Justice League: Secret Origins

-Warner Brothers (2001)

If you're looking for a review of the full season of Justice League click here.

Summary

The world’s mightiest jointly owned AOL/Time Warner superheroes gather to save the day.

My Thoughts

 When the prospect of a Justice League television series came about I was pretty damn excited. I liked both the 90s animated series for Batman and Superman. Combining the two, then adding more even superheroes was a better combination than peanut butter, chocolate, AND marshmallows. This DVD is the two awesome episodes that kick started the series way back in 2001 and makes for one damn tasty superhero treat. Sadly, the DVD itself is not enough to match the super strength of the series, but more on that later. 

Secret Origins begins with a couple of astronauts digging around on Mars for stuff, because that’s what astronauts do. One of them discovers something strange half buried in the red sand, which in turn opens a hole. Of course, he then falls down the hole. Since he’s separated from his astro-buddy he decides that it’s a good idea to open this big ass door with all these weird symbols on it.  Low and behold, something bad happens. We then move on to our ever popular hero Batman spying on some scientists. These scientists do some wacky things like speak a strange language and lift several ton objects above their heads. Batman, angered by their flagrant use of super strength, decides he’s seen enough and starts beating on them. Unfortunately, his non-super powered ass gets handed to him by the scientists. Superman shows up out of nowhere and starts helping Bats when the man of steel gets some crazy vision and is rendered helpless. The scientists escape and one of them insults Batman by giving him the “one gun” salute, which is of course only half as cool as the “two gun.” If anyone deserves a two gun salute it’s Batman so therefore it is very insulting. Regardless, things go all crazy as aliens begin landing on Earth and the only way they can be stopped is by gathering the world’s most powerful superheroes. It turns out that The Martian Manhunter did just that in an effort to stop the partially inspired War of the Worlds looking aliens in their place.  

The biggest problem with Secret Origins is that character development is pretty lame. Since most people know who Batman and Superman are that’s not a problem. Martian Manhunter gets a good deal of time and a little bit of back story is revealed for Wonder Woman, yet for some reason there’s hardly any explanation for Flash, Green Lantern, and especially Hawkgirl. At one point one of the heroes asks, “Hawkgirl? What’s she doing here?” Indeed, what is she doing there? Of course, I believe that this is a forgivable error since A: The DVD is only an hour long and B: Secret Origins is a pilot for the show and this leaves it open for further episodes to explore each of the characters more in depth through future installments.  

The animation style that was first made popular in Batman: The Animated Series works extremely well for Justice League, but there are a few moments where I was a little disappointed. First, Superman’s face looked a little weird if you compared him to his own series from a few years earlier. Also the ‘S’ on his chest must be super hard to super draw considering that it looked more like a blob of yellow at times. These are pretty minor errors when compared to the few points where characters looked like Rob Liefield freak designs, especially Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Wonder Woman who each sport freakishly huge shoulders and necks a couple of times. Other than these few points I’m quite pleased with this beginning to the continuing and awesome adventures of the Justice League.

As for the DVD itself it’s a rather poor offering. The only thing that could make my regular fix of new episodes of Justice League on Cartoon Network even better would to have the series on DVD for my archives, including Secret Origins. The problem with Origins and all the other Justice League releases is that they are basically cheap releases for the kids set. I realize the show is made for children and that I’m far from being like most adults, but for god sakes the show airs at 9:00 pm and the stories have a lot more depth than say, Teen Titans. There’s got to be more than a few adults that would buy a much better DVD edition, especially if they were packaged in full seasons. Unfortunately, there isn’t a box set for any of the seasons. Instead, there are a few DVDs with selected episodes. To make things even worse, Origins is only an hour long! Instead of including it in a full set for a decent price, fans will have to pony up way more cash that what's worth for one hour of programming. Warner Brothers, please get your act together on this one.

Another sticking point with me is that Origins (like the other Justice League releases) is presented in full frame. The back of the package says that they are in standard format “preserving the original” aspect ratio. I distinctly remember Cartoon Network airing the episodes in widescreen, but I’ve read in a lot of places that it was a “fake” widescreen. That means that cartoon network would have to cut out about 30% of the full frame original. So, if that’s the case I don’t care if it’s not in widescreen, I don’t like cropping of any kind. 

On the plus side, the picture quality is rather decent. On the downside, the audio is only available in Dolby 2.0 and it’s not the greatest mix in the world. In addition, even the packaging is utterly craptastic. Remember those old Warner Brothers DVD cardboard and plastic cases? Well, they aren’t gone yet as this release proves.  

Extras

So what do you get on a kiddy format DVD? Not a whole lot, in fact almost nothing.

First off there’s “Character Bios” that are pretty handy for the two people who don’t know who Batman or Superman are. “Cast and Crew” is a STILL FRAME of people worked on the DVD.

There’s a few trailers for other DC related DVDs and a Scooby Doo sneak peak thing to round out the crap. Oh, wait there’s some pointless DVD-Rom stuff like web links!

And… that’s all folks.

Score:

Film: 8.0

Extras: 2.0

Edition: 2.0

-Paul