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

5. It Had The Right Kind Of Scale

Justice League Green Lantern Corps
Warner Bros.

Although Justice League should receive credit for venturing into the world of Jack Kirby's New Gods, what with its allusions to Apokolips, Darkseid and all the rest, it's equally true that it lacked one or two elements to really take it up a notch, one of them being the Green Lantern Corps.

The animated series' Green Lantern was John Stewart, who was played to great effect by Phil LaMarr throughout its run. For those who grew up with that series he's still their GL; Hal Jordan seems bland and totally uninteresting by comparison.

But it wasn't just the Corps that got their nod in Justice League, the New Gods, like Mister Miracle, Big Barda and Orion all featured in some way over the course of the show's five year run, in a period that also saw the series cross cities, galaxies, dimensions and timelines. It was a living love-letter to DC's history, and while there are certainly limits of what can be achieved in a live action arena, there's nothing to stop the DCEU from embracing the mythos with the same gusto Warner Animation did ten years ago.

Oh, and if DC are going to include a Lantern for their JL follow-up, it better be John.

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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.