The DC: The New Frontier movie is honestly pretty bad. Weak voice acting (Neil Patrick Harris is good; everyone else is mostly not), generic-looking animation that looks more like warmed-over third degree Dini/Timm models than the gorgeous Darwyn Cooke pencils from the comic, and a superhero-heavy storyline (which removes a lot of the charm of the book) all contribute to make what is easily one of the best comics of the last decade into Just Another Crappy Superhero Cartoon.
Bleh.
EDIT TO ADD: I remembered that a few days ago one of the comic news stories making the rounds was that DC was considering scrapping their animated DVD movie of the famous Teen Titans story, “The Judas Contract.” And how Teen Titans fans were trying to mobilize to get it made, and…
…why?
Seriously. If you’ve already read “The Judas Contract,” it’s not going to get any better as a cartoon; comics stories in particular are noteworthy for losing a lot of their storytelling power in cartoon form. Think for a second about how many episodes of the various DC cartoons are explicitly based on existing comic book stories. (For BTAS, as an example, I can think of one or two Joker episodes, and that’s about it.) Using themes and broad story arcs from the comics (“the Legion and the Fatal Five team up to destroy the Sun-Eater” or “Terra joins up with, then betrays the Teen Titans”) is fine, but pure adaptation?
It’s impossible to duplicate the effect “The Judas Contract” had on its readers at the time, because the cartoon can’t duplicate the months of reading New Teen Titans, watching Terra work within the team, and then one month when you weren’t even slightly expecting it OH SNAP SHE IS FUCKING DEATHSTROKE THE TERMINATOR, Y’ALL. The box copy on the back of the DVD will say something like “can the Teen Titans ever be prepared for betrayal… from within?” and the shock value of the story – which is in large part the reason it worked so well – just won’t exist, unless you seriously think new viewers are going to think “hey, maybe Robin or Kid Flash is the traitor.” (Hint: they will not.)
Here’s an idea: make direct-to-DVD movies with actual new stories. Wacky, I know, but I’ve watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm multiple times, because it is actually a good movie, rather than cheap regurgitation of existing product transformed into fanboy porn designed to milk ever yet more money out of an existing fanbase.
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I’m afraid I concur. I had high hopes going into it, and there are one or two moments a hardcore DC fan will indulge in (Rick Flagg Sr.!), but the acting is sad, the plot disjointed, and most of the character moments are wasted (Hal’s complex, he finds a ring, he’s Green Lantern).
It’s a curious choice for an animated movie, because this creates yet another animated universe with its own continuity (JLU/BTAS, “The Batman,” Teen Titans), and I’m not sure who it’s supposed to appeal to. It’ll baffle the casual fan who expects some carryover from other series, it’s too vapid for the true fan, and it’s not going to appeal to the unintiated.
I saw it a while back and wanted to write a similar review, but just wasn’t motivated enough. It’s not…god-awful, but it’s not worth getting worked up enough to write a true review, is it?
Ding ding ding. Still, the urge for fanboy porn is pretty high. Many of us are still under the impression that anything can be adapted for film or television, so for many of my friends, the thrill of seeing things they like moving around on a screen outweighs the damage to the story.
Agree. I went and read the comic after seeing the movie. This movie isn’t going to send adults flocking to theater, and kids are going to be confused.
The comic was fairly cool, but I gotta ask WHY mess with continuity here? It seems… contrived to me. It might just be me, but the story itself is a bit not-quite-elseworlds and very not-quite-useful. It’s just throw various versions together in ways that don’t fit and then watch them be heroic. It was PRETTY (the comic, not so much the movie), and a limited sort of what-if fun, but I didn’t get drawn into that story, it was more jarring than juxtaposition I guess. Why not throw in the Wonder Twins!
But as always, good ol’ animated Supes gets the ever loving gob smacked out of him, and everyone ELSE gets to be awesome. I loves me the animated Superman. *grin*
It could have been really good, if they had an extra 20 minutes for set-up, characterization, and subplots. But alas.
Part of the problem with the New Frontier (as a movie) is that it works off of the “the past is always wrong” argument. Which is, the story makes the assumption that you, the viewer, have already come in with the impression that everybody in the 1950s was an intolerant moron. Not to say that same intolerence doesn’t apper in the comic (it is, after all, a central theme), but it’s humanized, explained, and expounded upon, rather than just put out because “people in the fifties didn’t know better”. You read the comic, you can see where these ideological divisions come from and appreciate the characters’ growth as they overcome them. In the movie, people are jerks for no good reason and then Superman gives a speech (I should note, he gives Col. Flagg’s speech, to a group including Col. Flagg, which just made me facepalm).
I don’t think 20 minutes could save it for fanboys, to be honest. And it wouldn’t make a difference to kids except to make it longer and possibly go over their attention limits.
I just wish they’d do the canceled Justice League movie already. I don’t know whether the live action version will help speed this along or ensure it never happens.
To be honest, I prefered the movie. All of the WW2 stuff didn’t work for me in the comics. The only thing I was really unhappy with was how they changed the part about John Henry and King Faraday’s demise.
Both comic and movie nailed Aquaman, though.
I thought the movie was quite good. Not OMG BESTEST EVAR, but still pretty good.
Of course, I recently attempted to watch Dragonlance, so I might have been able to put in POTC 3 and think, “Hey, that’s not bad at all!” 🙂
I was under the impression that Mask of the Phantasm cribbed fairly heavily from Batman: Year Two.
I really need to get around to reading New Frontier.
I was only interested in seeing The Judas Contract because of the vague mention that they weren’t going to use the traditional Dini/Timm style animation which my brain assumed meant that they were going to ape Perez’s art style for it. Keep in mind I probably would have still hated it simply due to the fact that I’m about as hardore a purist as you can get.
I admit, you do have a strong point. JLU worked mostly because it dumped most of the continuity and went some truly awesome stories in their own right.
Only counter-example I have to offer is the adaption JLU did of “For the Man who has Everything” which, aside from being very close to word-for-word, is damn good in its own right.
IMHO
Michael
I’d put the ten or so episodes of the Cadmus arc of JLU against any Justice League comic you can name. The part where Question is going to kill Luthor so Superman will never have the chance to… that’s some awesome.
salmo just pointed out one of my favorite action cartoon moments ever. So, uh, damn that guy for having good taste before I could say it, just so I have a second sentence to put here.
“I was under the impression that Mask of the Phantasm cribbed fairly heavily from Batman: Year Two.”
You could make that argument. Certainly there are ideas in Mask of the Phantasm that seem to have been inspired by Year Two.
But the movie took a few elements from the comic book and executed them in a very different way. And also implied that the Joker was having sex with a robot, which is pretty cool, especially since they slipped it into a kid’s movie.
Plus, Batman: Year Two sucked breathtaking amounts of ass, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is really good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QrBvWdlRDc&feature=related
I just wanted to bring this to everyone’s attention. If you can tell me with a straight face that’s -not- awesome and wouldn’t be awesome if it got made full length . . . well, I don’t know what I’d do.
Wait, didn’t they already kinda do Judas Contract in the Teen Titans series? I mean they had Terra join the Titans, then betray them and it ended up she was working for Slade/Terminator. Of course they completely skipped the relationship angle; the show’s for young audience.
Eh, I liked NF. It was certainly better than Doomsday. Sure a lot was left out, but considering they only had 75 minutes to work with I think they did a great job and I like that they at least tried to mention/integrate the parts that were left out rather than just make them non-existent (the fact that Mr. Cooke helped with the story really showed). These movies should be a full hour and a half-two hours rather than the limiting 70-75 min factor they’ve been stuck with- especially if rumors are true and they’re going to try and do Kingdom Come. As for the voice acting- I thought overall it wasn’t bad. Again, it was a ton better than Doomsday.
Personally, I find it vaguely entertaining that the faults everyone’s finding with the film are about the same thing that made me hate the comic; it’s poorly paced, the plot makes no sense, the whole thing depends on you buying into the idea that the Fifties were a time of stultifying conformity and rigid adherence to the status quo instead of the vibrant, dynamic period of social change that they actually were, and Cooke spends big chunks of the series lavishing long, slow blowjobs on Hal Jordan, his personal mancrush. (Did I mention I wasn’t a big fan of ‘New Frontier’?)
Eh, I liked it, flaws and all. It wasn’t the best adaptation but it was an entertaining movie.
However, no matter how you feel about the thing you must admit this: this movie has offered up irrefutable proof that the Blackhawks’ battle cry is absolutely fucking terrifying. Hawkaaa!