DC should have begun its original video animation program with Justice League: The New Frontier instead of Superman: Doomsday. The latter video was very much a stumbling block for what could be a series of potentially excellent animated action-adventures OVAs.

I predict that if enough people see this video, it'll be much harder to find in a short while than Superman: Doomsday which will eventually end up within 6 months in the $5.50 bin at Wal-Mart. The New Frontier is that much better than Doomsday.

Yes, it's animation done on a bargain budget and it's nowhere near as nicely animated as a Disney feature or the Fleischer Superman shorts. The character designs are serviceable and suit the story but don't expect to be blown away by something new -- there's more than a little bit of a Bruce Timm influence in the look of the film even though he didn't design the characters. This story's original writer/artist, Darwyn Cooke, was a storyboard artist on several of the DCAU series in the 1990s and shows heavy Timm influence.

Its questionable and somewhat naive political biases aside (1950s America ALL bad, 1960s USA and JFK ALL good! sums it up), the film actually has a decent story about the next generation of heroes overcoming personal insecurities and finding their identities . The Flash is the fastest man alive yet feels inferior next to the demigods of yesteryear, Superman and Wonder Woman. Green Lantern feels he's not brave enough to step out of the crowd since he refused to fire guns during the Korean War. (Yeah, that part of GL never made sense in the original New Frontier comic, either...) Martian Manhunter is stuck in a world that's totally foreign to him but sees the spark of possibility and hope in humanity.

If anything, the 72-minute running time of the film (I don't count three minutes of B & W end credits as film!) works in the story's favor. So much of the needless exposition and nice-but-unnecessary cameos from the original comics are cut to focus on the three previously mentioned characters. This is NOT a Superman, Wonder Woman, and/or Batman story. And thank goodness for that -- because NOT ALL the stories have to be about those three characters. The original story has improved for the better. The narrative flows much more smoothly and the whole point of the story becomes obvious unlike the original mini-series which seemed to get lost and rudderless for an issue or two.

The casting choices are for the most part excellent. David Boreanaz grows as Hal Jordan and matures into the great icon of DC's Silver Age, the space age Green Lantern, by the end of the film. Brooke Shields also does one of her best performances as Carol Ferris, the boss and girlfriend of Hal Jordan. Frankly, her vocal and diction is so good that I feel she might have actually made a better Wonder Woman than Lucy Lawless who is surprisingly one of the weaker links in the film.

Yes, the producers made the most obvious casting choice. The live-action Wonder Woman project fell apart but Lawless never wanted to do it in the first place since she basically played another Greek character for five years. For whatever reasons, Lawless just doesn't seem to click as well as Wonder Woman and it's something of a disappointment. Her performance is not awful but she's definitely not the definitive Wonder Woman in my book. So far, nobody has captured the ultimate animated Amazon thus far as far as I'm concerned.

Neil Patrick Harris is also surprisingly good as The Flash. Although I felt he sounded a bit young to play Barry Allen he'd won me over well before The Flash's legend-making race for humanity towards the film's end. It's easy to buy him as a decent person who loves his fiancee but yet is conflicted by feelings of inferiority and awe in the presence of the legends who didn't fade away in McCarthyism (Wonder Woman and Superman).

Kyle McLachlan nails Superman as the 50s hero and Jeremy Sisto is also excellent as a Batman in transition from obsessed predator of the night to a more civil and responsible detective. Sisto was one casting choice a bunch of fans were nervous about since just about everybody agrees Kevin Conroy was THE voice of the animated Batman. They shouldn't have worried. Sisto was pretty darn good. A lot better than the other casting choices made for Batman since the end of the classic 1990s series.

Ultimately, The New Frontier is a faithful adaptation of a good comic book story that evolved into an even better film. It follows the basic lessons carried through the previous DCAU series Batman, Superman, and Justice League/Unlimited -- what's good and has worked for over 40 years really doesn't need to be changed because some egotistical Hollywood writer or artist wants to make his mark. Respect the past and don't become a slave to it, but don't lose the "hero" in "superhero," either. Those are lessons that the makers of Marvel's competing animated video series have yet to fully learn.

And you said you had little time to contribute reviews...!

Nice one, GC, I am looking forward to seeing this at some point.

Rand will have our Animated View up soon, too.

And here's the review:

http://animated-views.com/2008/justice- ... l-edition/

Looks like George and I largely agreed on this one.

Nice one, Rand! I'm really tempted to give this another look, since I didn't care much for it the first time around. I don't know why, since I'm such a huge JL fan in general... maybe it was an off day. The ending was one of my problems too, though.