The plot: After a series of grisly murders that seem to have
a magical component to them, Batman (Jason O’Mara) is led to occult detective
John Constantine (Matt Ryan). Reluctantly, Constantine agrees to team up with
Batman, Zatanna (Camilla Luddington), Deadman (Nicholas Turturro) and Jason
Blood/Etrigan (Ray Chase) to discover what could cause these ordinary civilians
to become murderous. However, as they delve deeper into the world of the dark
arts, the team are going to be confronted with things that no human should have
to witness. Things like a demon made of literal shit that looks like it was
designed by Hayao Miyazaki. Yeah.
Ryan’s experience with portraying everyone’s favourite
supernatural detective serves him extremely well here, bringing a lot of
sardonic charm to his very quippy dialogue. Aside from how well he delivers his
lines, his general aura within the story feels like this is a personality that
is borne from frequent exposure to very, very
dark and unsettling stuff. O’Mara as the Caped Crusader doesn’t have the same
heaviness as Kevin Conroy (then again, few things on this Earth do) but since
he only has to focus on the superhero side of the character, he does very well
with it. When you hear him manage to scare a literal spectre of death, you buy
it without a second thought.
Luddington is okay in her role, even though it’s
not quite as meaty as it should be given her own place within the group
dynamic, Turturro is likewise just okay as the resident wise-cracker, and
Colleen Villard as this story’s version of Black Orchid is really damn passive,
which is saying something when her character is already passive as hell to
begin with. Cross as both Swamp Thing and the John Stewart iteration of Green
Lantern works out nicely, mainly as the former since he’s able to imbue the
character with the majestic air that it calls for, and Chase as Etrigan is
absolutely fantastic. Not only does he do very well with both Jason Blood and
the demon he turns into, he makes the literal poetry of his dialogue sound
fitting and even has some fun with it.
Similar to that other Justice League film from this year, this has to introduce pretty much its
entire main cast within the story itself. Dissimilar
to Justice League, this film actually manages to get the job done. With Batman
as our focal point into the seedier side of magic within the DC universe,
writer Ernie Altbacker manages to introduce some rather high-concept ideas into
a 75-minute space without any of it feeling slapshod or even out-of-place
alongside the OG Justice League. Some of the characters are rather easy to set
up, like Zatanna the performing magician with actual magical powers, while
others should take some time to get your head around, like Swamp Thing the
personification and defender of nature itself.
And yet, not only do we get a
definite sense of character establishment and personality for everyone
involved, we also get some really solid set pieces to introduce them. Whether it’s
Constantine playing poker with demons, Jason Blood fighting alongside the
others knights of Camelot, or Deadman’s trapeze act going horribly wrong, they
all work at quickly getting the audience up to date on their existence and making sure that they stick in the
audience’s mind.
That lingering sense of memorability, again with the short
running time in mind, also exists in the visuals. Now, admittedly, the DC
animated universe as it exists right now is going by The New 52 character
designs, which means that when we get a good look at Superman and Wonder Woman
(and even Batman, to be honest), we’re shown one of the weaker visual iterations of
the character. The animation also lacks a lot of the crispness that I’ve come
to expect from DC’s animated work, but then again, that’ll happen when I
haven’t really seen that many of the more recent instalments and Paul Dini isn’t directly involved.
That said, when the film gets into the more action-oriented moments, it is
rather effective. The emphasis on magic might not get stretched as far as it
could in the animated arena, but it’s kind of difficult to argue against
magicians, ghosts and demons battling an Arthurian-era sorcerer. Especially
when the action is paced out enough so that everyone can get their chance to
shine.
In the realms of comic books, the term “dark” in regards to
story is usually a bad sign. Most of the time, it refers less to the themes of
the narrative being heavy and disturbing, and more to the themes of the
narrative being what the writers think
is heavy and disturbing but is more accurately just trying too hard to be
“mature”. It takes literally no time at all before this film makes its case in
that regard, delving into the kind of unnerving and rather frightening ideas
that I’ve come to expect from the Vertigo staple of characters (Constantine,
Swamp Thing, etc.) While the impetus for getting together the titular team is a
bit of a headscratcher, since the Justice League themselves admit that they
have experience with magical foes, the progression and willingness to delve
into truly dark territory ends up making that scepticism just an afterthought.
Things like being convinced that your newborn child, your family, your
neighbours, even random people off the street, have been overtaken by demons is
perturbing enough… until you see the reactions to that idea.
From then on, this
film deals with notions of death and the dark arts in a surprisingly smooth
fashion, getting some chuckles and blood-pumps in without diminishing the
material given. I say “surprisingly” because this is a barely-feature-length
animated film, and it somehow managed to get the seriousness of the situation
across better than a full-fledged live-action flick. Good to see that not everyone
connected with DC nowadays is a complete dumpster fire.
All in all, it’s nice to know that we got at least one good Justice League movie this year.
The voice acting is damn good, with Matt Ryan definitely making a case for
keeping his incarnation of the character around, the animation has its off
points but definitely sells the action scenes, and the writing balances
character introduction, characterisation, morose subject matter and humour
without even breaking a sweat. I’ll admit to not being that familiar with the
DC Universe Animated Original Movies, but after seeing this, I’m looking
forward to seeing more of them.
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