Tag Archives: Cyborg

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Justice League: War – Review

Justice League War blu-ray box

A theater full of excited fans and I braved a blizzard in New York City to attend the world premiere of Justice League: War at the Paley Center. I can’t lie, I was both excited and apprehensive when I took my seat. I was excited because Justice League: War represents a new initiative in the DC Animated Universe. Producer James Tucker has a vision of the films now operating under a shared continuity. I was also excited for the talent that Andrea Romano cast to be in the movie. I’m an unabashed fan of Justin Kirk and wanted to see what he brought to Green Lantern. But I still had a lingering apprehension, which stemmed from the source material. I love Geoff Johns and I love Jim Lee, but I found the story in Justice League: Origin to be a bit underwhelming. Not to say I didn’t like their run on Justice League. I own all of the issues and even a page of Jim Lee’s original art from #5. I just wanted more from that story.

Justice League: War brings the more.

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Screenwriter Heath Corson and Director Jay Oliva make a number of improvements to the Justice League: Origin story in Justice League: War. My favorite line in Justice League: Origin, “Who’s Bruce Wayne?” is still here, but it’s moved much earlier in the story. It definitely works better in its new spot. Later, Bruce’s unmasking to Hal, which I remember being a big sore point for fans when the comic was released feels much more organic in the movie. The scene is now an inspiring one and seems to fit perfectly into the narrative. The biggest change to story is Vic Stone’s transformation into Cyborg. In the Justice League comic, his cyborg body is basically built out of a bunch of spare parts that his dad had lying around. But in the movie, his cyborg half stems from the techno-organic virus-like goo that transforms beings into parademons. I feel this new origin works better, because it gives Victor something to overcome. Vic is still saved by his father Silas when he’s near death, but this method gets Vic back in the game much more quickly.

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Corson’s humor definitely shines in the script, and because of that, I feel that this is a superhero movie that non-comics fans can enjoy alongside comic book fans. It has that same wink and a nod tone that the best episodes of Justice League Unlimited had. Whether it’s Batman and Green Lantern’s verbal jabbing, the ice cream scene with Wonder Woman, or even just the reactions characters give to certain lines, the humor makes this movie stand out. And don’t think for one second that this comes at the cost of making the movie feel silly. Just the opposite. Corson plays the humor in a way that heightens the seriousness of the threat. And it makes sense. Thematically, Darkseid is the absence of all joy, so of course the heroes should have a tinge of mirth to them.

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Jay Oliva can really direct a fight scene. At NYCC, Jay said he wanted Justice League: War to be balls to the wall action, and man did he deliver! This might be the most action-heavy DC animated movie yet. The movie revs up quickly and does not slow down for the most part. Oliva does take small breaks from the action, but this keeps things from getting monotonous. There’s a fine line that separates great action from overdoing it, and Jay walks that line well.

As you watch the movie, you may notice the pace of the story has been dramatically increased. In the comic, the story played out over a few days, but here it’s been reduced to one night. It’s almost like Justice League: 24. The shortened timetable both increases suspense and raises the stakes.

I really liked the character design work by Phil Bourassa. He took Jim Lee’s New 52 designs and improved on them for the movie. This is particularly true for the parademons. Gone are the bugged out red eyes that defined Lee’s parademons for me. Bourassa’s parademons don’t even have eyes…unless that’s them on their chins. Bourassa also designed a very cool Wonder Woman costume. It’s the most athletic looking Wonder Woman costume I can remember, while retaining all of Wonder Woman’s iconic pieces…the tiara, the bracelets, the lasso, the boots and the chest plate symbol.

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Andrea Romano cast what I would call a perfect cast for this movie. Sure, I’ll always want Nathan Fillion to voice Green Lantern and Kevin Conroy to voice Batman, but they’re not always available, and you will not hear any complaints from me on the casting of Justin Kirk and Jason O’Mara in their stead. Christopher Gorham’s take on The Flash is what I found most interesting. It’s definitely not the voice for Barry Allen that I hear in my head when I read the comics, but his choices on he played Barry make sense. He gives Allen a definitive cop voice, which makes sense, because Allen is a cop. I think Gorham and Romano took a risk with playing Barry Allen this way, but it’s a risk that paid off. Gorham speaks quickly as he voices The Flash. He has a knack for speaking quickly. During the panel after the screening, he let the audience know that he’s a trained auctioneer. You can listen to clip of him training the audience on how to be an auctioneer right here:

In my opinion, Justice League: War is the new reigning champ among DC animated movies. And I say this as a HUGE fan of Under the Red Hood and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 and Part 2. I think the crew there are operating on all cylinders, which makes me very excited for Batman: Son of Batman, their next release. If you are a fan of the Justice League, consider Justice League: War a must-see!

Justice League: War is available for digital download right now and will be released on Blu Ray and DVD on February 4. You can preorder it on Amazon right now.

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“Where’s The Flash?”

Tuesday Night Movies is running a contest where one lucky winner will take home a copy of Justice League: War, signed by Christopher Gorham of Covert Affairs, who voices The Flash in the movie. While interviewing him at the premiere last night, I pointed out that The Flash wasn’t on the poster for Justice League: War. The fan who makes the best poster for Justice League: War that includes The Flash will win a signed Blu Ray combo pack of Justice League: War by Christopher Gorham and a follow from him on Twitter! You can find all the details on how to enter here.

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Director Jay Oliva Talks Justice League: War

justice league war box art

In the third and final installment of my interviews with the crew from DC Animation at NYCC regarding the upcoming Justice League: War animated movie, I sat down with Director Jay Oliva. Jay is no stranger to directing animation, as he’s already directed Green Lantern: Emerald Knights and the excellent Batman: The Dark Knights Returns Parts 1 and 2, among other things.

Jay explained what makes Justice League: War different from Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. “It’s much more ensemble than Flashpoint. In Flashpoint, Flash was clearly the main one.” Cyborg does have a major arc in Justice League: War though.  “In this one, Cyborg is the one the audience can empathize with more, because you see him as a regular guy, and then you see him become the hero he eventually does.” But from the sound of it, unlike in Flashpoint, the story will be more divided among the League members and not mainly focus on one hero. Jay explained, “(Cyborg) has more of an arc. Batman shows up and he’s Batman. There’s no Batman arc…He’s just Batman from beginning to end. He’s just a bad ass all the way through.”

I asked Jay if Geoff Johns, the writer of the Justice League comic that Justice League: War is based on, was involved in the script at all. Unfortunately, Jay didn’t know how much involvement Johns had with the script. “When I start, it’s usually after the script has been written. Then I take over and try to do my adaptation of that,” Jay went on to elaborate.

When you sit down with Jay, the first thing you’ll notice about him is that he very energetic. I think this comes from the huge level of enthusiasm he has for his work with Warner Brothers Home Video. He wants his animated movies to stand out. Jay explained,  “You guys are paying 20 bucks for it. It’s on the same shelf as Man of Steel, Dark Knight, The Avengers. I have to be able to compete with that. I want you guys to say, “Hey, this looks like a good film,” and when you watch it, even though it’s animated, I want it to hold up with the live action stuff out there: balls to the wall action, good storytelling….I’m having fun with this stuff.”

When asked what storyline he’d like to turn into a film, he was very quick to answer. “I would do Gotham by Gaslight,” Jay said. He would go on to namedrop Gotham by Gaslight a few times in our conversation. The dude really likes Gotham by Gaslight. And looking at how he handled The Dark Knight Returns, I bet he could do a stellar job on the period piece Gotham by Gaslight. Warner Brothers, let Jay Oliva make Gotham by Gaslight!

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Gotham by Gaslight features Batman taking on Jack the Ripper.

Jay also said he’s love to a Kingdom Come movie, but that he wasn’t sure “if we have the technology to do it. It’s too hard. It would have to look like Alex Ross’s watercolors…We don’t have five years for this. We have a one year turnaound.” The 76 minute limitation posed by the budget of the animated movies also comes into play. “I’d love to do 120 minutes,” Jay said, “But the animation studio could not physically do it. Hopefully we can do parts 1 and 2 or more if it sells well….Dark Knight Returns sold really well, so Home Video is seeing hey, maybe we can do two-parters.” I don’t know about you, but if Kingdom Come were done as a four-parter, I’d buy every release!

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“Action, action, action.” That was Jay’s response when asked what we’re going to see in Justice League: War. “The comic is literally an invasion of Earth…It’s about a group of heroes who are powerful, but couldn’t take down Darkseid by themselves. So they have to band together to take down this greater evil. Personalities clash. Superman and Batman, whenever they meet they gotta fight. They’re so polar opposite…Ultimately, they become the team we all know and love,” Jay said. He also confirmed that we will see Apokolips, the home of Darkseid and his parademons in Justice League: War. But Jay also pointed out that, “We don’t see any New Gods, which I would have loved to put in there. It’s strictly just Darkseid and his parademons.”

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Jay has worked for both DC and Marvel’s animation divisions and was candid about the differences between the two. “From my own experience, the DC stuff I work on, they leave us alone…I don’t have to show my storyboards to the president of animation…They trust us. They know that we’ll do good work,” said Jay. Comparitively, he said about Marvel: “At Marvel, there’s a lot of hands in there. Mind you, I haven’t worked for them since they were taken over by Disney…I would never have been able to get away with The Flashpoint Paradox at Disney. Never.” That said, he also mentioned that he would love to work for Marvel again one day, “but right now I’m enjoying the freedom I have here,” meaning at DC. Going by the quality of his output at DC, I hope Jay Oliva stays with them for a long time.

The February 4 release date for Justice League: War is approaching quickly. Have you made your pre-order yet?

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Andrea Romano Talks Justice League: War

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Justice League: War is the next release in Warner Bros Home Video’s line of direct-to-DVD animated movies featuring DC superheroes. The official release date is February 4, 2014. I expect that Best Buy will once again have an exclusive version of the DVD that comes packaged with a mini-action figure. There has been no word yet as to what that figure will be. My guess is on Cyborg, since his origin story makes up a large portion of Justice League: War. If not him, then Darkseid, the main villain of Justice League: War.

At New York Comic Con this year, I had the chance to sit down with casting director Andrea Romano about Justice League: War. Andrea and DC animated projects go back. She’s the woman who originally cast Kevin Conroy as Batman in Batman: The Animated Series. Since then, she’s cast Batman enough times to lose count as to what the actual number is. “I’m looking for someone to tell me how many times I cast Batman. I think it’s somewhere around 17.” said Romano.

Justice League: War is the first of DC’s animated movies set in the New 52 universe. For those unfamiliar with the New 52, in 2011, DC rebooted their entire line of comic books, calling the new universe and continuity the New 52, which was the number of titles DC put out that month. Origins and costumes have been modified and modernized. When asked if she approached casting for Justice League: War differently than how she cast prior movies, Andrea said “(It was) pretty much the same process. We all looked for the best possible voices.”

I asked Andrea if there was a mandate from on high this time about not repeating voices. Andrea said there was, but that it changes every film. Andrea elaborated, “My first question on every job is can I use people I’ve used before? May I use Kevin Conroy? May I use Mark Hamil?” Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes they want her to have an all-new cast. According to Andrea, sometimes a change in visual style or the use of a different color palette from a previous project will lead to the decision to work with a new cast of actors.

Bruce Timm handed the reins of the DC animated movies to James Tucker in order for Bruce to focus on other projects. When asked how working with James Tucker compared to working with Bruce Timm, Andrea said, “I love working with both of them. I worked with James on Brave and the Bold and many other projects in the past, so I knew him. Bruce and James have very much the same mindset on the way they think things need to be depicted, and the way they want it to look and sound. It’s kind of a seamless transition. James is great. I love both of them.”

Andrea walked me through the production time line for a project. She explained, “There’s lots of time limits. The script is written. Then I do casting and voice directing. Everything then takes its cue from there, so if I’m late, everyone else is late, and that’s not good. We have to deliver by a certain date. Even though we might deliver this now to Warner Home Video, it may not release for another six months, but we still have to deliver it. And if we don’t deliver it, we’re fined, because they have plans for it. They have to promote it. They have to get footage out there.  If I’m late, the next step gets late, then the next step. I’m at the end doing the ADR, so I’m impacting my own schedule, because I have less time. And when I use celebrities, trying to get them in to their ADR, I’m working on Saturdays, I’m working on Sundays, I’m working on holidays just trying to get it done so that I can get it in to the mix, so I that I can deliver on time. Production takes about a year and a half to make, start to finish, and then it may sit another six months before it’s actually released.”

In regards to specific casting, Andrea was very high on casting Shemar Moore, from Criminal Minds, to play the part of Cyborg. “There are always actors I watch on television shows or films that I keep a list of, that I want to find a role for.” said Andrea. Shemar was one of them. Andrea went on to say “It’s his first time ever doing voice animation. You would never know it how good he was. Really good.” She shared a funny anecdote about Shemar’s recording session. “It took a lot of screaming in that particular role, because he’s almost killed. If you watched the Emmys…he was doing a couple of interviews; he had worked for me that day. I was like, “Shemar, I hope I haven’t destroyed your voice for the night.” Because he just did all the ADR for him. I was like, “Oh lord, I hope I didn’t wreck you for the night.” But he was good.”

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Andrea also shared a story of voice direction gone bad. “We do so many of these projects simultaneously where we are doing post production on something, casting the next one and recording for one. When I directed this piece, I had forgotten that it’s really the Justice League origin story. When I was directing Alan Tudyk as Superman, I was directing him incorrectly.” How? “I was directing him as playing it kind of the hands on the hips, arms akimbo, secure. But he wasn’t that yet. The character hadn’t grown to that yet. After we animated it and I got the track back, I went, “Oh, I screwed up.” I had to go back in and ADR his first lines of the piece, making him sound more innocent…It was very interesting to make that change because to me, they’ve always existed forever. But it was the origin story. I forgot.”

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When asked if she wonders why Warner won’t release DC animated movies on the big screen, Andrea replied, “I wonder that often.” She said she was happy with the way Batman: Mask of the Phantasm turned out. Andrea elaborated, “When you make something intended for the small screen, if there are flaws, no one is ever going to see it. Of course, when we made that (Phantasm), people didn’t have 56″ flat screen TVs to watch. But you put that on a big, huge feature film screen and (you) see all those flaws. That film did really well in that there were no many flaws that showed up.”

Possibly the greatest thing about talking to Andrea is that you get a real sense of her high energy and enthusiasm for every project. I expect her to be casting Batman, and the other heroes of the DC Universe, long into the future.

Justice League: War will be released on February 14, 2014.

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The Outsider Revealed! – Justice League #23 Review

5/5 – Perfection from Johns, Reis & Prado
First off, I would like to welcome all the new readers who discovered our site from Bleeding Cool and New Earth 2 linking to our Who Is The Outsider? post.
I woke up early like a kid on Christmas morning and rushed to my iPad to buy Justice League #23. After putting out my Outsider/Alfred post, the suspense of waiting to have my suspicions confirmed was killing me. I had the feeling we’d be getting answers this issue and did we!
Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Rod Reis knock the art in this issue out of the park. I think this is best I’ve ever seen out of this art team. Every panel on every page is expertly rendered. If there’s any complaint about the art here, it’s that not enough comics from Marvel and DC look this good.
I’d like to warn you all that I am going SPOILER CRAZY from here on out, so if you haven’t read Justice League #23 yet, perhaps now would be a good time to close this window and come back when you have. Cool?
The Spoiler is giving you a warning!
Justice League #23 reveals The Outsider’s identity as the Alfred Pennyworth of Earth-3. I had the feeling that we would get that reveal either in this issue or in Forever Evil #1. Needless to say, I was very excited to read confirmation for my theory on The Outsider’s identity.
Alfred works for Owlman, the evil Batman counterpart from Earth-3. Some people have speculated that Earth-3 Owlman and the Owlman that appeared in Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls are one and the same, but that does not appear to be the case. While they do have costumes very similar to each other, going by how he addresses Alfred, it sounds like the Earth-3 Owlman has been trapped on Earth-3 alongside the rest of the Crime Syndicate all this time.
Geoff Johns is a writer who loves the Silver Age. He’s the man who made Hal Jordan and Barry Allen relevant again. Because of that, I am insanely excited to see his take on the Crime Syndicate of America. I’ve had a thing for the Crime Syndicate since I first encountered them the first time I read Crisis on Infinite Earths. I have always loved evil versions of heroes. It’s a concept that doesn’t get old to me. Grant Morrison perfected the Crime Syndicate in his Earth-2 graphic novel, and I’m looking forward to Geoff Johns taking them to the next level. The amount of thought that Johns has already put into these new versions of these characters is great. Power Ring being a coward is so clever, yet I’m surprised no one ever thought of that before. Superwoman’s golden lasso being made out of barbed wire makes her appear like even more of a sadist that when Grant Morrison wrote her.
Power Ring is no Hal Jordan.
Has Cyborg ever been treated as brutally as he was in his takeover by The Grid? This panel makes Magneto ripping Wolverine’s adamantium out look like a spa exfoliation treatment. I’m really hoping that Vic having his cyborg half ripped from him means we’re going to get a slimmed down redesign of Cyborg in the near future.
My other favorite scene in the book is when Atomica reveals herself as the traitor. The way that Reis and Prado draw the expression on her face when she’s revealing the truth to Vic is just classic.
Everything you need to know about the character is revealed right there in that panel. She’s not the guilt-ridden wet blanket that she’s been portraying herself as in the previous parts of Trinity War. She played both leagues. Somehow she even managed to hide it from J’onn. I really like that Johns hid her duplicity as The Outsider’s inside woman in the league by having her cover being she was a secret agent spying on the Justice League for the Justice League of America. Looking back on it though, it makes so much sense. The Outsider bragged about having a mole in the Justice League of America and the Justice League. It should have been obvious that the mole would be the one person who has access to both leagues.
I wonder if the outing of Atomica means we’ll see the return of Ray Palmer to the DCU. I certainly hope so.
It’s funny, Justice League #23 had much bigger reveals than Marvel’s Age of Ultron #10, but DC didn’t feel the need to wrap Justice League #23 in a black polybag. The end of the Trinity War succeeded where Age of Ultron failed. Age of Ultron’s lackluster tenth issue made me less excited for the Marvel events that immediately followed. But after reading Justice League #23, I am psyched for Forever Evil and Villains Month! Bring on the bad guys!