"Justice League Dark" Animated Release Talkback (Spoilers)

[Wag]

There was no real resolution with Swamp Thing. Was he destroyed or just ended for a span?

I guess it didn't matter, so there was no reason to resolve it.

And why exactly was Batman in this? Detective Chimp would have been a much better choice, but then again, it's Batman, so why not?

 

[Yojimbo]

And why exactly was Batman in this? Detective Chimp would have been a much better choice, but then again, it's Batman, so why not?

He had the role of "The Skeptic" to play.

 

[Wag]

He had the role of "The Skeptic" to play.

That's the role Detective Chimp plays in the comics. They just replaced him to sell more copies. Batman is really wasted here.

 

[Spider-Man]

There was no real resolution with Swamp Thing. Was he destroyed or just ended for a span?

That is my only complaint about the movie really. His fate is kind of open-ended. It seems like he is destroyed but it's done in a way where it seems like he could just as easily come back. I enjoyed the movie and thought it was one of the better recent DC cartoon movies.

Do any iTunes Canada users have a problem viewing the extras? I was able to view some and then the rest they just wouldn't load. I guess I could just redownload the purchase.

 

[-batmat-]

This was easily the best movie out of all the New 52 continuity movies. Now, I'm not saying much since I disliked them all, but still, it was enjoyable and a solid film.

I didn't know Destiny was going to be in this. so I was pleasently surprised since I enjoyed him on the JL series, however, he's very different here (I got the vibe this was his original story and the JL series was made up, but I dont know), and sadly, doesn't do much other than being there to fight the heroes in the end.

I liked all the characters, I thought this was gonna be a Justice League movie with the Dark characters thrown in, but nope, it is a Justice League Dark movie! I thought having the real Justice League here was a bit unnecessary since they are basically doing a cameo here. I would have taken the movie out of the continuity, and make Batman the one witnessing all the stuff at the beginning and then have the movie unfold with him looking up the rest of the Dark characters. No JL needed, specially at the end! It was reeeally cool though seeing John Stewart, Martian Manhunter and Hawkman again.

I don't get the one who said Zatanna didn't have much to do in the Faust fight. What movie did you watch? She was the most powerful hence why Faust did the spell for not allowing women to talk, and when she got free she basically became some sort of Phoenix from Xmen almost killing Faust! SHE defeated him... nothing to do you say? I don't get that... Agree about the final fight though, but it was a really cool moment when Batman is thanking her and suddenly she spells to freeze Superman who was bassically going to kill Batman!

I enjoyed Deadmen a lot, though I think having his backstory told here was unnecessary. Swamp Thing was great, I had never seen anything from him before. I liked how he refused to help save mankind with his reasoning that mankind are the ones destroying the planet. I felt his death was emotional and I enjoyed the sequence, not so much with Jason Blood's since the ''acting'' felt a bit clitched, but the funeral scene with Etrigan calling him his brother was touching.

I liked the twist of having John and Zatanna's friend being behind it, didn't saw that coming. For asec, I thought the personified version of the House was going to be involved but I guessed wrong.

This movie flew past me, I had a nice time with it, nothing more... I'd give it a 7,5 out of 10.

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

I enjoyed the movie, but I don't really like how many of these movies are introducing swarms of characters at a time. I get that this is a relatively new universe, and that these films are intros to the characters for many viewers, but as a guy who's already familiar enough, I'd like to see more building off established characters.

I would also agree about Batman's role was mostly there just because he's Batman. As the movie pointed out early, the League has a lot of experience with magic at this point that it seems strange that Batman all of the sudden thinks there's a more... grounded... explanation to the crimes and that it's unlikely the supernatural was involved. On the other hand, I think it added some humor to the movie. Every time some weird magical thing happened, Batman would just give an unamused "hnnnh..." or grunt.

But back to too many characters, I don't think these movies' run time really lends that well to introducing five-plus characters at a time. Still, I enjoyed it enough.

 

[Bestmand902]

I don't get the one who said Zatanna didn't have much to do in the Faust fight. What movie did you watch? She was the most powerful hence why Faust did the spell for not allowing women to talk, and when she got free she basically became some sort of Phoenix from Xmen almost killing Faust! SHE defeated him... nothing to do you say? I don't get that... Agree about the final fight though, but it was a really cool moment when Batman is thanking her and suddenly she spells to freeze Superman who was bassically going to kill Batman!

I'm honestly re-thinking my position on that. I admit, I was a bit hasty in my judgement, I didn't really give myself time to really think and digest the movie, so to speak. I'm still somewhat disappointed that she ended up not doing too much, but I do really like what she did do, now that I think about it, especially freezing Supes in his tracks.

 

[RoyThomasConan]

The Missus and I finally found the time to sit down and give this a watch. With the track record of these films being pretty non-sensual and lacking in characterization, we were braced for a let down. And I happy that we enjoyed it instead. It was similar to Justice League War in that it was very fast paced because of it's short running time with the responsibility of taking the time to introduce these characters coming together for the first time viewer, but I think it juggled it all very nicely. Villains and their characterization were sacrificed again, but they served the story.
It was creepy in the right places and earned it's R rating too.

We were worried that Batman was going to come off as stupid because he encounters magic in nearly all the previous films in this continuity (War: He meets Wonder Woman / Son: He uses a Lazarus pit and obviously has a history of familiarity with them / Atlantis: Meets mythical undersea sorcerers and sorceresses and travels to the lost city itself / Titans: Encounters demons and Trigon and is aware the young team went to a version of hell itself / & some might count the pseudo-science zombie nonsense in Vs. Robin as well.)
But, he seemed to just be observing and obsoleting everything he could from these encounters, to use against magical threats in the future. That's Batman.

All our new heroes get time to shine and Constantine is definitely a standout.

Jason Blood's death seemed too soon for us, but it was handled well.

As for Swamp-Thing, his part was very small, and what Destiny did to him isn't a forgotten lose end, it's obviously set up for that solo Swamp-Thing film Oliva has been lobbying for that Warner Bros. is considering for next year. It was a catalyst for a lose adaptation of the start of Alan Moore's run, as Swamp-Thing is parted from the bones that makes him "human" and suffers an existential crisis believing he is just a mesh of plants and returns to the earth, as in his last scene of the film. I very much hope the solo Swamp-Thing film comes to fruition.

The Sandman Easter eggs and plot points had the Missus and me on the edge of ours seats with geeky anticipation of what may come down the line. The rewrite of Destiny to be a medieval threat and the dream stone not being referenced as originally a Possession of Morpheus puzzled us a bit, but worked for the film (And also resulted in Etrigan's origin being tweaked to drive the plot). We had really hoped (expected even) that Death of the endless would cameo to take you know who to hell at the end, and for Dream to take the stone, leaving teases for Sandman films in future. Also expected to see Cain & Abel in the house of Mystery, but none of those things happened. I hope that Sandman and the Endless films are being heavily considered with all the borrowed material in this one though.

We pretty much loved everyone, and I was great to see this team treated so well, some for the first time in animation. The twist was obvious, but the movie is such a fun ride that it is not a hindrance, and it doesn't suffer any logical fallacies like previous entries. Hopefully it is a sign of what's to come.

 

[Troy Troodon]

Actually looking back, I feel I should address at least one of these flaws.

Why does Destiny need to make people attack each other, even after he is reincarnated?

 

[RoyThomasConan]

@Troy Troodon

I took it to be that he didn't need to, it just really amuses him. Destiny as a character gets off on the power trip, forcing innocent people to do depraved things to each other. This is explored in Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. But even for a viewer who hasn't read the books, it seems straightforward enough that he revels in and even seems to feed off the chaos he's creating.
He's just that kind of monster.

 

[Troy Troodon]

Actually speaking of monsters ... our heroes against a demonic fecal monster... yeah they fought a monster, that was made of literal crap... what is it with DC's use of excrement?! It's bad enough we got the dead baby monster in Countdown to Final Crisis... but this?!

 

[RoyThomasConan]

@ Troy Troodon
Maybe I can help you with this one too. It's an type of possessive demon people in the modern day have nicknamed "exceremental" (I think Kevin Smith coined that). Many cultures, from the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and the Japanese believed that evil spirits could inhabit collected excrement as it was "part" of man in a way (sort of like hirsutism golems, made of intended victims' hair). There is an apocryphal legend of the Golgotham, a demonic beast made of the feces of all the men who died and passed their bowls at the site of Golgotha, where many were crucified. It was the sorrow of Christ's own suffering there along with all the demonic forces that were already drawn to the site because of the amount of death that occurred there.
Fecal possession/ spiritual manipulation is a gross monster legend, but one as old and as valid as any other, and as believed in by as many people. Hell, originally ghosts were believed to inhabit the bile and mucus of a person, hence ectoplasm.
The cult films Dogma and Spirited Away also feature excremental spirits. People utilize these sort of socially taboo demons for the same reason people write anything in the horror genre; to scare the viewer and make you uncomfortable, and hopefully leave an impact on you in a way the overly used legends probably can't any more.

 

[Fett One]

I think I might have missed something. What was the point of the blue energy ball that Zatana pulled out of her throat during the Felix Faust fight?

 

[Wag]

I think I might have missed something. What was the point of the blue energy ball that Zatana pulled out of her throat during the Felix Faust fight?

Zatanna's source of power is her voice, and since she couldn't speak in Faust's house she used her wand to store it. At least that's what I gathered from Faust's comment later on.

 

[Yojimbo]

James Tucker tweeted Swamp Thing isn't dead. Just to be clear.

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

@ Troy Troodon
Maybe I can help you with this one too. It's an type of possessive demon people in the modern day have nicknamed "exceremental" (I think Kevin Smith coined that). Many cultures, from the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and the Japanese believed that evil spirits could inhabit collected excrement as it was "part" of man in a way (sort of like hirsutism golems, made of intended victims' hair). There is an apocryphal legend of the Golgotham, a demonic beast made of the feces of all the men who died and passed their bowls at the site of Golgotha, where many were crucified. It was the sorrow of Christ's own suffering there along with all the demonic forces that were already drawn to the site because of the amount of death that occurred there.
Fecal possession/ spiritual manipulation is a gross monster legend, but one as old and as valid as any other, and as believed in by as many people. Hell, originally ghosts were believed to inhabit the bile and mucus of a person, hence ectoplasm.
The cult films Dogma and Spirited Away also feature excremental spirits. People utilize these sort of socially taboo demons for the same reason people write anything in the horror genre; to scare the viewer and make you uncomfortable, and hopefully leave an impact on you in a way the overly used legends probably can't any more.

I thought those things were called Mons-turds.

 

[WebMasterSage]

James Tucker tweeted Swamp Thing isn't dead. Just to be clear.

Yay! Big Green Lives.

(That's what I'm will be calling Swamp Thing for Now On)

 

[Bestmand902]

James Tucker tweeted Swamp Thing isn't dead. Just to be clear.

The Jolly Green Giant lives again!
Hooray for Plant Jesus!

 

[knightowl]

Some thoughts from both a fan of the Justice League Dark comic book series and the live action Constantine TV show. I loved this film. I'd rank it as the best of the in-continuity Justice Leagues films so far (even though we've only had two JL films proper and two used to introduce other teams.) The Constantine-Zatana relationship was straight out of the New 52 so I enjoyed their banter. The fact that Zee referred to Batman as Bruce was a nice nod to their prior history as well. Was it just me or was Matt Ryan's accent slightly modified from his live action version? Given my first exposure to him was through voice acting (in Assassin's Creed) I can see that being a conscious choice or maybe it was the vocal direction. Also love his theme being another nod to the show (with the harpsichord.)

If there's a follow-up, I'm hoping they'll add Madam Xanadu and Frankenstein. Since there was no button on this one I'm curious what comes next.

 

[Otaku-sempai]

Was it just me or was Matt Ryan's accent slightly modified from his live action version? Given my first exposure to him was through voice acting (in Assassin's Creed) I can see that being a conscious choice or maybe it was the vocal direction.

I was hoping that he would correct someone's pronunciation: "It's 'Con-stan-tyne', mate!"

If there's a follow-up, I'm hoping they'll add Madam Xanadu and Frankenstein. Since there was no button on this one I'm curious what comes next.

Hmmm...Justice League: Rebirth?