Justice League Doom Blu-ray Review

Feature (Runtime: 76 Mins Region: Free)

The latest DC Universe animated feature arrives and this time it's an adaptation of Justice League: Tower of Babel, simply retitled 'Doom'. Adapted by the late Dwayne McDuffie, this latest DC movie brings together much of the voice cast from the original Justice League animated series, Batman (Kevin Conroy), Superman (Tim Daly) Wonder Woman (Susan Eisenberg) The Flash (Michael Rosenbaum) and Martian Manhunter (Carl Lumby) as well as DCU regular Nathan Fillion returning as Green Lantern. The Justice League come under threat when the Legion of Doom, led by Vandal Savage hack into the bat computer and access Batman's files on bringing down the Justice League (via a collection of plans ol' Bats has put together to stop The League if any of them ever went rogue). With the JLA all but taken out, Vandal Savage moves his plan to a more Earth threatening level but with our heroes out of action, maybe no one can stop him. Yeah right. JL: Doom sits somewhere in the middle ground of the 'good' scale for me. It's by no means a weak entry into the DCU animation catalogue but something isn't quite right. Artistically, it's beautiful. Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash look fantastic here Their developed style over the previous projects suddenly feeling the norm and blueprints for future animated projects. Green Lantern feels very right but still needing a bit of an edge and really it's only Superman who looks a little soft and in need of a slightly slicker re-design. The animation also takes another step towards holding up to high end Japanese style animation - the HD image here is stunning but more on that later. So why am I not going DCU crazy over this one? For me it's the story. For all of the human aspects, the dark themes of how to break our heroes and the question of whether what Batman has done is right, there's an elephant in the room throughout. Why doesn't the Legion of Doom simply kill the Justice League when they have the chance? Each member has been taken out in perfect ways (because Batman put the plans together) and even though Batman's original backups didn't involve killing his fellow League members, each one of the situations could go there with very little effort. This wouldn't be a problem if Vandal Savage simply wanted to prove a point but his bigger plan requires nobody to get in his way, so why stop at simply sweeping out The League's legs? Just shoot them in the head while they're down, surely? This question really began to bug me, mainly because each hero was taken out was handled so well and with real dramatic tension. As this all started to come together for the big villain take down (what else did you expect?) this began to feel like a silly Golden Age story that's been given a spit and polish with modern storytelling and a darker sense of drama for our comic book heroes. With that said Doom was still wildly entertaining. The fight scenes were absolutely fantastic. Every time I see Wonder Woman tussle in these animated projects I yearn for someone to give the DCU gang a pop at developing a live action flick because they make her so bad ass. The scrap between Supes and Metallo was awesome with a handful of killer cool moments and all the set pieces here worked wonderfully as did many of the dialogue driven scenes. As for Batman calling The League "Damn fools" and his "Can we just get this done?" attitude towards the supers around him always make me love the Dark Knight more and it's really played well here. The fallout of this tale was pretty great because of these attitudes and even if the whole of Doom didn't blow me away, moments like these sure did.

Quality

(Video: 1080P Ratio 1.78:1 Audio: 5.1 DTS-HD Master English, 5.1 Dolby Digtial French, 2.0 Dolby Stereo Spanish, English Subtitles ) As with all the other DCU animated titles, there's very little to fault in their HD presentations. There's an ever so slight hazy appearance to the image her but it's only to enhance the filmic quality of the project. Colours are slightly darker than usual, with Superman and Wonder Woman's blues a tad deeper and Batman's darker blues on the way to being black. Explosions, energy bursts and light effects all glow off the screen and the sharpness of 2D animation done this well is impressive as ever. As for the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track, it's got a solid thump to it but it's never going to compare to a big budget action movie. Dialogue is crisp and strong and the score has moments of glory but really the limited budgets for these projects are heard here and as per usual the audio tracks on these DCU animated project do enough but never really do anything to impress.

Extras

The Commentary with Geoff Johns and Mike Carlin is a pretty dull sounding track but it's full of thoughtful insights on the character and themes as well as discussions about how much you can get away with on TV shows now and how the animation game has changed since the Justice League days. A League of One: The Dwayne McDuffie Story (36:35 HD) has fellow writers, friends and family talking about McDuffie's life and work. The topics covered are his early life and his Marvel era but the real focus is on McDuffie's work on Milestone. Moving onto his years in animation, this era if full of admiration and his part in the DC animation project's successes as well as his work on Ben 10 is highly celebrated. The last half of the documentary brings in his personal life and this ends up being a respectful, passionate, personal piece and full of detail celebrating the man and his career. Guarding The Balance: Batman and the JSA (18:54 HD) looks at power going without accountability both in fantasy and reality and how Batman is the only man on the planet who could bring down The League if so required. The documentary trips through some classic comic stories that look at this theme as well as how governments should be run with the same view. Sneak Peek At Superman vs. The Elite (06:32 HD) looks at DCU's next project which isn't all that exciting a prospect. Man I wish they'd do something a bit more special or something totally new. Cyborg: The Time Has Come (06:08 HD) bigs up the pretty much background character who gets featured in Doom (and of course as a main player in the new Justice League comic line up). Sure I liked him in Teen Titans but I'm still not sold on his current promotion to the big leagues even with this little nugget of hype. Bruce Timms Picks are the episodes Wild Cards Part 1 & 2 and run for about 22 minutes each, the DC Digital Comic Book Tower of Babel is too small and with no zoom function it's more of a looker than a reader. Last up we get trailers for The DCU Application, Thundercats, Mad and Young Justice. Also the release comes with a DVD copy and Digital Copy. Justice League Doom is available now from Amazon.com (US) and will need to be imported into the UK for our Brit readers.