Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths (2010)

Warner Brothers
Directed by Sam Liu, Lauren Montgomery
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Starring: William Baldwin, Mark Harmon, Christopher Noth, Gina Torres, and James Woods
Elwood Says: 3.5 Made Men out of 5 (Feature); 2 Naked Lex Luthors out of 5 (Extras)

Warner Brothers and DC Comics have been making some seriously quality animated films lately, and hot on the will-powered heels of “Green Lantern: First Flight” comes this latest entry, centered on the core supergroup of the DCU, The Justice League.

Borrowing heavily from Grant Morrison’s graphic novel ‘Earth 2′, the movie shows us a world where the heroes are on the run. On this Other Earth, the Crime Syndicate rules the roost. A superpowered mafia of sorts, Ultraman, Superwoman, and Owlman lead the “families” and the last surviving member of the Justice League – Lex Luthor – has vowed to stop them at whatever cost.

Lex transports himself to our dimension and enlists the help of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest to stop the Crime Syndicate from destroying not just Earth 2, but all of the Infinite Earths.

DC Comics and Warner Brothers animation has another hit with JL:COTE. The animation was beautiful, and looked amazing on Blu-Ray. Dwayne McDuffie, long-time writer for the Justice League animated series, did a great job with the script and told a tight crisp tale. I really enjoyed it. James Woods was note-perfect as Owlman, Gina Torres brought her A-game for Superwoman, and Chris Noth played a subtle and un-evil Lex Luthor.

Andrea Romano has never chosen poorly when it comes to the voices used in any DC Animated property, but in this film I found two voices to stand out as…different.

Mark Harmon as Superman is the first one. Harmon has a very wooden performance here, and it takes away from the emotion of Superman. We all know that Mark Harmon is a great actor, and can do comedy as well as drama. As Superman, he seems to bring a lot more Jethro Gibbs to the part. So much so, in fact, that I was anticipating Superman smacking Flash on the back of the head at any time. The problem with this is that Gibbs’ (Harmon’s character on ‘NCIS’ in case you don’t know) vocal inflections rely heavily on his facial expressions. Without Harmon’s face to go with the voice, there is a lot that gets lost in translation, and Superman comes off very stiff, lifeless, and militaristic. That’s not my Superman.

William Baldwin as Batman was my other problem. The Batman portrayed here is younger, and has more of a sense of humor than the animated Bats tend to have. In this case, Baldwin’s frat-boy style works. Still, I kept hearing Brian McCaffrey under the cowl. That made me wish they’d cast Kurt Russell as Superman instead. I might have bought both characters in that case.

I also didn’t like how “mobbed up” Ultraman sounded. He was very Guido, and if they were going to do that they should have just hired Ray Liotta or James Gandolfini or someone to voice him. Otherwise, fuggedaboutit.

My other major beef was the absence of any good meaty extras about the movie. This is not to say that there aren’t tons of items included, but nothing specific to the movie I just watched. There is a feature about the DCU’s Infinite Earths and how the word “Crisis” has come to be a catchphrase in comics. There are 4 episodes of past animated shows, there’s a feature on the next movie coming up (“Batman: Under the Red Hood”), there are features on the previous Green Lantern and Wonder Woman movies. Also included are the pilot episodes for the Lynda Carter ‘Wonder Woman’ series, and the pilot for the never-got-anywhere ‘Aquaman’ show the WB made years back.

There’s even a VERY COOL 10-minute short animated piece on The Spectre/Jim Corrigan which was outstanding. Still…nothing in this set to tell me about the process that went into making the movie I bought and watched. In that respect, this presentation felt like a college thesis that was heavy on annotation and cleaver formatting, but light on substance and actual analysis.

I liked the movie very much, and I’m sure upon repeat viewing the voices will become less of an issue. Another solid outing from the animation department at DC Comics.

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