michelle monaghan

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

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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

Fuck, Marry, Kill – Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

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The general, perhaps hyperbolic consensus about Mission: Impossible – Fallout is that it’s the best action blockbuster to hit the big screen since Mad Max: Fury Road. The two films don’t seem to have much in common beyond being late-in-the-franchise sequels that shrewdly exploit the basic thrills of their shared genre by stringing together a nonstop onslaught of chase sequences through extravagant set pieces. However, they are two pictures that the Swampflix crew was a little too late to the table to add anything substantial to in our coverage. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a great action pic, matching even its predecessor Rogue Nation as one of the best entries in the franchise. As the film was initially released well over a month ago, however, you’ve likely already heard variations of that praise ad nauseam, so instead of properly reviewing the film we’re attempting to avoid excessive critical redundancy by having some late-summer fun objectifying the film’s Hollywood-handsome cast. The series-arcing plot of Mission: Impossible is effectively resettable & amnesia-inducing from film to film; its stunts are technically impressive, but like all amusement park rides are more fun in experience than in description or critique. The only questions we can answer here, then, are which hunky members of the cast we would fuck, which we would marry, and which we would kill.

Brandon

Fuck Henry Cavill – This choice seems self-explanatory to me. Henry Cavill looks like he crawled directly out of a Tom of Finland illustration in this picture; he’s just oozing sex. This is easily the most fun he’s been to watch on-screen since The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (my non-apologies to DCEU die-hards who found a way to look past his digitally “removed” mustache in Justice League to see his true inner hunk), but I doubt he’s ever looked sexier, even in U.N.C.L.E.’s swanky 60s garb. Mustachioed meathead brute is a great look for him, one that turns even the nastier close-quarters fist fights into a homoerotic pleasure.

Marry Ving Rhames – This also seems obvious to me, as Rhames is already costumed like your middle-age husband, ready to barbeque a backyard meal while you & The Kids enjoy a swim. Beyond his Cuban button-ups & Target-brand brimmed hats, he’s also the most sensitive member of Ethan Hunt’s crew, shedding a giant man-love tear for his boss/bestie in one of the film’s defining dramatic moments. Rhames is an adorable middle-age teddy bear in Fallout, which promises a more long-lasting love than what Cavill’s mustachioed fuck-monster can likely offer.

Kill Tom Cruise – In deciding who to kill, I think you have to look past what these Hollywood Hunks are offering onscreen here to examine what they’re doing beyond the scenes. Not only is Tom Cruise a high-level operator of a dangerous global cult, but he’s also risking his life with each Mission: Impossible entry by performing a large percentage of his own increasingly dangerous stunts. It’s highly likely that the real-life Tom Cruise is going to die trying to distract his audience from his key role in Scientology through these over-the-top, life-risking stunts, so he might as well be sacrificed to the hypothetical consequences of this frivolous game. If you need that choice to be justified by the text of Fallout, consider that the film asks you to choose sides against anti-institutional anarchists in the favor of international government agents with free reign to interpret & execute the law, most significantly represented by Cruise as Ethan Hunt. It’s a political philosophy that’s tolerable enough in-film, but ultimately ACAB, so Cruise must die no matter the context.

CC

Fuck Henry Cavill – I mean, pretty much everything Brandon says. It’s not quite a full-blown fetish, but I definitely give extra (sexual) points to a man with a decent mustache*. In a Fuck/Marry/Kill scenario, who wouldn’t take the chance to shag a real-life Tom of Finland illustration?

*The pencil-thin pervert’s mustache and the thick-boi Henry Cavill-style mustache are the only two acceptable styles, however. Walruses, Fu Manchus, and handlebars need not apply.

Marry Simon Peg – He seems like a guy who is good with gadgets and can do a large portion of household maintenance. Even though he’s useless in a fight and lacks the raw sex appeal of pretty much every other guy in this film (background extras included), he seems like he’d be open to some pretty kinky stuff. At the end of the day, a useful pervert is more my speed than a sex idiot (even if it is King Sex Idiot).

Kill Tom Cruise (after fucking him too) – Oh yeah, I’d definitely kill Tom Cruise, but, like, there’s no sense wasting the opportunity to have sex with an ageless cult leader/god. Who knows, maybe magic is real? Let’s be optimistic during the impending End Times.

Adopt Ving Rhames – Ving Rhames and the character he plays in Mission: Impossible both seem like guys who LOVE their mama. I’ve never experienced that level of truly unconditional love and I feel like the intensity of its pure, wholesome light would burn a hole right through my soul – worth it, both for the release from the inescapable ennui of modern life and for how cozy & warm it sounds.

Start a book (wine) club with Michelle Monaghan & Rebecca Ferguson – In the Mission: Impossible movies, these ladies have to put up with so much shit from the men around them. Patriarchy, am I right? Even though one plays a human rights activist/medical doctor, the other plays a super spy, and both are real-life (probably?) wealthy, semi-famous white actresses, I still feel like we’d all have a lot to gab about, like how Henry Cavill is the raw-steak-eaten-while-still-warm-from-the-animal of men and Tom Cruise is a pretty lie we have chosen to believe for far too long. But to make sure we still pass the Bechdel Test when we’re not discussing the Patriarchy, we’d also have books, wine, and the never-ending depths of our existential despair to consider.

-Brandon Ledet & CC Chapman