Justice League: The New Frontier review

Last year it was announced that there would be a series of direct-to-DVD animated films for DC comics characters, all produced by Bruce Timm. The first was the rather undewhelming Superman Doomsday. The second is Justice League: The New Frontier, which is based off of the popular Silver Age-inspired graphic novel series DC: The New Frontier. The film features the voice talents of Kyle Machlaclin, Kyra Sedgewick, Lucy Lawless, and Jemery Sisto among others.

This film centers around superheroes during the cold war. The Korean War had just ended, McCarthyism is alive and strong, and superheroes are being increasingly looked down upon as the government inteferes with everyday lives. Along with this, an evil alien presence threatens to destroy all of humanity. It serves as an excellent backdrop for a film.

The film focuses around Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern most of the time, as they are the "new guys" being introduced. Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Flash, and King Faraday also have pretty decent roles in the film.

To appreciate this film, you have to be a comic book fan. That is pretty much a given. There is a lot going on in this film, and it takes an attentive eye to catch it all, but there is a lot of fanservice here if you know what I mean.

The animation is pretty much the same as we all remember from the previous Timm animations, but here the characters are redesigned to fit the '50s feel. In short, it's a joy to behold.

With the plot and the animation so great, I was a little disappointed at how the plot unfolds. The film is 72 minutes long, and we don't see Green Lantern in costume until about 64 minutes in. That is inexcusable. I know they were setting it up, but setup is for films that have sequels, and this movie won't have one. The filmmakers were walking a fine line between explaning too much and explaning too little. We don't see much of the characters' inner selves as plot development is stressed much mire than character development, and that's a shame. They could have added 20 minutes to this movie easily and it wouldn't have made it overlong.

The action is lacking, and just like Superman Doomsday, the first hour of development feels like it went to waste when a series of deus ex machinas force all the heroes into one big mutual earth-saving party. It's a bit cliche. But really, the message of the film is so wonderfully stated that even half-assed excecution doesn't totally destroy it.

A few characters are pretty much pointless. Ray Palmer appears in non-Atom form to give us a deus ex machina("hey, I have this shrinking gizmo that I magically have to help us all!"); Aquaman shows up at the end for another deus ex machina; and Robin, Green Arrow, and the Blackhawks are just...there. We even get references to other heroes that don't even play a part in the film. It's almost an endless list of heroes they were trying to cram into a short 70 minutes. But thankfully the film sits back and focuses the story on the main characters.

Overall, it has a strong plot, a strong message, and some totally awesome characters with some strong action in the latter moments. Plot excecution problems, lack of action through the first hour, and inaccessibility to many people force me not to give this a great rating, but I highly recommend it for comic geeks like myself who want to feel like a kid.

82/100