?  Well read on, true believers!

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder — And so, once again, we bid farewell to Futurama.  Matt Groening’s lunatic sci-fi series was brutally cancelled by Fox back in 2003 after only four seasons.  Luckily, after several long years of waiting, the series was resurrected for a series of four direct-to-DVD feature-length animated films, of which this is the last.  While these new movies haven’t quite reached the high-points of the series’ best episodes (I’m thinking about episodes such as The Farnsworth Parabox, Roswell That Ends Well, Love and Rocket, War is the H-Word, Amazon Women in the Mood, The Bird-bot of Ice-Catraz, The Problem with Popplers, or The Day the Earth Stood Stupid), they have been very, very good.  The strongest, in my opinion, was The Beast with a  Billion Backs, in which David Cross (Arrested Development, Mr. Show) plays the alien Yivo who attempts to mate with every creature in the universe, while the weakest was Bender’s Game (as I found the extended fantasy sequence in the middle of the film to be a bit dull).

Into the Wild Green Yonder contains all the crazy zaniness, wild side-stories, and obscure sci-fi references that I have come to expect from the series.  The plot is almost beside the point, but I will attempt a summation.  The story begins on Mars, where the construction of a new Mars Vegas is disrupted by a band of eco-feminists.  Pretty soon Fry has been declared the savior of the universe by a bunch of telepaths wearing aluminum foil hats, Bender arouses the wrath of the mobster Don-Bot for making out with his wife, Leela goes under-cover with the feminists, and it all builds to a massive space-ship battle in the middle of an intergalactic mini-golf course.

The DVD is very solid — the animation is GORGEOUS, as always.  The story, despite some digressions, works well as a movie.  There are very few lulls between big laughs.  As for the ending — well, the original Futurama series was cancelled without any time to produce a final episode, so with this being the final DVD (for now, at least — hope always springs eternal that these will have proven profitable enough for more to be on the way!), fans wondered if we’d get some sort of “finale” to the over-all story.  Well, I think they got things just right.  The last scene is just terrific, with some nice closure that doesn’t close the door on further adventures.  And the very last shot?  Perfection.

If this is the end of Futurama then I will consider us lucky at being given the incredible gift of these four direct-to-DVD movies.  BUT… come-on… there’s a lot more mileage left in this series, right?  Let’s see four more DVDs!!

Wonder Woman — The enormous success of Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series lead to several other Bruce Timm-lead DC animated series: Superman, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. Marked by gorgeous animation and adult storytelling, it was intriguing the way all four of those animated series seemed to share a larger universe, with characters and story-lines carried over from one series to the next.  When the door closed on this DC Animated Universe with the end of Justice League in May, 2006, it seemed like the end of a remarkable decade of entertainment.  But soon-after, DC and Warner Brothers delighted fans by announcing that Bruce Timm would be spearheading a new line of direct-to-DVD animated films based on DC comics.  These would not be set in the shared universe of Timm’s TV shows — rather, they would each be stand-alone adventures, many of which would be adapted directly from seminal comic books, and they would be aimed squarely at adults.  Wow!  I’m sure I wasn’t alone at being overwhelmed with excitement at the thought that Timm would get to cut loose with some high-quality PG-13 animated films.

Unfortunately, the track record of this series has been pretty mixed so far.  The first project was an adaptation of the multi-issue Death of Superman storyline that made such waves back in the 90’s.  I don’t have great affection for that sprawling tale, but I was impressed with the way that Timm and co. condensed it into a pretty solid hour-and-a-half film.  Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly) did terrific work as the new voice of Superman, and there was some pretty spectacular action.  The next film was adapted from a much higher-quality piece of source material, Darwyn Cooke’s retelling of the Golden Age origins of DC’s superheroes, The New Frontier.  Sadly, while there was clearly a lot of love on display in the animated adaptation, I found it to be pretty flat, missing a lot of the fun and dramatic energy of Cooke’s original work.  The third project was an anthology of Batman stories called Gotham Knight, with each short story created by a variety of different animators of wildly differing styles.  An interesting exercise, but not that compelling to me.

Which brings us to Wonder Woman.  I am pleased to report that this is a solid little adventure.  As always with these DC animated projects, the voice-cast is stellar.  Keri Russell is fabulous as Wonder Woman — tough but also able to bring a lot of humor to the role.  Speaking of humor, Nathan Fillion (Captain Mal from Firefly — I guess the casting director liked that show, huh?) is as reliably great as he always is as Steve Trevor, the pilot who crash-lands on Wonder Woman’s home of Paradise Island.  Fillion’s energy lifts every scene that he’s in, and he effectively walks the fine line between being a bit of a cad, but a lovable one.  Alfred Molina gives good menace as the villain, Ares, and Rosario Dawson, Oliver Platt, and Virginia Madsen also turn in fine work in supporting roles.

The design of the characters — the look and feel of the world — is very well done.  The design of Wonder Woman herself is particularly good.  She is strong and feminine without looking silly, and they gave her a slightly exotic look to her face that gives her a distinct, unique look, as opposed to appearing like a generic super-bimbo.  The animation is solid but not spectacular.  The film builds to a particularly carnage-filled battle in Washington, DC., which is cool, but the animation doesn’t quite sell the scale of things.  I think about an animated film like Akira, released back in 1988, that so gorgeously captured the enormous devastation that would result from the clash of super-powered beings.  In comparison to that, Wonder Woman’s final battle looks pretty small.  (Although, to be fair, so too does almost EVERY American animated film released in the intervening years!  And this certainly isn’t a big-budget theatrical release.)  I suppose the problem is that live-action super-hero films have gotten so good at bringing the world of super-heroes to extraordinarily vivid life that it’s hard for these modestly-budgeted animated efforts to compete.  For many years, these animated adventures could show us the type of spectacle that a live-action movie could never possibly capture.  But having just watched a film like Watchmen, it is now clear that the sky’s the limit in terms of what those films can accomplish with their visual effects — and these sorts of animated projects really need to raise the bar in order to compete.

I also found myself distracted by some pretty large plot holes in the film.  Who the heck were Steve Trevor and his fellow pilots fighting in that first aerial dog-fight?  After the other pilots are killed and Steve is rescued by Wonder Woman, he goes off on an adventure with her following Ares for the rest of the film.  But, um, doesn’t he have to check in with his superiors in the military, to let them know that he’s alive?  During the final big battle in DC, the President orders a nuclear strike on Paradise Island.  Cut to a missle shooting out from right over the Washington Monument.  Um, hasn’t it been established that Paradise Island is somewhere over by Greece?  Don’t we have some missiles closer to that part of the world that we could launch?  Do we really have a nuclear silo right by the Washington monument?  These sorts of lapses are distracting.

I sound like I’m being very critical of Wonder Woman, and I don’t mean to be.  It really is a nice rousing adventure story.  I really appreciated the more adult areas that the PG-13 rating allows this film to explore.  The combat sequences are pretty violent, and Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor’s banter is allowed to be a bit more risque than one otherwise might have expected.

Ultimately my disappointment is that this type of story isn’t where I wanted DC’s direct-to-DVD series to go.  The original announcement had seemed to indicate that the series would focus more on adaptations of classic comic stories as opposed to this sort of one-off origin story that isn’t based on any specific source material.  This is the sort of thing that most of the live-action super-hero films do, creating a new story that is sort of a “melange” of various bits of story-lines and background from the many years of the character’s history.  It’s not what I was hoping for from these DVDs.  (To my dismay, the preview included on the Wonder Woman disc seems to indicate that the next DVD, a Green Lantern adventure, will be exactly this same type of not-based-on-anything-specific tale.)  Where is my epic animated adaptation of The Great Darkness Saga?  Or Batman: Year One?  Or Kingdom Come?  How cool would that be?

Maybe someday…