Justice League: Gods and Monsters

Justice League: Gods and Monsters was a big ole swing and a miss for me. As much of a fan girl as I am for the animated movies, especially those done in the same art style as the old Justice League cartoons of the early 2000’s, this movie that changed things just to be different and not give us a catalyst or explanation for this change just felt forced and more distracting than titillating. Check out the small clips that DC posted with Machinima to get a flavor of the world before investing your time and money in this movie.I’m not a fan of this movie, if I wasn’t clear above. Justice League: Gods and Monsters wants to play on your understanding of characters and turn that on its ear (Spoiler alert for all content moving forward) (Zod is actually Superman’s biological father, Superman was raised by a migrant family, Lex Luthor is some sort of Stephen Hawking savant, Wonder Woman is the daughter of HighFather of the New Gods, and Batman is Kirk Langstrom or as we know him ManBat). I haven’t been reading the comics for Gods and Monsters, though I have lots of opinions on comics!

There is a plot that murders of scientists are happening and the three person team of the Justice League are being framed. (Why we care that they’re framed for these murders and not any of the other murders we’ve seen them commit so far seems to have eluded me.) We get an origin story for each of these characters, and the ‘who done it’ of the murders, but not WHY IS BARTA WONDER WOMAN, BUT NOT ACTUALLY BARTA NOR WONDER WOMAN???

Here’s what bothers me – changing something about our understanding of a character can be an awesome plot! But, this movie did so much of it all at once. The audience is left reeling so much from all the differences, that we’re not keeping up with the message you’re trying to share. I’m still not sure I understand why at the end of the movie Superman decides to be a good-guy. There is no motivation, other than this is what the viewers will want, and we want them to not pan our movie (as far as I can tell). And if you’re playing to an audience with less familiarity to these characters, then you’re setting them up for more confusion as Kirk Langstrom and Bekka are not known as Batman and Wonder Woman in any other cannon.

The story left me questioning the reasoning behind the story board choices that led to the setting of this movie, and the motivations of the heroes once they made it to the screen. At least with an Injustice story line, I know why the world is different. Gods and Monsters the movie doesn’t give us that.

And don’t get me wrong – I’m not pushing my glasses up my nose and uhm, actually…‘ing here; I love watching the animated features that are big departures from their hard copy source material. FlashPoint Paradox? Beautiful told story, and still a far cry from the FlashPoint comics. Heck, if DC wanted to step back and do an animated series just of Red Son (What if Superman were raised in the Soviet Union?), I would be all on board that hype train!

I wanted to love this movie, but even I had a hard time with it as a pretty big DC animated features fangirl. Do yourself a favor and skip this movie, and re-watch the Justice League animated series again instead. It will be a much more worthwhile investment of your time.