Justice League: The
Flashpoint Paradox (2013) – The Flash (Justin Chambers) wakes up in a world
he doesn’t recognize, where Aquaman and Wonder Woman are at war, where Thomas
Wayne is Batman (Kevin McKidd); suspecting his nemesis Professor Zoom (C.
Thomas Howell), Flash sets out to restore his powers and the world he knows
before this one destroys itself in war. While
I greatly enjoyed the original comics by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert, I felt a
little underwhelmed by the film adaptation for two big reasons: its ambition
and its animation. In terms of ambition,
this 80-minute film tries to embrace the scope of the entire comic series, a
summer crossover spanning more than sixty single issues. Add to that the film’s attempt to adapt a
Flash-centric comic into a Justice League adventure, and you’re looking at a
heavy dose of Easter eggs that don’t really advance the plot. Having said that, the way that the filmmakers
recount the brilliant Batman: Knight of
Vengeance (by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso) in about ten seconds is
genius, highlighting the clever twist Azzarello brought to the alternate-world
story. My second grievance is the
animation style, much looser and anime-inflected than some of the more polished
recent entries from the DC Universe Animated Original Movies studio. While this aesthetic is probably appealing to
some, it feels choppy and bargain-bin, far from the caliber I’d expect from the
DC studio. It’s a diverting enough film,
told capably if briskly with a few memorable sequences, but it’s so incredibly
dark (one character is shot in the head, in extremely
graphic detail, more than warranting its PG-13 rating) and so poorly animated
that it’s hard to imagine anyone who isn’t a diehard DC devotee lapping this
one up.
Star Wars: The Clone
Wars (2008) – Hard to believe I’ve never reviewed a Star Wars film on here, isn’t it?
This is a bit of an odd place to start, a midquel made three years after
Episode III but set before it as a
backdoor pilot for a television series of the same name. A classic gripe about the prequel trilogy is
that we never see the much-heralded Clone Wars, which begin in Episode II’s climax and end in Episode III; this film and its progeny
attempt to bridge that gap. In 3D
modeling reminiscent of a video game, Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and
Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) defend the Republic from the Separatist
forces that threaten to tear it apart; amid the chaos of war, Anakin takes on a
Padawan, young Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), as they liberate planets and the
kidnapped son of Jabba the Hutt. Though I’ve
heard good things about the television show that followed, the fact is that The Clone Wars is not much better than
the prequel trilogy that preceded it – but it is better by virtue of stronger
dialogue and better characterization, safely away from the pen of George
Lucas. The real gem is the character of
Ahsoka; the thought of Anakin taking on an apprentice is not exactly appealing,
but Eckstein gives the character a spirited persona with an infectious
eagerness to master the Jedi ways. If I
end up watching the show, it’ll largely be to see what comes of her
character. Unfortunately, while The Clone Wars improves on Lucas’s apparent
inability to write character with personalities, it suffers from the prequel
trilogy’s over-cluttered nature, with way too many subplots,
double/triple-crosses, and characters dropped in solely for fan service. For example, I’ll never really complain about
Samuel L. Jackson’s presence, but his voiceover as Mace Windu accomplishes
literally nothing. Ditto for the
surprisingly offensive homophobia in the effete character of Ziro the Hutt
(think Jabba by way of Truman Capote in garish drag). If such a thing exists, The Clone Wars is a misstep in the right direction, rectifying a
few of the prequel trilogy’s errors but committing a few of its own.That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!
3 comments:
I thought they boiled the whole Flashpoint world down to one movie pretty well. But it would have been much cooler if they did like a season-long run in that timeline on one of the Justice League shows, like they did with Dark Phoenix on the old X-Men.
As for Clone Wars, I turned it off like ten minutes in, and have only seen small bits of the show. Not the target audience.
I've seen the first few episodes of the Clone Wars television show, and it's a vast improvement on the childish movie - and leaps and bounds more entertaining than most of the prequel trilogy! The show has engaging plots, characters with personalities, and a sense that Obi-Wan actually knew Anakin before his fall to the Dark Side. Plus the times they mention the Anakin/Padmé relationship, it feels like an actual romance is developing.
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