Justice League: Doom (2012)

While Marvel Comic fans are rejoicing with the new Avengers film, DC fans seem to be left out in the cold. How about the Justice League? Is there any hope they’ll ever see a movie starring them???

The chances of a live-action Justice League film seem slim (at least for now). Fortunately, fans who are aching to see Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash and Martian Manhunter team up and save the world have Justice League: Doom to fall back on.

Warners animation has been doing some pretty nice steady work with their DC projects. There’s really no continuity between them. Voice actors change, animation styles are different, but they’ve been able to maintain a level of quality to them that make them worthwhile to watch.

Justice League: Doom throws an interesting problem at the members – what if an evil scheme is planned that would prey on their physical and emotional weaknesses rendering them out of commission. And who would have come up with this idea? Batman himself!

A newly formed Legion of Doom headed by Vandal Savage uses Batman contingency plan (an emergency plan in case any of the Justice League members turned bad. Just think how much trouble an evil JLA could do!) to eliminate our heroes allowing him to move forward with an evil bigger scheme!

It’s a fun story, loosely based on the comic miniseries ‘Tower of Babel’. It moves at a brisk pace and each member gets their own moment to shine. It’s also interesting how some of these plans attack the emotional psychology of the characters.

With a pack of villains consisting of Mirror Master, Cheetah, Bane, Metallo and Star Sapphire they keep the JLA’s hands full. Luckily they have Cyborg to lend a hand.

Overall it’s not the best animated DC film. The animation doesn’t reach the heights of quality that previous entries have. It looks more like TV quality animation rather than film quality. But the voice actors are all well cast (Kevin Conroy is and has always been the perfect Batman voice), the story is fun and the best individual attacks against each JLA member are inventive ways to showcase their personal demons they have.

Certainly worth a watch.