DVD Review - Justice League vs the Fatal Five

This is the 34th entry in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies. It's the 10th entry that has "Justice League" in the title. Four of those ten are really good. The rest aren't as good but still remain entertaining adventures. They're all better than the recent, live-action versions of the DC Comics characters. I would still separate all the animated features into three tiers, a top tier, a middle tier and a bottom tier. While this feature is entertaining, I would rank it toward the bottom tier but probably still in the middle. This feature, directed by Sam Liu, puts a woman as the protagonist and a woman as the antagonist. It represents female empowerment in ways that are progressive in a sense. What knocks this film down a little from being a really top tier entry is that the writers don't do enough character development to make the emotional pathos at the end fully land.

Diane Guerrero (Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin) stars as Jessica Cruz, a young woman living in Portland, Oregon. She survived the murder of all her friends three years ago. She still wakes from nightmares almost every day. It's topical given that her friends where victims of gun violence. She's in therapy trying to deal with it, but she's still racked with fear and guilt. However, she's been chosen to be a Green Lantern. Yet, she's reluctant to fully embrace her powers and become a member of the Justice League, despite repeated attempts from Wonder Woman to recruit her.

The movie doesn't do much more with this. For example, we never learn who the murderer was who took out her friends. We never learn if that murderer was arrested and faced justice. It's weird that the movie would introduce that history and that aspect but not resolve it directly. Yes, the events of this narrative are meant to be the resolution of her issues regarding that trauma but it feels as if the movie overlooks it more than anything.

Elyes Gabel (Scorpion and Game of Thrones) co-stars as Thomas Kallor aka Star Boy. He's a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, a group that is similar to the Justice League. Yet, the Legion of Super-Heroes live in the future, in the year 3000 or so. They protect the Earth and the galaxy. A group of villains named the Fatal Five attack the Legion's headquarters because the Legion has a time-machine. The Fatal Five get the time-machine and go back 1000 years, but Thomas is able to follow them. Unfortunately, Thomas has a medical condition that requires him to take some kind of pills. Those pills only exist in the future and without his medication, Thomas acts recklessly and in a child-like manner.

Who the Fatal Five are and why they want to go back in time are the thrust of this movie. For a lot of the previous Justice League animated movies, the villains were ones who were mostly iconic and who perhaps needed no introduction or explanation. Yet, for a few of the previous movies, the villains were given a bit more introduction and explanation than the villains here get. Usually, the bad guys just want death and destruction or dominance. Not much more introduction and explanation are usually required, which is fine, if the heroes' stories are more weighted. Here, that's not really the case.

As mentioned, Jessica's trauma isn't really explored. Thomas' mental illness is used mostly as a punchline and as a way to have him strip naked in one scene and then run around nude. There is a scene that goes inside Thomas' brain. The scene is just a way of giving us back-story, but it doesn't give us any more about Thomas as a person or his condition. As such, when the finale occurs involving emotional pathos between Jessica and Thomas, that pathos doesn't hit as hard as it could have.

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence, bloody images, language and partial nudity.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 17 mins.