‘Tower of Babel’ was better. But then the book is always better than the movie adaptation. Still, the latest release from DC Comics’ animated movies is an alright film, with a killer ending. Justice League: Doom features great animation, solid characters and a fun plot. The problem is that it’s kind of boring and run-of-the-mill. This could have been a made-for-TV movie of the Justice League cartoon from a few years ago. There’s just nothing special about it, nothing that warrants its existence in the animated movie library.

But who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? A Justice League movie is a Justice League movie.

Movie rating: 3/5: Alright!

Unless it’s a stupid Justice League movie. There were a lot of times during this film where I was rolling my eyes at just how stupid some of the ideas and plot points were. The villains, especially, were acting ridiculous, and some of their plans were downright dumb. These are the people Vandal Savage has hired to rid the world of the Justice League? These are the plans they come up with? But all of that foolishness is undercut by some pretty great characterization, especially on the part of the Justice League. They look fantastic, and the animation is top notch.

The ending is spectacular, really getting to the hearts of these characters. The problem, though, is that this is a stand alone movie. These character moments aren’t going to pay off anywhere else. There are aesthetic similarities with previous animated movies, so perhaps this is the same Justice League as those movies. But still, it’s mostly stand alone.

So what was the point?

The final work of the late, great Dwayne McDuffie, Justice League: Doom is an animated adaptation of the Mark Waid-penned comic book storyline ‘Tower of Babel’. The plot is really quite brilliant. And I’m going to spoil it, so stop reading if you don’t want to know what happens in either the original comic story or this movie. I like including spoilers.

Spoiler: The Justice League faces some kind of Doom

Basically, the idea is that Batman is the ultimate tactician and strategist, and as such, he has contingency plans for every member of the Justice League. In case Superman, Wonder Woman or the Flash turns evil or falls under mind control, Batman has a plan in place to take them down. But he’s keeping these plans a secret from his teammates. They have no idea that Batman is thinking of ways to take them down behind their backs. That’s not something friends do.

But then one of the bad guys finds out about the plans and steals them from the Batcave. With help, the bad guy starts using the plans to take down each member of the Justice League, keeping them busy while the bad guy enacts some greater plan.

In ‘Tower of Babel’, it was R’as al Ghul and his League of Shadows. In Justice League: Doom, it’s Vandal Savage and the Legion of Doom.

They sure are a pretty bunch

Ah, so that’s where the ‘Doom’ comes from in the title. Otherwise it’s as boring a title as Superman/Batman: Apocalypse.

There are a lot of great characters in Justice League: Doom, with a lot of great voice actors. Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly return as Batman and Superman respectively, the same guys who voiced them in their previous cartoons. Vandal Savage, Wonder Woman and the Flash all have the same voices too, with geek-favorite Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern. So we’ve got an all-star voice cast, which is always a plus.

And honestly, why don’t these same voice actors always voice these characters? Do Conroy and Daly have really busy schedules that they can’t make one or two new Batman or Superman movies a year? Are their asking prices so incredibly high for the roles that made them famous in the first place? DC always acts like getting these guys to play these voices is a catch.

As if he has something better to do than 'be Batman'

I really love the looks of a lot of these characters, especially the villains. The Justice League all look and act like you’d expect them too. The only new addition is Cyborg, and he looks and sounds great. More on him later. The Legion of Doom are all good choices: Bane, Metallo, Mirror Master, Star Sapphire, Cheetah and some evil Martian who I’m not sure exists in the comics. But they’re a fun group. Better than the usual Joker/Lex Luthor combo we might have seen. I wish we could have got more characterization from them, a little more depth, but they were at least fun to look at.

Sadly, no standout villains like Owlman or Johnny Quick from the previous animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

A star-making role for James Woods

So let’s get to the story itself, and why I was rolling my eyes through most of it.

We open with a very good fight between the Justice League and the Royal Flush Gang. I’ve never been a fan of the Gang, and considering how often they’re used, they’re really just boring. Between the comics and the various other animated projects, the Royal Flush Gang are just used far too often. It’s never the same people in the costumes, so they’re just not exciting to see on screen. Still, it’s a good fight with the Gang holding their own. We get a nice introduction to the League, and Cyborg, who just happens to be hanging around for no particular reason.

Unless, of course, you take it seriously that he calls himself, “the world’s ranking expert in multi-dimensional interface.” And that Batman asked him to help investigate the gang because of that reason.

Excuse me, what? Where the hell did that come from? You’re a guy who is half human, half robot. That’s it. Since when are you the world’s ranking expert on some kind of made-up science fiction?

The master of robot/human interface

As cool as he may look, Cyborg’s presence in this cartoon is laughable. I was at New York Comic-Con when Bruce Timm was asked (at a DC animation panel) if the New 52 reboot would have any effect on the animated efforts. Timm said it would not. But he’s a bald-faced liar. The only reason to put Cyborg in this cartoon is because Cyborg has been retconned in the reboot as being a founding member of the Justice League. The only reboot JL member missing in this cartoon is Aquaman. With him, they’d have the New 52 Justice League. Especially considering they are randomly using Barry Allen as the Flash in this movie. Every other animated Flash has been Wally West, so the only reason to claim he’s now Barry Allen is to match up with the reboot JL.

Which doesn’t make sense when you consider the fact that they brought Michael Rosenbaum back to voice the Flash, because he voiced the Flash in the previous cartoon series and people would remember him. Yet in the previous cartoon, he was Wally West. In this movie, he’s Barry Allen. Why would they do that unless to match the reboot JL?

So Bruce Timm is a big, fat liar and his pants are probably on fire.

And now he'll send his nerd armies after me

Anyway, Batman asked Cyborg to look into a machine that the Royal Flush Gang are using that turns walls intangible, so that they can sneak into a jewelry store without breaking in. This should be noted for later. The Justice League defeat the gang and everybody goes their separate ways. We follow Batman back to the Batcave and get a delightful scene with Alfred. Why they couldn’t get the guy who voice Alfred in the earlier cartoons, I’ll never know. But, as always, Alfred steals the show.

We also see that Mirror Master has tagged along with the Batmobile. Once alone in the cave, he downloads some files off the Batcomputer – those contingency plans for the Justice League I mentioned earlier.

We cut to the Louisiana Swamplands, where Vandal Savage has gone ahead and built what is essentially the Hall of Doom from the old Super Friends cartoon. Because why the hell not? He has summoned the various villains to the Hall and hires them for obscene amounts of money. Using Batman’s stolen plans, he has each of the Legion members attack the individual members of the Justice League in order to defeat them once and for all. You’d think this means death, they even talk like they plan to kill the League, but nope!

Be prepared to lose all faith in Green Lantern

Let’s take all of these one at a time and I’ll explain why I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at each of them.

1. Superman: Metallo poses as a suicide jumper on top of the Daily Planet. Superman approaches to talk him down, then Metallo shoots him with a kryptonite bullet. Then exposes Superman to Metallo’s kryptonite heart. However, rather than staying there and finishing off the now greatly weakened Superman, Metallo lets him fall off the building to the street below. Metallo leaves, I guess expecting the bullet alone to finish the job. It doesn’t. The League is later able to just surgically extract the bullet.

Why didn’t you just finish off Superman when you had the chance? Drown him in kryptonite on the rooftop! Don’t let him fall a safe distance away! Dumbass!

2. Batman: Bane draws Bruce Wayne out into the open by desecrating the graves of his dead parents. Bane then surprise punches Wayne into the empty grave, later burying him in a casket with his parents’ corpses. Batman has seen Kill Bill, however, and simply punches his way to freedom. Later Bane brags that he did better than kill Batman, he humiliated him.

Wrong! Nobody saw what you did! So he was humiliated to nobody! And Batman immediately freed himself. You should have killed him when you had the element of surprise! Moron!

3. Wonder Woman: Cheetah goads Wonder Woman into a fight, and secretly implants her with a bunch of tiny nanobots that attach themselves to Wondy’s brain. Now she thinks everybody around her looks and sounds like the Cheetah. So Wonder Woman attacks relentlessly. Because it doesn’t matter if these people are saying things like “Stop, we’re the police,” or “Oh God, she’s hurting my children,” they are saying those things in Cheetah’s voice with Cheetah’s looks. That’s good enough for Wonder Woman.

Cyborg shows up and gets attacked too, even though he’s displaying Cyborg’s tech and saying things like, “Hey Wonder Woman, I’m Cyborg, not Cheetah.” He’s able to scan those nanobots and disable them, freeing Wonder Woman. Because there would have been no way for Wonder Woman to guess that the dozens of Cheetahs running and screaming from her were not the real Cheetah simply cloned a bunch of times. Stupid!

4. Martian Manhunter: Posing as a hot babe at a bar, the evil Martian buys the Manhunter a soda laced with a poison that makes him sweat flammable chemicals. When lit on fire (the Martian’s one weakness), not even water stops the burning. Now he’s a flaming, out of control lunatic who can’t be put out. Pretty good idea actually. Why the fire doesn’t actually burn him, who knows?

Eventually Batman knows the chemical needed to counteract the poison and Manhunter is saved. But why didn’t the bad guy finish the job? Why not use this extreme distraction to kill the Martian somehow? Idiot!

5. Flash: MirrorMaster lures Flash to a speeding train and a deathtrap. It’s all fairly complicated, but basically it all leads to Flash getting a bomb bolted to his wrist. Like the movie Speed, the bomb will go off if he slows down below a certain speed. So the Flash is forced to just keep running and staying away from populated areas, until eventually even he gets tired and has to slow down. Batman comes up with the idea to vibrate through an iceberg, because somehow that safely removes the bolted bomb from Flash’s wrist. How exactly, I don’t know. It just does.

Why not just blow up the Flash once the bomb was on his wrist? Mirror Master revealed that he wasn’t really at the deathtrap, he was using a hologram. So there was no danger to Mirror Master. Just blow up the Flash! Fool!

6. Green Lantern: Star Sapphire lures Green Lantern into a hostage situation in an old mine. A bunch of terrorists have taken the mine workers hostage, including a secretary named ‘Carol’ who just so happens to look like GL’s ex-girlfriend Carol Ferris (who is also Star Sapphire). Green Lantern kicks ass until the terrorist holding hostage Carol blows a bomb before GL can stop him, killing both him and the hostage. Green Lantern is then so broken up that he couldn’t save the woman that Star Sapphire convinces him to give up his Power Ring right there on the spot. GL falls to his knees, cradling the dead woman and crying.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Green Lantern is defeated by turning him into the ultimate wuss! Sure, somebody died, but it wasn’t his fault! These things happen! He spends a considerable amount of the movie just crying there in that mine. Man the hell up, GL!

But what’s worse: the dead woman and the terrorists were ROBOTS!! Star Sapphire went to the trouble of having freakin’ super advanced androids built to simulate this hostage situation, and to make the dead woman look exactly like her. Once Batman tells GL that they’re robots, he immediately gets over it, picks up his ring and is ready to go.

Why not kill real people, Star Sapphire? That shouldn’t be a problem for a villain like you. And when GL takes off his power ring, why just leave it lying on the ground next to him? Take it with you! Or kill him when he’s powerless! YOU ABSOLUTE IMBECILE!

It's no surprise, really. She can barely put all her clothes on

So there you have it: six of the dumbest plans ever to kill the Justice League. In almost every single incident, the Legion of Doom have but to reach out and kill their greatest enemies. Instead, they just kind of walk away and celebrate their victory – which, of course, is cut short when the Justice League tracks them to the Hall of Doom and defeats them.

Another problem with Cyborg: how fortunate that he was around to simply step in and save Wonder Woman. He could have very easily saved any of the Justice Leaguers. Batman didn’t have a contingency plan for Cyborg. But that also means any of a dozen other superheroes could have stepped in to help. Aquaman, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Robin, anybody else! You can’t acknowledge that there are other heroes out there and just pick and choose that only Cyborg is around.

A Robin cameo would have been bliss

Anyway, we get to the ending, which is the best part of the film. Vandal Savage’s master plan is revealed: he wanted the Justice League out of the way at a specific hour to launch a magnetic missile at the sun. The blast would create a magnetic solar flare, which would follow the missile’s trajectory back to Earth and obliterate one half of the planet. Not only would billions of people die, but the EMP would wipe out all technology. Savage wants to take the world back to a primitive level, then he can rule.

Fine, sounds fairly villainous to me. Though I would have liked it if at least one of the Legion of Doom opposed the plan. Oh well, so much for wanting a little humanity in my villains.

The Justice League show up as expected, having shrugged off the various attempts to stop them, and thwart the villains. Though it should be noted there is one scene in the final confrontation where Metallo has Superman weakened by kryptonite, and Superman just sort of decides that he’s not going to be weakened anymore, and defeats Metallo. He pretty much just gets over the kryptonite, and is still strong enough to punch out Metallo.

“Hey guys, how do we have Superman overcome the kryptonite?”

“What if he just does?”

“Perfect!”

Anyway, Savage’s missile still launches. Superman fails to intercept it and the solar flare comes racing towards Earth. Green Lantern has a badass scene where he tries to stop a solar flare, but he also fails.

This is when the movie just gets balls-to-the-wall insane! Remember that intangibility device from the beginning, that the Royal Flush Gang was using? Well the Justice League figures out that Savage was going to use the same technology on the Hall of Doom, sparing it and those inside when the solar flare hit the Earth. So the Justice League uses the Hall of Doom to turn the entire planet intangible! Every person, place or thing becomes temporarily intangible and the solar flare passes right through the planet. That’s pretty freaking wild. The movie before that moment was lackluster, and then Justice League: Doom throws us one hell of a badass curveball.

Batman is properly shocked

We end with everybody back on the Justice League Watchtower officially inducting Cyborg onto the team. This conflicts with the ending of Justice League: Crisis on 2 Earths in terms of new members, but whatever. We also find out that the World Court has sentenced Vandla Savage (an immortal) to life in prison without parole. The team cheers, even though prison has NEVER held a super-villain for long. Again, whatever.

The really juicy part of the ending is taken from ‘Tower of Babel’, in that the team is pretty darn upset that Batman would think up contingency plans against them behind their backs. They want to vote on whether or not Batman should remain a member of the team. Batman gets a moment to defend himself, and is completely badass. He tells the team that if they’re so naive that they don’t think the Justice League is potentially dangerous, then he’s not even going to wait around for a vote. He quits.

Superman approaches Batman before he leaves and points out that Vandal Savage came up with the plan to bury Batman. Superman asks if Batman has a contingency plan for himself?

Batman replies, “I do have a plan; it’s called the Justice League.”

Bad. Ass.

Batman does not shiv

I don’t remember if that’s from ‘Tower of Babel’ or not, but it completely makes the movie. Superman’s all touched, and he gives Batman a hunk of kryptonite, just in case he ever needs to use it. Then we end with the Justice League dramatically looking out the window.

So even with an awesome couple of endings and some nice characters, the movie fails to live up to the excitement of previous animated features. The movie is worse than boring, it’s at times eye-rollingly ridiculous. I couldn’t believe how stupid everyone was acting. It completely took me out of the movie. I expect more from this animation team after the previous Justice League cartoons and animated movies.

I expected better.