Wednesday, May 25, 2011

DC movies

I'm not talking about the theatrical release of Green Lantern but the animated films that Warner has been churning out for a few years now.  Netflix has some of them available for instant streaming.

Overall the quality of the animation is a step above your typical TV production.  The writing isn't nearly as good as what was done on Batman the Animated Series or the Superman series done in the same style.  Big on fights and small on excuses to have them.  There is vertually nothing of a human scale in these things.  The ones I've seen (Green Lantern, Crisis on 2 Earths, Doomsday) are all just fight after fight with a bit of dialog between fighting set pieces.  There is the occasional bit of nice voice work (James Woods as Owl Man being a stand out).  Also, I should add that these cartoon are not for kids... the fighting is very violent rather than cartoony and Superman doesn't hesitate to hit girls.

It seems like they save the best animators for the critical fight scenes and scenes where things slow down enough for a minute or 2 of dialog are assigned to the less talented animators.

There is an exception to this... there is one collection called Captain Marvel vs. Black Adam, which is actually a collection of 4 shorts.  The title cartoon is pretty awful, but the following short features the Specter, and it's genuinely creepy.  After that was a Jonah Hex story that was very reminiscent of spaghetti westerns.  It was very violent and strumpet filled, but surprisingly satisfying for a cartoon.  Last up was a Green Arrow story that was fairly light and fun.  The witty banter was actually witty and by the end of the cartoon I was thinking "Hey, I never knew that I liked Green Arrow!"

1 comment:

  1. I think I had that in the queue and took it back out. Now I'll give it another chance. Mainly to check out the Spectre.

    ReplyDelete