alan tudyk

The Not-So-New 52: Justice League — War (2014)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

Right off the bat, this one starts out a lot stronger than its predecessor, although its differences from it only further ask the question of why Flashpoint Paradox was made in the first place. The art design is miles better, with the character models looking much more slick and complete, and it has a pretty strong opening. Right off the bat (no pun intended), we are introduced to Green Lantern (Justin Kirk) as he pursues an apparent kidnapper that has been construed with the supposed Batman, who most believe to be an urban legend. Rescuing the kidnapping victim from her would-be captor, he unmasks what turns out to be some kind of alien monster, only to be joined by the real Batman (Jason O’Mara). The scene counterbalances exposition with some fun new character work as these two meet for the first time, showcasing Hal’s brashness and sarcasm while allowing him to demonstrate his powers and explain their function and form to Batman, who in turn demonstrates his own newly-playful mystique and the deftness that allows him to play in the same league (pun intended this time) as people with superpowers, when he manages to lift the Green Lantern ring without Hal’s knowledge. 

Elsewhere, we get our character introductions to others, some of which are intertwined. Young Billy Batson (Zach Callison) sneaks into a football game to see his hero, Vic Stone (Shemar Moore), ending up sitting in the seat reserved for Stone’s scientist father, Silas (Rocky Carroll). Dr. Stone, as usual, is too preoccupied with his work to take any interest in his son’s athletic achievements; his most recent object of obsession is a seemingly alien device that was delivered to him by the Flash (Christopher Gorham) sometime before the movie began. The device is identical to the one that Batman and Green Lantern were able to obtain from the alien that they pursued in the film’s opening, and which they have taken to Metropolis in order to get more information from the only other alien they know of, Superman (Alan Tudyk). Meanwhile, unconnected to anyone else, Wonder Woman (Michelle Monaghan) finds herself in Washington en route to meet the U.S. President when her motorcade encounters protesters; she initially offers to lend her support in taking action against the person that they are chanting about, only to discover they are carrying an effigy of her. Using her lasso, she compels the leader of the protest to explain why he really hates her, and he is forced to admit that he dresses up as her in lingerie to make himself feel powerful. After she tries some ice cream, she learns that the President will not be able to see her. 

This seems as good a time as any to point out that this film has a pretty decent sense of humor, and I appreciated that. Most of the time, when these movies have succeeded, it’s been because of the depth of their dramatic elements, and rarely because they were able to make me laugh. It’s interesting that this was the first real attempt by the DC animation division to create an MCU-style interconnected franchise and came out a few years prior to the 2017 cut of Justice League, and it shares some plot elements with that one – notably, that the villain is fromApokalips, uses Parademons as foot soldiers and Mother Boxes for his plans, and that we see Victor Stone turn into Cyborg over the course of the film as fallout from said Mother Box. Also like that film, it’s also attempting to echo some of that MCU-style jokey dialogue, but to much better effect than the live action adaptation. Not all the jokes land, and the ones that really don’t are mostly references to contemporary pop culture, like Green Lantern initially japing/probing to see if Batman is a vampire by referencing the in-universe product from which True Blood took its title. There are even references to TMZ and World of Warcraft, with the latter invoked in order to tease Darkseid, the film’s villain, for his silly name. 

What does work are the interpersonal touches. Batman and GL get off on the wrong foot at the beginning of the movie, and their sniping at each other as they work together usually features the latter moaning about having to deal with the former. Later, when they are joined by Flash, GL immediately tries to ingratiate himself with the speedster, attempting to do an awkward series of secret handshake segments that Flash could not give less of a shit about. When Flash then fanboys upon learning that Batman is real, Lantern tries to play off that the guy is a tool, only for Batman to recognize Flash as a peer, telling him that he does “tight, efficient work” and that shaking his hand, much to GL’s consternation. It’s not groundbreaking intercharacter work, but it is fun. Cyborg’s puzzlement over why the Shazam (Sean Astin) is so interested in partnering with him, in conjunction with Shazam’s apparently adult form fawning over his child alter ego’s hero, also makes for a nice dynamic. There’s also a fair amount of decent physical comedy as well, with one particular standout being the sequence in which an overzealous Lantern is backhanded by an unimpressed Darkseid, then is immediately jumped by a couple of Parademons, who just start kicking him like he went down in a schoolyard fight. 

And now for a few one-off notes that I took while watching this one. It’s funny to think of this one as being considered to be a direct continuation of Flashpoint Paradox, taking place in the new timeline created by all the tiny ripple effects left over after Barry tried to fix the timeline in that one. For one thing, Barack Obama was definitively the POTUS in the timeline where Atlantis and the Amazons were at war, with the implication he was president before Flash went back in time, but in this new timeline, he’s replaced by a generic white prez. It’s also funny to me that Diana gets so bored of waiting to meet him that she decides to just bail and get ice cream, given the current president’s fondness for it (he loves it almost as much as genocide and rolling over to show the GOP his soft underbelly). I also really enjoyed the way that Superman and Batman first meet here, with their fight being about as one-sided as you’d expect before the latter stops his god-tier opponent by simply whispering “Clark,” showing immediately that he’s not to be trifled with. 

Overall, I enjoyed this one a lot more than I was expecting to. There are parts of it that are so familiar that I can’t help but wonder if I already saw this one or just consumed the comic it adapts or the movie with which it shares so many narrative elements. I can say that I don’t love that the threat that they team up to defeat is Darkseid. I know that’s an artifact of Justice League: Origin, the comic on which this is based, but hitting the ground running with Darkseid as your primary villain still doesn’t quite sit right with me. That’s the kind of thing that you should build up to. Still, this one was actually quite a lot of fun, which was a nice surprise after Flashpoint Paradox. I’m hoping the quality holds.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

/ swampflix / 11 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

When I found out last year that there were going to be 6 new Star Wars films — not just the new trilogy, but three stand-alone films as well — I was skeptical. As excited as I was about the final trilogy, the in-between films sounded like nothing more than a money grab. But after seeing Rogue One, the second entry in the reboot, I’m pretty sold.

Before watching The Force Awakens last year, I kind of lost myself in fan theories and had fun with the idea of Jar Jar Binks coming back as the ultimate big baddy, but for Rogue One I went in blind. After all, chronologically it happens in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. People who are even slightly familiar with Star Wars know how this plays out, but it turns out there were a few twists and turns I didn’t expect. Rogue One frames the rest of the series in a much darker light. It brings a revived urgency and anxiety to the franchise, which I hope was probably there when Star Wars was first released in 1977. It manages to make the Death Star not just an impractical super weapon and the Empire a floundering bureaucracy that can’t teach its Stormtroopers how to aim. No, the Empire is a real frightening threat. Despite Disney’s CEO insisting that this is not a political movie, there’s quite a bit of war imagery and themes that are being presented in a time when the threat of fascism seems to loom. I mean, the movie itself is about a rebellion. The notion that it’s not political is naive and out of touch. But I guess you should never count on a multimillion dollar mega corporation to stand by the radical media that they inadvertently release

Rogue One follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) of the Rebel Alliance. They form a group of misfit rebels with Andor’s brutally honest droid sidekick K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk), a blind force warrior Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), his big gun toting conterpart Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang), and a defecting Imperial shuttle pilot named Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). Together they work against the Empire to smuggle the plans of the the Death Star to the Alliance. One big problem I had, though, was that the characters are not as developed as they should be. I keep hearing people say that it’s a lack of screen time, but in the case of Jyn I really think that they had ample opportunity to present her as more than just another brunette leading lady with good aim and an uncanny ability to scale vertical surfaces. I also thought that Cassian could have been a much more interesting character. As he is, I don’t really buy the vague romance that he and Jyn are supposed to have by the end of the movie. Though with Star Wars, it’s usually the minor roles that win hearts. Chirrut and Baze are a great pair, and K-2SO is a real pal. I’d like to have had more from Riz Ahmed’s character, instead of shoving him to the background and referring to him as “the shuttle pilot” half the movie, though.

What the movie gets right, it gets really right. The villains are scary. Somehow Rogue One was able to present a fresh introduction to Darth Vader, which is great because this is the first time we’re seeing Vader as Vader, really doing his thing, since Return of the Jedi thirty-three years ago. He is used sparingly and masterfully, and is truly terrifying and cruel. It’s so great to hear James Earl Jones’s voice coming out of that mask again. The gestures were spot on, right down to that iconic Vader finger wag. This is not the “NOOOOO!” moment of the prequels. This is true Vader. Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin also gets resurrected as a total computer recreation. Despite the general mixed response, I found to it be extremely impressive and convincing.

It’s also a pretty movie. It really captures the look and feel of a Star Wars movie. There’s hazy shots of star ships gliding across horizons at sunset and far off planets in the distance. One of the locations in particular really stands out. There’s a moon called Jedha, with a city and a temple that we’re to assume belonged at one point in time to the Jedi. There’s an aerial shot of the landscape featuring a giant, ancient Jedi statue on it’s side in the sand that, nerdily enough, reminded me of The Gates of Argonath, the great statues of kings on the river Anduin in Lord of the Rings. There’s some really cool costumes too: floor length bright red robes in the cities, Chirrut’s semi monk style clothing, and some retro helmets made a comeback.

In the day and age of reboots and series revivals Star Wars has taken the lead for quality. The two newest movies have proven that the old “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude works out and has even redeemed a franchise so nearly killed by its own creator. Rogue One was far from being the nostalgia fueled money grab I expected, and actually left me feeling some complex things.

-Alli Hobbs