Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)

Please don't spend money on this.

Good concept, poorly executed.

good back-story, and good acting

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The earth is threatened by an evil counterpart to the Justice League. Lex Luthor comes to our earth from a parallel one with a warning about how everything is a stake and that it must be stopped by all means. The setup about parallel universes and the travel between them is pretty cool, although it was explored a little more in the later JL movie The Flashpoint Paradox which did it to perfection. Crisis On Two earths does a great job, too, especially near the finale with a great amount of tension increasing by each second. How the League plays off of their counterpart is cool with all their similarities being used against each other both superpowers and personalities. Ultraman is deliciously badass, Jimmy Olson from Ultraman's earth is cleverly different from the one we know, Owlman is just like Batman, but with much more radoical schemes than Bruce Wayne's Batman. Speaking of him, for the first time I expirienced a disappointing performance by an actor voicing Batman. I'm sorry, but William Baldwin's Batman lacked the same weighty volume as many of the other actors who has taken on the role the years, and that just kept hanging as a reminder through out the movie.But if that wasn't the case, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths had been a 10, because the other voice actors did amazing jobs with James Woods' Owlman and Gina Torres' Superwoman being the highlights.

Every fantasy and sci-fi show does an alternate/parallel world episode. "Let's make the good guys act like bad guys, and the bad guys act like good guys. The normal good guys cross over into the alternate- reality and defeat the new bad guys. While we're at it, let's put two of the good guys (who are now bad guys) into a romantic relationship." It's the sci- fi version of the sitcom "bottle episode" and is rarely well done.This variation of the theme is worse than most, and for Justice League fans, the randomly chosen set of celebrity voice actors makes the whole production just seem fake - i.e. good superman and bad superman both sound wrong. Alternate-world episodes usually seem to be driven by actors who want to dress up and "act" differently. But in this case the unfamiliar voices of the characters only works if the script is exceptional (like in Flashpoint Paradox), but in this case the story and script and very bland.The entire movie just falls flat.

These Marvel and DC animated movies are certainly great chances to explore different stories. The only problem with the DC ones is that they have a strict formula for the number of action scenes. This means most of the dialogue between the action can pretty much be ignored. Crisis on Two Earths did well in displaying the different characters and their relationships in the short amount of time. James Woods as Owlman was the most interesting character, becoming something worse than his dull crime- syndicate buddies. It's no New Frontier, and perhaps it's just my love of Green Lantern, but he wasn't in this enough. Hopefully DC will focus on the individual characters as the group efforts are overflowing with too many ingredients.

Overall a good story and also nicely presented. It's also probably better than 'Avengers'. But then what I've always hated about justice league is that superman very often ends up getting knocked out. He's so strong but still gets beaten up, even wonderwoman's evil twin superwoman was knocking him around quite easily. There's the fight scene between ultraman(superman's evil twin) and superman where both shoot laser from their eyes on each other which makes the lasers collide and ultraman intensifies his laser and superman gives and dodges ultraman's laser beam instead of intensifying his own(maybe superman should take a few lessons about projectile duels from goku). Then superman uses some shiny plate to reflect ultraman's back at him there by knocking him down...now what if that plate wasn't there? I am not trying to be cynical, but sups is supposed to put up more of a fight than this...he has the ability but is always underused, even against super powerful enemies. I also hoped to see wonderwoman fighting superwoman but that never happens. The best thing that martian manhunter does in the movie is scare the evil green arrow...and probably throws two punches and a kick in a fight scene and if this isn't INJUSTICE enough Owlman(the goofiest looking villain in JL history)outsmarts and beats the hell out of Batman yes BATMAN. Batman also takes a beating from superwoman(and outsmarts her)which is understandable but the way Owlman beats the heck out of Batman until the very very end feels like a load of crap thrown straight at your face. So the only superhero properly used is flash.But still if you are a Justice League fan the movie is good enough to entertain you from the start to the end, so go ahead and watch it.