Movies / Animé and Toons

Justice League : Doom - An Adaptation Riddled with Plot Holes

By Hervé St-Louis
March 6, 2012 - 23:47

Batman’s protocols to stop his fellow Justice League members in the advent of them going bad gets stolen by the new Legion of Doom, headed by Vandal Savage. One after the other, members of the League fall prey to traps engineered by their arch enemies.  As the League is defeated, Vandal’s Legion of Doom plans to wipe out two thirds of the human population. How can the Justice League save the day?

This is the latest animated offering from Warner Premiere and DC Comics as a direct to video feature featuring DC Comics’ characters. These home movies tend to be good. This one was not. It was riddled with plot holes and some of the characters’ motivations were off. One saving grace was the animation which was excellent and offered cleaned up character model sheets although some of the changes are not great. Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Superman, Flash and Batman all had character design changes.

Character designer Phil Bourassa’s model sheets have been tweaked for this DVD release. For example, Wonder Woman and Superman’s eyes are wider.  Bruce Wayne looks weird here. I would argue that the characters looked better in previous animated films and in the Young Justice animated series which seems to be based on the same continuity and character designs. The figures were less solid and realistic and more cartoony.  Green Lantern has changed a lot. Like the other characters, his eyes are now wider and more expressive. It almost feels like after years of abandoning the Bruce Timm's super cartoony look, that the creative team from Warner Animation is slowly reverting back to that style. While I don’t hate the Timm animated look, I’m not interested in seeing a bastardization of his style and Bourassa’s.



Story-wise that’s where everything breaks down. Vandal Savage could have launched his projectile towards the sun and catch the League by surprise without having to disable them first. Then, there’s how each of his henchmen was too lazy to check that they had finish the job and completely eliminated the threat of the Justice League member they went after. There is the question of where some of the technology used by Mirror Master and the Royal Flush Gang came from.  An even bigger question is how Vandal Savage even knew that Batman had designed protocols on his fellow Justice League members.

There were problems with some of the villains introduced. For example Malefic is a known Martian Manhunter villain, but only hardcore comic book readers would know much about him. As he was introduced, he seemed like an uglier version of the Martian Manhunter with the same voice. He seemed to doubt and know a lot more about Vandal Savage, but ultimately never double-crossed him. He’s not into this for money so his motivations beyond hurting his old opponent were dubious. Ditto Star Sapphire. The last time we met her as Carol Ferris in these animated films’ continuity, she was just green Lantern Hal Jordan’s girl friend/boss. What happened? What made her hate him so much? And what about all of the secret identities of the Justice League that the villains amass and retain? Does it even matter?

The film is entertaining notwithstanding the major plot holes and problems in the script. If you want to see a few good fights between good and bad guys, this is it. If you don’t care about the internal logic of the story which is inconsistent, you’ll definitely have a good time with this release. If you’ve watched the Super Friends’ Challenge of the Super Friends recently on DVD, you’ll appreciate the many cameos, Easter eggs and references to that old cartoon series. Justice League: Doom was inspired by a JLA story arc called Tower of Babel, but has been substantially changed for the animated version.

Rating: 6 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12