DC animated original movies

[BentonGrey]

Thanks for sharing that, SS!  I've been quite interested in that movie precisely because of its JLU connections.  It sounds like it is probably worth my time.

[Tomato]

It was pretty good. That said, as an aside to I guess past ss, the thing with medication is that mixing medicine can be dangerous, and medicine which deals with brain chemistry is super tricky. I have no doubt they could reverse engineer the medicine if they had some, but inventing a psychosis medication on the fly, that doesn't conflict with residuals already in his system... It'd be dangerous to even try tbh.

[Silver Shocker]

Makes sense.....
But we also have extremely skilled and powerful magic users in this universe.... it's possible those powers could be very helpful...
This is why these concepts are often wonky in a fantasy setting like this...

[BentonGrey]

That's true, 'Mato, but I'd argue that kind of verisimilitude is somewhat antithetical to a superhero universe replete with super science. 

[Tomato]

That's true... Except by that logic, they should be able to magically cure Harvey Dent's multiple personalities, riddler's narcism, etc. I don't think Batman would allow Harvey to rot in Arkham if he could have a super buddy whip up a mental health cure.

And again, this is trying to do that with a metahuman like, the day after they met him, without any understanding of what his issues are even caused by.

I can believe Batman can make, say, a joker toxin cure within a few hours, because if joker made it Batman probably knows how to unmake it, and he's dealt with similar toxins enough. But I don't have any issues believing he can't solve a mental health problem he's never seen before within a few days.

[BentonGrey]

Ha, yeah, there are any number of world-breaking conceits in a superhero universe like the DCU.

[Silver Shocker]

Alright, I take a nap for a few hours, think some more on it and find out we're apparently all in. I can live with that. It's not like I made the movie.

Benton: I almost forgot to mention, you still haven't seen the film, eh? Everything under this section is going to vaguely sound like I hated it so I want to reiterate: if you're able to, you should watch it at some point. It's fun.

There's surprisingly little footage of it on YT, (maybe WB had a lot of it taken down) but this 47-second clip does a good job of showing how fun it is. Bruce Timm really did do a good Richard Moll impression.

I just finished re-watching JLU itself very recently, so I find myself thinking I should rewatch it sometime in the near future.

Starting with that clip, I should mention, and I've touched on this kind of thing before here on FR.....trained mental health professionals do not call their patients "lunatics". DC got a LOT of flak for that from the mental health industry when the New 52 came out. At the time it was aimed at the villains, but here it's far more inappropriate. Speaking of which...

That's true... Except by that logic, they should be able to magically cure Harvey Dent's multiple personalities, riddler's narcism, etc. I don't think Batman would allow Harvey to rot in Arkham if he could have a super buddy whip up a mental health cure.

Those characters are villains. Starboy (and Cruz) are heroes. We want our heroes to overcome their problems, especially if they're supposed to remind us of ourselves. [And you know the sad thing? This section is one of the last parts I thought to write.  ]

Depending on how you define the phrase "magic", they've done stuff like this a million times.

Originally I listed off a truly massive list of characters (not just from DC) but the short version is it's more or less the go-to method to reverse a heel turn.

They literally did exactly what you described in the Arrowerse like half a dozen times.

Credit where credit is due. Suggestion of the good guys making makeshift medication is socially irresponsible.

To that I say 4 things:

1. As they say, if you're not equipped to handle the heavy subject, don't touch the heavy subject.

2. There's a very good reason Breaking Bad doesn't tell you in any way how to make the meth. There's a reason Fight Club uses the term "and some other stuff" to describe how to make bombs.

3. Internal in-universe logic. Mr. Terrific is the third-smartest person on planet Earth. There was an entire episode of Justice League Action establishing this, and I feel confident it's more or less accurate across the board. The only way the person who came up with the original medication is more qualified than Holt is if it was Brainy, and Luthor is explicitly established as being as smart or smarter than Brainy in Red Son, Supergirl AND JLU.

From the DC wiki: "Genius Level Intellect: Holt is described as having "a natural aptitude for having natural aptitudes;" picking up complicated skills quickly and retaining them, such as performing emergency surgery on teammate Alan Scott after reading about the procedure in a medical text book. As Holt himself put it, "everyone has a talent...Mine is learning."
Eidetic Memory: Holt also possesses an eidetic memory, meaning that he never forgets anything and has perfect recall.
Polymath: Holt is also a polymath who has specialized in multiple fields of medicine, engineering and science. He possesses 14 Ph.D's (two of which are in engineering and physics-including assorted doctorates and masters in degrees in Law, Psychology, Chemistry, Political Science and Mathematics)."

FOURTEEN PH.D'S. I LOWBALLED IT.  I guessed 8.

Holt's PH.D's Include chemistry and psychology.

On further reflection, this could have solved by not having Mr. Terrific in the movie. There are plenty of members of the league who don't appear in person in the flick, including Dr. Fate and Zatanna, and Holt wasn't in this (he wasn't even that main a character in JLU) I probably wouldn't have brought it up at all.

4. You have seen the ending to this film, correct?

I found the ending (to Starboy's story) disappointed me. I see it as a cop-op, and it soured the movie slightly (or rather, that part of the story). It also ended up putting more of the spotlight on him and less on Jess, and as I said earlier, of the two, I found Jess was handled better. Starboy felt more like a caricature to me, while Jess felt more like a real person.

Personally I would have preferred one or both of two things:

1) Just have Jess and leave Starboy out entirely

2). Make this two different movies, because this kinda feels like two different movies mashed together. Miss Martian feels like she belongs in JLU (I could easily see her teaming up with Green Arrow and Supergirl or Stargirl - come to think of it, I wonder if Supergirl was swapped out for her? Strange that I never thought of that) But Jess and Starboy kinda feel like they wandered in from a different movie, and I think movie could have been the DC animated extended movies, since the Johns run of Justice League comics were where Jess was created in the first place. Their movie would probably have been much worse for it, but the JLU movie IMO could have better for it.

[Silver Shocker]

So anyway:

DC has announced another animated movie: Justice Society of America: World War II.

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

[BentonGrey]

Ohh, I would watch the HECK out of that!

[Panther_Gunn]

Don't get too excited there, Benton.  This is still a WB project.  There's still plenty of time & ways for them to hack it up.  Not the least of which would be to PC the heck out of it.  I'd watch it, too, but I will remain hopefully optimistic, but still prepared to be let down.

[Silver Shocker]

Don't get too excited there, Benton.  This is still a WB project.  There's still plenty of time & ways for them to hack it up. 

As I (and Tom, and Benton) can attest, this is true.

Not the least of which would be to PC the heck out of it.  I'd watch it, too, but I will remain hopefully optimistic, but still prepared to be let down.

Not even remotely where my mind was going......
Yeah, DC is so known for delicate sensibilties, considering this sucker only got greenlit because they wrapped out about 10 years of connected stories and long-form investment (for me and Tom anyway) with a 2-hour snuff film filled to the brim with explicit violence and salty language with all the main characters relegated to glorified cameos and pretended it was Avengers Endgame.

The age old question for the philosophers....what's more offensive, seeing Starfire's cleavage, or seeing the gooey red stuff inside her you're not suppose to be able to see?

The film could be 3 hours of the cast reading Nazi propaganda and furiously debating its merits and it wouldn't have a snowball's chance of being half as offensive as the last offensive animated feature they released.

[EDIT WHOAH, you know what? I have to take that back. Batman: Death in the Family, which is about the death of the second Robin, was the last movie with edgy content. Sorry, my bad. That movie DOES have disturbing violent content, but that's the only specific thing it has in common with Apocalypse War.

Because then, it would in fact be ABOUT something other than securing a hard R rating and being able to say "Ya ain't getting that from a Marvel movie."

I mean granted, World War II means Nazis, but if the "worst" they do is be Captain America: the first Avenger and just make it a Wolfenstein movie with Cap in it (literally what I compared it to when I walked out of the theatre) and namedrop the actual Nazis like once or twice, I don't see that as much to complain about.

Here's the sitch:

-I assume we have the Stargirl television show to thank for DC greenlighting this sucker, which sounds good to me, because I really enjoyed Stargirl.
See DC? This is how who you do it. You use your characters, so you can grow your characters, and then you can sell your characters. And I know you know that because you know who Harley Quinn and Deadpool are.

And the fact that you guys (DC/WB) have your heads somewhere unpleasant darn near 24/7 365 is the reason something like this project falling out of the digital sky feels like a pot of gold.

-This thing looks like it might have a Darwin Cooke-inspired look to it. Neat stuff.

-Our cast includes Wonder Woman (listed as "Diana Prince" - not Hippolyta eh?) voiced by Stana Catic. The main thing I know about her in this context is that she voiced Talia Al Ghul in the Batman Arkham video games.

-Flash (Barry Allen) played by Matt Bomer. He voiced Superman in a movie a few years back and far more recently is Negative Man in the excellent live action Doom Patrol series. IMO Larry is the weakest member in the cast, but he's still quite good because Doom Patrol was a show where there were no weak links -- in season one anyway. I'm curious if there's going to be some time travel in this. I mean, that tracks. If DC puts some people in here that they actually make effort in, that makes the project less risky. Case in point, if someone told me Stargirl being featured quite often on the cartoon Justice League Action had some influence on the Stargirl live action television show being made, I would not call them a liar.

-Black Canary, voiced by Elysia Rotaru. She is a Vancouver based actress who played a not-terribly important supporting character on Arrow and voiced a few Capcom characters in a mobile game, and subbed for a Star Wars character in a Lego cartoon that had different voice actors for the characters in question.

-Steve Trevor voiced by CHRIS DIAMANTOPOULOS - a voice actor who played Green Arrow several times. He's similar to the guy who played him (Ollie, that is) in Justice League Unlimited. I've seen all the stuff that had him in Green Arrow, he's pretty solid.

-Hawkman and Dr. Fate, Hourman voiced by Matthew Mercer. Mercer's reliably good. I don't know a lot about Hourman personality and history wise so I can't comment on this is specifically appropriate casting.

-Jay Garrick, Iris West and Aquaman.

Either a bunch of these characters just live during WWII, there's time travel, or there's a story that will span multiple time periods.

Seems pretty cool. And it's so refreshing to see something like this and one less project with Batman or Superman.

I knew that after Apocalypse War wrapped up their animated movie universe that they'd have to just make movies about something else and exactly what they were going to be putting out would be figured out one by one. The other thing coming out right now is a Batman movie that's Power Man and Iron Fist - except it's Richard Dragon and Bronze Tiger. I saw the trailer and it's exactly what it sounds like - a movie made to look and sound like a cheesy martial arts flick from the 70's.

I knew it wouldn't be long before we got something like these - they basically had to. We already got a completely skippable Superman origin movie that has exactly 3 characters in it that make it marginally interesting. 

[HarryTrotter]

The film could be 3 hours of the cast reading Nazi propaganda and furiously debating its merits and it wouldn't have a snowball's chance of being half as offensive as the last offensive animated feature they released.

The movie end with the Justice Society watching the news. Mournful music plays as the camera zooms out and we hear Hawkman say: You know Jay,maybe we fought for the wrong side. 🥁 🥁

And it still wouldn't be as bad as Killing Joke.

[Silver Shocker]

DC does some stupid stuff, and often has trouble getting in touch with their own audience, but that would almost certainly never happen.

I don't think DC would put out a JSA movie with art that looks like Darwyn Cooke style art and compromise it in any way like that.

Red Son is a movie about Superman being raised by the Soviets, and it has a happy ending.

Mind you, the animated movie changed things, and one of the things they was changed resulting in Red Son Superman being more villainous at the midway point or so (he gets to a better place by the end)
In fairness, the tweaks to the ending are an itty bit political in a way the comic was not.

And fair's fair, Superman: Man of Tomorrow was a mostly wholesome movie (though as I said in my mini review, Lex does get political for a hot minute early in the film, but that's about it)

And your comparison to Killing Joke is definitely subjective. I mean, it's an explicitly canon story and there are consequences and repercussions to it. If this is a standalone film, they could do what ever they want and never have to show what happens next.

Anyway, I went to an extreme to stress a point, and that was wrong of me, I apologize. I'm gonna specifically make an attempt to be better.

Here's the answer I SHOULD have said.

Don't get too excited there, Benton.  This is still a WB project.  There's still plenty of time & ways for them to hack it up.  Not the least of which would be to PC the heck out of it.  I'd watch it, too, but I will remain hopefully optimistic, but still prepared to be let down.

You are correct that DC could find a way to foul on it or make it worse than it could be. We don't know yet, and there isn't a trailer. As for "Not the least of which" I would say I disagree on that part. I'd even go so fair as to say it's objectively wrong. DC tends to go to the violent well with their animated features (since, as we covered with their violent Batman/TMNT crossover animation, they're selling it to adult fans with disposable income who be neutral or positive to such content) But I don't think they push an ideology often with these, or perhaps not intentionally.

"I will remain hopefully optimistic, but still prepared to be let down." Well, maybe we should expect something different, because a movie about the JSA IS something different. That 15-movie set was presumably selling to an audience that was already opting in, so this might have different goals and meet a different audience.

Red Son, the comic anyway, is a story about the sway of living under the Soviets, and yet it's probably the most tasteful thing Mark Miller's ever written that I'm aware of that wasn't specifically written for the younger set.

I suggest you try to keep a more open mind until the trailer comes out. If there's something in there that we can and think might be a sign that DC will make this weaker in any way, we'll point it out. I'll most likely be the first to talk about it here.

If I were a betting man, I'd argue DC is more likely to push violence here than ideology. To kinda bring it home, violence is easy for DC. All that thinking business is the tricky part. Heck, that particular film I mentioned earlier likely had a script with less dialogue in spots than the scripts for a lot of other animated features they've done.

Alright, to all mysteries, clues. 2 minutes on google I found the content rating. PG-13 for violence and some bloody images.

For comparison, Batman vs TMNT was PG-13 for fantasy violence and it included decapitations and a character getting a throwing star to the head, among other things.

Batman: Bad Blood, arguably the most violent PG-13 film in the 15-movie set, was PG-3 for "violence throughout" and included, among a few other things, a notable Batman villain's head exploding.

So based on the clues, I'd say either they've changed the content labels as they go, or the JSA movie will as violent or more violent than the two films I just mentioned.

Interestingly, the other new one, Batman: Soul of the Dragon, has an R rating for violence. The rating went up, but the description is less detailed.

Back to JSA: there were no content warnings for sexual content, and quite a few of those films have innuendoes and such.

Pushing an ideology can mean many things, and many of those things will not be reflected in any way in a content rating. They could also talk about the story in an interview.

Personally I don't think a JSA WW 2 with Cooke-style art needs "bloody images". There's no reason they can't make that movie and make it classier than it.

Many of DC's best animated projects are ones that didn't have that level of violence. The movie revival of the Justice League cartoon, for it's positives and negatives, wasn't better for having swearing and some extra violence, and arguably would have better without it, because then you can show it to your kids and it won't have the kind of discontent where it doesn't entirely feel like a JLU movie (that is an issue, for more reasons than that)

Batman and Harley was directly based on Batman TAS, and was presumably canon, and it was chock full of sexual content, and some vulgarity, and it was in no way better than the majority of Batman TAS output (one could easily argue every single episode of TAS was better than it; for one thing I said they artificially padded the length.)

Funny thing is, DC's putting out a bunch of these movies for years, and almost none of these ones you could show your kids. Oh well. I guess that's one for the parents and guardians and such.

Young Justice was a kid show cancelled because the toy line didn't sell (or so we were told) and it was revived as a direct story continuation that you can't show your kids because it's not kid friendly anymore. I have said many times on here I greatly prefer the first two seasons. If you're already making violent movies in the movie line, you don't have change the kid friendly stuff to make it less kid friendly. If it's a great show we watched years ago and we like the new one, I assume many of us won't mind either way.

Anyway, Soul of the Dragon is described as an "Elseworlds tale" but with that 15-movie set over, don't all their animated movies going forward qualify as an "Elseworlds" tale? If they're all Elseworlds, what is the world for which this is something else? Ah well.

NOW, that, being said...

The thing I wanted to take back was the crack about the JSA reading Nazi propaganda for 3 hours. That was gross and uncalled for. That one part.

Panther Gunn, if you believe DC are going the make movie too PC, and that's the thing they're MOST likely to do to it, I'm curious if you know exactly HOW violent the movie I described was and in what specific ways. It's on Youtube, so you can totally check out the violent scenes very quickly if you're interested.

[HarryTrotter]

I don't expect anything like that in the movie ofc,I was exaggerating for comedic purposes.

I meant the Killing Joke movie,since that just sucked. Im behind on the whole series,so they probably did something worse in the meantime.

[Silver Shocker]

Oh, the movie, Ok, you know what?

Fair enough, in the case of the prologue. And yet, that movie STILL had added a mid credits scene where Barbara becomes Oracle.
DC never put out a follow up to that, but they still put in the scene anyway, and that's probably the only new scene I specifically liked. That 100% should have been in there.

I still maintain that DC should have made the prologue a story about Batgirl and/or Batman foiling a Joker scheme. And it's even more disappointing that they didn't, since, as I told you once, IICR, DC once put a Barbara Gordon one-shot of literally that, and it featured Barbara being worried about being shot by gunfire as deliberate reference to Killing Joke.

I feel confident if that was the prologue the film got, the reception would have been more positive.

Im behind on the whole series,so they probably did something worse in the meantime.

If you're interested, you can always read the rather explicit, literally gory details me and Tom has discussed.

[BentonGrey]

Don't get too excited there, Benton.  This is still a WB project.  There's still plenty of time & ways for them to hack it up.  Not the least of which would be to PC the heck out of it.  I'd watch it, too, but I will remain hopefully optimistic, but still prepared to be let down.

Gah, that's very, very true.  Well, I'll be cautiously optimistic as well.

Urg....I don't like the looks of that art.  If it were Darwyn Cooke-inspired, I'd LOVE it, but that just looks bad.

I'm also not thrilled with the team.  I love a lot of those characters, but we've seen almost all of them get plenty of love in media (and I prefer my JSA to be it's own thing).  Why not do a JSA story with the lesser-knowns who you could do more with?  Give me a story with Mr. Terrific, Hourman (glad he's in it), the Atom, Starman, Sandman, Amazing Man, and those kinds of characters, and I'd be all over it.

Well darn.  I'm much less excited than I was.

Yeah, I have zero interest in the 'sex and violence' to be 'grown up' mindset of the modern movies. 

[Silver Shocker]

Don't get too excited there, Benton.  This is still a WB project.  There's still plenty of time & ways for them to hack it up.  Not the least of which would be to PC the heck out of it.  I'd watch it, too, but I will remain hopefully optimistic, but still prepared to be let down.

Urg....I don't like the looks of that art.  If it were Darwyn Cooke-inspired, I'd LOVE it, but that just looks bad.

I'd argue that DC's track record with the visuals for animated projects not using the Young Justice style they used in the Justice League: War set have, in many cases, been worse than they could or short be, Which sometimes makes me wonder if DC WB have any strong sense of how to make these things. I know it's not anime or Transformers but surely one of the biggest entertainment company on the planet can make movies featuring their biggest characters and IPs look prettier.

Speaking of looking pretty and Transformers, I have now seen the new Beast Wars stuff, and while I wouldn't dare spoil it, what I saw brought myself and other BW fans to tears because of how good it looked. Unfortunately I'm absolutely dreading finding out what the BW characters are going to sound like.

Killing Joke, right from the trailers, was a weak attempt to recreate Brian Bolland's art from the comic. It doesn't look that much like the comic, or particularly good in its own right.

Looking back at Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and it's sequel Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, I was surprised to see how ugly and unappealing their art styles were (one could, and did, argue that this was the result of trying to match the style of the artists who did the comics those movies were based on) Based on memory, I'm certain their art styles didn't bother me at the time but do now.

Superman vs the Elite is a bit blocky and ugly but not too bad IMO. I think it's based on the artist on the comics it's based on too, but I have not yet read that one (it's on the list)

The Turtles specifically looked ugly in Batman/TMNT, but the Turtles look ugly in a rather large concentration of the content put out under the Nick/Paramount era (such as the two new live action movies, and a very large concentration of the IDW comic books)

As I've mentioned above, if nothing else, in Justice League vs the Fatal Five, despite being a JLU movie in the Bruce Timm style, Ms. Martian looks like she was piped in from a different DC animation with a slightly different art style. I genuinely believe if she was in the original JLU cartoon, her face would have looked noticeably different and simpler.

On that note, this is likely the reason why quite a few of these movies (at least the ones Timm and co directly worked on, and the ones that were revisiting earlier iterations) use the Timm style, and I find it usually looks better than a lot of the others. It's clean, simple, minimalist, consistent (something early Batman TAS were not) evergreen (that means applicable to many other things) almost certainly cheaper and easier to animate. The earlier seasons of Batman: TAS that most hardcore fans seem to prefer had a much more detailed, less minimalized and blocky style.

Speaking of which, now that I've run of out of JLU episodes to rewatch I'm currently rewatching more of Batman TAS (for the record, every episode is arguably better for the Killing Joke prologue as well, but that's probably an unfair comparison) and I'm sorry guys. Yes, the animation isn't as nice to look at, but IMO (I've never loved BATMAN TAS, a show who tie-in comic digital collections call "the greatest animated series of all time". It's a good show, no doubt, but it's a little episodic and the earlier seasons are a mixed bag in terms of episodes) the actual STORIES of "The New Batman Adventures" are without a doubt the best season. When I was going over the episode list I realized that depending on whether or not you consider Calendar Girl an adaptation of Calendar Man (and either way, that episode hints at Batman's age, something I've always remembered it for) there's not a single "filler" episode in it. Unless I forgot one somewhere, every single episode in it features a classic Batman villain (including the debut of Firefly), many of these episodes are solid classics (though I just rewatched "Girl's Night Out" the other night and it surprisingly doesn't hold up as well as I thought it would. It's strangely dull and slow paced in spots, and I'm curious how the voice directing for that episode went, Livewire and the rest of the characters in it sound weirdly off their game) and it features, among other episodes, "Over the Edge", which I consider the best episode of the show.

So yeah, where was I? Oh yeah. One thing I'll always give Young Justice Outsiders: It LOOKS nice. Because it looks exactly like the original show. Anyway:

I'm also not thrilled with the team.  I love a lot of those characters, but we've seen almost all of them get plenty of love in media (and I prefer my JSA to be it's own thing).  Why not do a JSA story with the lesser-knowns who you could do more with?  Give me a story with Mr. Terrific, Hourman (glad he's in it), the Atom, Starman, Sandman, Amazing Man, and those kinds of characters, and I'd be all over it.

Well darn.  I'm much less excited than I was.

Yeah, I have zero interest in the 'sex and violence' to be 'grown up' mindset of the modern movies.

See, this is where you and I disagree, pops. I'm one of them uncultured young folks who doesn't know the "good old days" where the books were decent (this is half sarcasm, of course) so I barely know anything about the JSA, and most of what I do know comes from supporting roles from other shows and comics. What's really helped me get into them, and I mentioned this earlier, is the Stargirl television show. (Incidentally, Tomato, if you see this post, if you haven't seen the Stargirl television show, you might like it quite a bit because in addition to all the other stuff about it that is good and sweet and wholesome, Artemis Crock (who will likely have a bigger role in it in S2), Paula and Sportsmaster are in it, and Tigress and Sportsmaster are BEASTS in it.) See, it's directly based on John's Stargirl comic, which revived the Golden Age Heroes and had whole issues talking about their history and what they are up to. Stargirl is one of those adaptations that's just faithful enough, with plot twists directly adapted, that it can directly spoil the comic book. So, since I'd already bought the digital comics, and planned to read them, I read through them very quickly and they're quite swell. The book got cancelled pretty quick, but the entire story (in particular, that of Shiv, which is a big reason I knew I had to read the rest) continues in the pages of JSA itself. So I course bought, on sale, the digital collections of Johns' entire run (the digital collections includes the minis as well, which is good, because Shiv's in them) so presumably, something before or around Stargirl S2, I will be reading what I was told at the time to be the single best book DC was publishing at the time. Looking forward to it!  (in particular, I'm curious as whether I'll have any particular feeling one way or the other about Power Girl as a character).

Anyway, what we haven't seen is the JSA in a starring role in an animation. Even if the roster isn't your cup of tea, as I said before, it's certainly a refreshing change of pace. I'll likely watch it when it airs on Teletoon in about 4-6 months after it's released, but I can't imagine it not being more interesting than that Superman reboot I just watched.

Yeah, I have zero interest in the 'sex and violence' to be 'grown up' mindset of the modern movies.

I think it depends on the movie. It's kinda hard to complain about it in a film adaptation of Suicide Squad, Dark Knight Returns or Death in the Family, because those are dark violent stories. As I said, it's in no way needed in a Batman TMNT film or a JSA film, and I'd argue it's inappropriate and makes the movies a bit lesser.

If you really apply such preference with a wide brush, and would opt out of watching a flick because of that, then....that's pretty funny to me. 

Because I've been mapping out what I think an entire season of a JLU revival show would be about (I'm starting to considering writing them as fanfic....), and tasteful and well handled as a lot of it would be, because I'm a morbid fellow I suppose, if the actual show came out and that was the story, there are three major stories in it I suspect you might outright refuse to watch. (For one, Superboy Prime)

[Silver Shocker]

I don't expect anything like that in the movie ofc,I was exaggerating for comedic purposes.

I meant the Killing Joke movie,since that just sucked. Im behind on the whole series,so they probably did something worse in the meantime.

Here's a bit of extra fun. While once again failing to find a clip on YT of one of my favorite all-time Alfred moments (In Mystery of the Batwoman, Bruce dismisses a woman jumping around the city in a bat costume as some nut, to which Alfred remarks "I ain't touching that one, sir".) I landed on this other part, what was (and still probably (?) is, IMO) the best scene in the movie

At the time, it was a cute, funny and clever gag for all four characters featured in it. Now, it's aged horribly and has me shaking my head and going "Dammit Bruce Timm."

I shudder to think what would happen if Bruce Timm got a writing credit on a JLU revival. Now in fairness, Timm did not actually work on the story of MotB in any way, as far as I can tell. And yet, speaking as someone currently rewatching BTAS, am I the only one who think Barbara seems completely out of character in this scene? I'm going to choose to salvage the scene by assuming Barbara was trolling Bruce, Miss Martian style. The animation on Barbara's face doesn't really reinforce it, but that could just be a reaction to Bruce's embarrassingly unconvincing attempt to get off the phone.

Maybe stuff like this is why some prefer the safe, security blanket of nostalgia.
And yet, still better than Mask of the Phantasm (Hey look, now it's in the right thread. Aren't I a lucky duckie?)

Now on the topic of that old gag, THIS inspired sequence in the otherwise not particularly good "Batman & Harley Quinn" has a twist I don't think I've even seen anywhere else - have the person on the other line call out the "going through a tunnel" excuse.

[HarryTrotter]

I got around to Batman vs TMNT and its actually pretty good. I kinda wish they used the Nickleodon voices since the turtles personalities and body types are clearly based on the 2012 version. Also,Troy Baker is doing a Kevin Conroy impression,right?
"Gotham is basically New York."
"Does NY have blimps?! What are they even for?!"

This was an odd mix of styles. With Turtles being Nick-like,Shredder and Stockman looking like their 80's versions,and Batfamily reminding me of The New Batman Adventures.

[Silver Shocker]

As I've mentioned before, they were forbidden from using returning voices for the TMNT. As for Troy Baker as Batman. More or less, though he dips into a bit of a Will Arnett-style in the Lego content he's in.

[HarryTrotter]

I assumed it was the licencing issue. I noticed some mutations were changed from the comic. Like Bane is a leopard instead of an elephant.

Batman Hush was okay. Which probably makes it the best Batman movie in this universe. The new twist works for this continuity.

[Silver Shocker]

I assumed it was an attempt to reduce the chances that kids would mistake this for "their" Turtles.

The changes to the mutations were interesting. Poison Ivy being either a Preying Mantis or a Venus Flytrap - either totally work.

Mr. Freeze as a Polar Bear - very appropriate. Joker as a cobra is pretty cool.

[HarryTrotter]

Possible,but again,they look and act like the Nick turtles. But okay,this is clearly its own universe. And I want to see more of it.

Death of Superman and Reign of Superman. I still prefer Doomsday, but its passable. Very close to the original story but fitting into this continuity. Big thing being that Darkseid is behind everything. Well,they were building him up for the past 7-8 years,so ofc he is.
And now to end this universe with what basically seems to be Flashpoint 2.0.

[Silver Shocker]

Possible,but again,they look and act like the Nick turtles. But okay,this is clearly its own universe. And I want to see more of it.

I file that under a Nick/Paramount problem. For...some reason, they're really hung up on Fred Wolfe TMNT nostalgia and don't seem to understand that there were indeed other incarnations of the property that people have a fondness for and that not every version of TMNT should fit into that mold.

Death of Superman and Reign of Superman. I still prefer Doomsday, but its passable. Very close to the original story but fitting into this continuity. Big thing being that Darkseid is behind everything. Well,they were building him up for the past 7-8 years,so ofc he is.
And now to end this universe with what basically seems to be Flashpoint 2.0.

I've forgot to mention, as for the "best" Batman movie in this set, IMO it depends on how much you like Damien. If you're like me and you love that little brat, the movies starring him are the best ones, though if I'm fair, each one is only like HALF a good movie.

Which is a good segue to:

As I've said before, Death of Superman, Reign of Supermen, and Apocalypse War all have this weird problem I've repeatedly called "they need better writing." Everything should work on paper, and you can tell they're making an effort, but for some reason they're flat when they should be thrilling. IMO Death of Superman was the best one in that area. Superman Doomsday isn't exactly more faithful, but it has more energy.

As for Flashpoint 2.0. Oh boy, you enjoy THAT hot mess. And while you're doing so, make sure to glance at its Rotten Tomatoes score so you can further weep for humanity.

[HarryTrotter]

100%/91%...this is why I don't trust average scores. The movie itself sucks. Its like Flashpoint with added gruesome deaths from the Injustice comic. Does DC hate its characters or what?
Etrigan only shows up when they are about to reboot a universe. He needs a better agent.

[Silver Shocker]

My running theory isn't that DC hates its characters, they're just dumb. Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can easily be attributed to stupidity."

[HarryTrotter]

I think WB started making Scorpions Revenge and never stopped.
Batman Soul of the Dragon- thats actually a 70's kung-fu movie starring Bruce Lee as Richard Dragon. Which actually works.

[Silver Shocker]

I'll probably give Soul of the Dragon a watch on tv when it comes on in a few months. Unless I look it up and find out there's something really neat in it that makes me want to get to it sooner than that.

I liked Scorpion's Revenge. Johnny Cage stole the show in it. Would watch another one (and they just announced they're doing one)

Now, at the risk of being overly literal, that flick was released so close to Apocalypse War, that it wasn't likely it rubbed off on them, but one can simply look at the Apocalypse War as the punchline to the joke that is DC's increasingly unhealthy obsession with violence in gore in otherwise (mostly) straightforward superhero narratives.

[HarryTrotter]

As soon as everyone starts getting dismembered, you know this whole thing will be reset at the end. Actually,as soon as the timeskip happens,you know there will be time travel involved. But it actually end with John Constantine saying: Look Flash,we need you to do another Flashpoint because we effed up...I would have respected it more if it ended with Superman waking up and saying it was all a dream.

[Silver Shocker]

Yup, me and Tom put the flick through its paces for exactly that about half a year ago.