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User Reviews for: Justice League vs. the Fatal Five

AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS7/10  3 years ago
[7.1/10] I don’t know why this movie wasn’t titled *Green Lantern: The Fatal Five* or something along those lines. Presumably there’s sound marketing reasons behind the choice to put the Justice League moniker on the tin. But this movie isn’t really about the League. It’s about Jessica Cruz overcoming her trauma and anxiety and asserting herself as a Green Lantern. It’s about Star Boy proving his value and courage regardless of his mental illness. It’s about Miss Martian earning her place in the organization. The rest of the characters, including DC’s biggest names, are effectively set dressing.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it’s a positive move to explore new, less-exhausted characters among the DC Pantheon. I’ll admit to only having the faintest knowledge about Cruz, Star Boy, and Miss Martian, and their respective powers and predicaments. Realizing new stories with new characters, rather than just rehashing old ones on both counts, is a good choice.

But it makes me question what the point of not only branding this a Justice League film, but placing it in the continuity of the DC Animated Universe is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to hear Kevin Conroy, George Newbern, and Susan Eisenberg playing Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman again. It’s neat to get glimpses of *Batman: The Animated Series* villains like Two-Face, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy again. And it’s cool to watch DC’s Trinity beat down various members of the titular quintet of villains.

The problem is that this is all, more or less, empty calories. Wonder Woman gives Cruz a nudge (er, slice) in the right direction. Superman’s inability to save the day calls for Star Boy to do his thing. And Batman has some mildly amusing banter with Miss Martian. But this is the young heroes’ story, not the familiar one, which renders the old guard fairly superfluous.

The best you can say is that they’re there to lend legitimacy to the ascension and sacrifices of Cruz, Star Boy, and Miss Martian. (And Mr. Terrific is there too! But he doesn’t really have a story either!) *Justice League vs. the Fatal Five* gives us a threat that the three most famous heroes of the DC Pantheon can neutralize on their own, requiring the contributions and initiative of much more reluctant and untested heroes. That’s good for a story of self-actualization among those younger heroes, even if it turns some familiar faces into props.

Even then, it’s not clear why this movie is set in the DCAU. My initial thought was that it could spare the screenwriters some time for having to establish the characters and setting, letting them build on details and developments from past tales. But that doesn’t really happen. The Fatal Five and the Legion of Superheroes appeared in the 2004 *Justice League Unlimited* series for an episode (not to mention an even earlier episode of *Superman: The Animated Series*). But the villains were undercooked there too, and there’s little use of the Legionnaires who’ve already been established (not to mention a complete lack of Supergirl).

That’s a shame, because the Fatal Five, a group of villains from the future causing trouble in our present, are bland and generic as all hell. Their motivations are standard to the point of doldrums -- rescue one another and then destroy the world. Their personalities are full of cookie cutter evil-doer attributes. And their powers are standard super strength and energy blasts, more or less, making you wish that the movie would either take more time to sketch them or alternatively borrow already-developed baddies from the DCAU instead.

But maybe that’s to give more space to the personal development of the three young heroes. There’s a laudable throughline to their arcs here, namely that mental illness does not have to prevent you from achieving great things. Jessica Cruz is agoraphobic and riddled with anxiety and self-doubt after witnessing the senseless murders of her friends and barely escaping with her life. Star Boy unintentionally goes off his meds when he travels to the past to stop the Fatal Five, leading to him being committed and underestimated for most of his stay in our time. Miss Martian...uh...is a little intimidated by working with the League? I guess?

Still, for the other two, the movie gives them solid journeys and big moments to prove their value. Star Boy has a heroic sacrifice, using his powers to hold Earth’s sun together despite the Five’s plan, saving the day in the process. And Jessica Cruz has her Spider-Man moment, using her strength of will to escape from under a pile of rubble and embrace how much talent and ability is at her fingertips, with her courage and skill pushing past her self-doubts and post-traumatic struggles.

Those are all strong ideas. The movie just doesn't do much to dramatize them between beginning and end. What should be the middle portion of the film is mostly spent on fine-but-unmemorable fights and flashforwards that confirm our young heroes become remembered in the annals of history, making their achievements, both personal and professional, feel like a fait accompli, thereby weakening the tension. More to the point, the villains and their threats don’t do much to challenge those weaknesses or illustrate the heroes’ personal journeys, instead just being a pack of bland antagonists.

Still, the movie is a competent character-starter at worst. It gives us enough detail and introspection on Jessica Cruz’s ascension to Green Lantern Corps. hero from a state of self-questioning reluctance to make her a compelling character. If there’s a follow-up to her story, one that can build on the necessary but occasionally flavorless establishing work done here, I’d be pleased to see it.

But I’ll admit to some disappointment over what *Justice League vs. the Fatal Five* wasn’t, which conflicts with my goal to judge the movie for what it was. With “Justice League” in the title and a billing as the first firm entry in the DCAU in a decade and a half, I expected a follow-up to the five seasons of adventures Bruce Timm, Dwayne McDuffie, and others put together in the early 2000s. Instead, most of those characters are conspicuously absent, and the ones who are still around are largely shuffled to the background.

And yet, if this was the pilot for a standalone new *Jessica Cruz: Green Lantern* show set in the DCAU, rather than a supposed follow-up to the canon, I doubt I’d have the same complaints. The movie is pretty standard and scattershot in terms of its coming-of-age beats, and features flat unmemorable villains as obstacles to its self-realization. But taken on its own, it’s a solid tale of a young hero overcoming her fears and doubts and realizing her power and potential. That’s a good story, even if it’s not necessarily the one I was hoping for.
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