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

4. You Cared About The Team

Justice League Huntress Question
Warner Bros.

By far the DCEU's biggest problem is that it was simply too eager to get going. Man of Steel might be four years old - and the same timespan existed between the first Iron Man film and Avengers Assemble - but Marvel had a greater output in those years. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger all released before the Avengers set the world alight in 2012, and they were all invaluable in its success.

People cared about the team because, for the most part, they'd gotten to know them over the course of their own individual features. With Justice League, only Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman had been given even the most basic of exploration in the years before, which made the film's team dynamic feel contrived and indeed, far less organic than its Marvel counterpart.

The Justice League animated series suffered no such issues, largely because it juggled its time (wisely) between each member of its cast. While this may speak more to the limits of the live-action format more than any inherent lack of quality on JL's behalf, it's simply true that the cartoon made fans fall in love with its heroes. The serialised format was instrumental in this success, most definitely. But any show is only as good as its characters, and it's equally true that the characterisation of each and every Leaguer in this series is superior to their respective live action counterparts.

You just care what happens here, whereas the film - on the whole - just feels like a cynical product.

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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.