With the tease of the Justice League movie hanging over all of our heads, many are wondering what such a film could look like. Could it be better than the Avengers? Or will it fail to meet the expectations it has slowly built over the years and is still building now?
Well here are four films that really give you a good taste of how good the Justice League film could be, keeping in mind none of these are really origin Justice League films, however a few are based around just the bare bones big wigs before all the other Metas joined the crew. (Keep in mind these are in no particular order like release date or best to worst).
1. Justice League: Doom
For anyone whose watched the original Justice League series on Cartoon Network (or for us Canadians YTV, and we didn't even get all the damn episodes!), you will be quite familiar with the cast voicing the characters (Kevin Conroy IS Batman!) in this animated film, and there are even styles of the 90's Batman series in the animation work.
The only difference is Nathan Fillion voices the Green Lantern and that's a casting change I can always get on board with (sorry Phil LaMarr).
It was supposed to act like a tie-in to the original Justice League series, however it strays far from it, telling the story of the Justice League in their prime, even before adding Aquaman to the crew, and how the Legion of Doom first came together under the hands of Vandal Savage (and yes he is voiced once again by Phil Morris from the Adventures and Superman and Justice League Unlimited days).
Savage pays off Mirror Master to break into the Batcave and steal the contingency plans Batman came up with for each of the Justice League members to incapacitate them should any of them turn evil or become the victims of mind control.
Savage tweaks the plans to make them a little more deadly and sends each of the heroes personal enemies (Mirror Master, Bane, Cheetah, Metallo and Ma'alefa'ak to implement the plans. For the Flash its a bomb that is bolted into the bone of his wrist which will detonate if he slows down, attempts to vibrate it from his body or does anything else to stop it. For Martian Manhunter, a poison that secrets through his sweat glands and makes him permanently flammable even in water. For Green Lantern it is a emotional response to ruining the life of Carol by turning her into the evil Star Sapphire. For Wonder Woman, nanobots that make everyone look like her arch nemesis Cheetah, and set her adrenaline to overdrive making her want to fight them all and leading to her having an aneurism or stroke. And for Superman, playing on his human need to help those in need, to get him close enough to shoot a kryptonite bullet into his heart.
Batman never kept one for himself but Savage had Bane dig up his dead parents and take their bodies away which triggered an emotional response that temporarily made him loose his guard and focus. Enough time for Bane to beat the living holy hell out of Bruce and bury him with his father's corpse in the ground. (The best part is when Bane references the events of Knightfall when he says "First I broke the bat, now I will break the man").
When Batman escapes his hellish prison and realizes whats happened he quickly helps all the heroes break free of the personal prisons he's set up for them. They quickly travel to the Legion of Doom headquarters where Savage has actually planned to destroy half the population of the earth by using a rocket to set off a solar flare in the sun, scorching half of the earth.
While the rocket is sent, the solar flare is stopped by some quick thinking by Cyborg. Batman is questioned about his shady practices of keeping plans to take down each of the heroes, but defends himself stating that if they would be foolish not to be prepared for anything.
The end of the film kind of leaves Batman on the edge of the group, even though Superman has entrusted him with the kryptonite bullet that he was shot with by Metallo.
If you are a big fan of Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited you will definitely love this stand-alone film, as well as be able to reconnect with the characters from the show once again.
The show was dedicated to the Justice League TV series writer and producer Dwayne McDuffy who wrote the script but died shortly afterwards.
2. Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
This was another film that was meant to be connected to the Justice League TV series as a bridge between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, this was originally titled Worlds Collide, however it was shelved for a while due to the main cast being unavailable because of production on the Justice League Unlimited series and later brought back and re-written to serve the purposes of a stand-alone film with an entirely different voice cast (I mean William Baldwin as Batman? Come on.)
The film is actually a good one though following the idea of hundreds of different 'Earths' known as the DC Multiverse, each with differences in heroes, villains and even people. In this film though the focus is on the main DC Earth featured most often known as Earth-One and Earth-Three where a team of villains known as the Crime Syndicate terrorize the world with their super powers and cronies.
Lex Luthor who is actually good in Earth-Three and runs his own Justice League escapes to Earth-One with aid from The Jester (a good version of The Joker), to get help from the Justice League to stop the Crime Syndicate.
We discover that the gang of super villains is actually the exact opposite of each of the Justice League members, with a few small detailed differences. The most similar are Superman/Ultraman and Batman/Owlman.
The syndicate has been held off from basically running the world by the threat of nuclear response from the governments of the world, but with the help of Owlman they build their own bomb to up the ante.
It is later discovered that Owlman is completely psychotic, wanting to go to Earth-Prime, the original Earth that all other dimensional earths are based off of, and use the bomb to blow it up, thereby erasing all other Earths and realities based around them.
Batman learns of his plot and follows Owlman to Earth Prime which has been knocked out of its orbit due to some unknown cataclysmic event, that Owlman assumes was caused by humans.
He gives some big speech about how humanity is the death of everything and then beats the crap out of Batman (Bats gets his ass kicked a lot in these films), but Batman is able to use clever Batmany cleverness and outwits Owlman, sending him to another unpopulated Earth which is frozen over with no life on it whatsoever, seconds before the bomb explodes.
Owlman's last epic words are 'It doesn't really matter', before he and the entire earth are blown to pieces.
The rest of the Crime Syndicate is incapacitated and Lex Luthor takes control of his own Justice League once again.
3. Justice League: A New Frontier
Speaking of infinite earths in the DC Multiverse, this film might be considered to take place on one of those other Earths. It is set between 1953 and 1960 and follows the origins of all the original members of the League in this time period instead of in the present.
Hal Jordan is the only member in this film whose complete origin story is retold, from before he received his ring, it is basically similar however, the alien who passes the ring onto him warns him of an alien entity known as the Centre.
Martian Manhunter, referred to only as J'onn J'onzz in this film, is teleported here by Dr. Saul Erdel who has a heart attack upon seeing J'onzz. While J'onzz is uanble to return to Mars he takes Erdel's wallet and identity and shapeshifts his appearance into Edrel.
You also get to see J'onzz turn into Bugs Bunny while watching TV which is pretty freaking cool.
Superman meets Wonder Woman in Vietnam where she allowed a group of women to kill their captors which leaves him horrified. And she returns to Paradise Island.
Basically you get to see the heroes fighting a bunch of their arch villains and then they are all brought together in the end to fight The Centre which has collected Dinosaurs from when it landed on earth before evolution started and has mutated them and sent them to fight for it.
The heroes defeat it, blah dee blah dee blah, and they decide to form the Justice League to fight anything else that decides to come on their doorstep.
Its a pretty good film if you want to see Batman in his awesome 1950's getup, and of course mutant Dinosaurs, nothing more awesome than that.
4. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
Again on the trend of various Earths, this film, which was recently released this year, explores the Flashpoint Paradox storyline from the comics, which sees Barry Allen waking up in a universe that is completely different than his own, and he is no longer the Flash.
A lot of other changes have come about too including Superman having been captured by government forces when he landed on earth and forced to live in captivity under heavy guard, Aquaman and Wonder Woman meet on Paradise Island years before and strike up a treaty, and then become lovers, much to the dismay of his wife, who then fights for her husband against Wonder Woman in a sword fight and loses...her head. This leads to Aquaman declaring war on the Amazonians and the two powerful forces basically battling it out in Europe, destroying everything and leaving the pitiful humans to cower and watch.
The other major change is that Bruce Wayne was shot instead of his parents and while his mother goes insane and becomes the Joker, Thomas Wayne becomes Batman, however he is a vigilante who is willing to kill and uses guns instead of tech. He is also a raging alcoholic, all part of grieving over his dead son.
Barry believes that this happened because his arch nemesis Zoom (basically the Flash but in Yellow gear instead of red, and also psychotic), has gone back in time and changed the events of history. He attempts to play out the same experiment that turned him into the Flash in the first place, but ends up burning himself horrifically and nearly dying.
However, not to be beaten, he tries the experiment again with the aid of Thomas Wayne and is successful, with his fast moving molecules quickly healing his melted skin.
When he travels to Europe to stop Aquaman from detonating a device that will wipe out the entire planet and gets caught in between a battle between the two major forces with a band of other heroes like Deathstroke, he discovers from Zoom, who is watching everything play out, that it wasn't Zoom that changed things but Barry himself.
In the beginning of the film we see the event that made Barry want to become a CSI investigator, his mother was murdered in their home. Barry went back in time and changed that event so his mother would be alive, therefore causing a rift that slightly changed the events of history just enough to completely throw everything into chaos.
Barry is able to defeat Zoom, with the help of Thomas who shoots him dead, and then speeds himself up so fast that he is able to travel back in time again and catch the first him who is traveling back to save his mother, stopping himself from changing history.
This film was an amazing piece of Justice League production but is definitely not for children, featuring a ton of blood, gore, close to nudity and sexual situations.
This is one of my favourites because I love the Flash and the Flashpoint Paradox comic has always been one of the best written series in DC history.
Aside from these films if you haven't seen either series you should definitely check out Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, both streaming on American Netflix. The latter series is the more popular but each has its charm with the episodes running for two or three parts, making each of them mini-movies in themselves.
Whether they use any of these story arcs in the actual Justice League films will be interesting to see, if they use any I would hope they try to fit in the Flashpoint Paradox and the Legion of Doom origin story.
Justice League the live action film is slated for release in 2017.