Review: Justice League: Gods & Monsters

Justice League: Gods & Monsters present the big 3 of the Justice League as you’ve never seen them before! Superman is a hard-nosed son of Zod who doesn’t particularly care about collateral damage and was raised by Mexcian immigrant farmers (which I guess makes him look vaguely Latino? Wouldn’t he still be a pretty whitebread dude?)! Batman is a bloodthirsty vampire! Wonder Woman is a New God! They save the world, but at what cost? The government is constantly afraid of them and when prominent scientists start getting murdered in ways that seem very much like the Justice League, they must find out who is framing them before the whole world really turns against them. Does Justice League: Gods & Monsters provide a compelling altered-universe tale? Read on to find out.

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Justice League: Gods & Monsters marks the return of Bruce Timm doing his “Timmverse” style of animation, and for anybody who fondly remembers shows like Batman: The Animated series, Superman, Justice League, etc. it’s bound to have an instant nostalgia connection because it looks like it’s pulled straight from that era, almost like a lost episode. This style is pretty timeless and one of the strongest features of the film. Honestly even the music sounds like something straight out of one of those shows, which only adds to the nostalgia.

Unfortunately, Bruce Timm nostalgia is all Justice League: Gods & Monsters has going for it. The villain is a nice deep cut to one of the more obscure DC characters, but his reasoning for framing the Justice League & especially killing virtually every other prominent DC universe scientist is just dumb.

The Justice League themselves often seem to act with little rhyme or reason and change motivations on a whim. Batman refers to when Superman found him as a raving vampire out for blood and saved him, but the Superman in Justice League & Gods & Monsters doesn’t seem like someone who cares much about saving the individual person or someone who would bother to find out why someone is a vampire and try to help them, he would just fry the dude and move on. It’s a little bit of a spoiler, but at the end of the movie, Superman says, “hey maybe we should stop trying to kill bad guys”. There is literally no motivation for this, or nothing where he pauses and thinks maybe the way they have been doing things are wrong, he just decides to do this thing because why not.

Ultimately, Justice League: Gods & Monsters is a unique, well-animated but really undercooked idea. I know there is a planned second season web series, but if it’s basically the same Justice League in slightly different garb, what’s the point? I feel like DC animated films have sort of been slumping lately and I really hope they can turn it around soon.

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