10 Reasons Why The Justice League Cartoon Is Better Than The Film

10. It's Much More Mature

Justice League Green Lantern Hawkgirl
Warner Bros.

The visual hallmark of the DCAU may have been Bruce Timm's iconic character designs, but there's another thing that brought these shows together: their maturity.

Justice League was no exception to this rule, and while BTAS may be able to boast seminal storylines like Heart of Ice, Feat of Clay and a Bullet for Bullock, Justice League has just as many hits to its name. The team dynamic even allowed the show's producers to push the series in bold new directions, and indeed, in many ways, the show is even smarter for it.

Certainly, Justice League's frank and honest discussions surrounding relationships, trauma and loss deserve to be commended. The series was very adult when it wanted to be (you could probably fill up an article comprised solely of all its innuendos), but it served a purpose in creating a show that catered for all ages.

Another DC series, Young Justice, would later follow in its footsteps, but there's just something uniquely engaging about JL's character-driven ethos. You won't find a series like it.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.