Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

MAHQ's general podcast for nerdy things, which ran from 2011-2017.
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Chris
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Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

Chaos Theater Ep. 061 - "DC Universe Animated Original Movies"
- Download Now: 64 kbps - 196 mins, 1 sec. (3:16:01) 44.86 MB

Special Guest Host: Kevin Ondarza (Opening and DC movies)

Segment Breakdown for this Episode:

01. Intro: "What We've Been Up To"
Runtime: 0:00:01 - 0:30:18

02. Discussion: "DC Universe Animated Original Movies"
Runtime: 0:30:55 - 3:07:33

03. Outro: "Audible recommendations"
Runtime: 3:08:10 - 3:13:31

Chaos Theater is back with our originally promised episode covering the DC Universe Animated Original Movies. Our friend Kevin joins us as we discuss every movie released to date, including Superman: Doomsday, Justice League: The New Frontier, Batman: Gotham Knight, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern: First Flight, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, All-Star Superman, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, Batman: Year One, Justice League: Doom, Superman vs The Elite, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Superman: Unbound and Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. We also briefly discuss the DC Showcase shorts. Due to the absurdly long length of the main topic, we skip the Mailbag in the closing. Next time, we're getting ice cream as we discuss Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy.

Music Featured in this Episode:
"Boing Zoom DAKOTA!" from Rock Candy 1 by Shadow
"Toy Computer" from Morning Noon Night by Jim Guthrie
"Right and Right Again" from Morning Noon Night by Jim Guthrie


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yazi88
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

Wouldn't Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker count as a DC movie along with the Teen Titans movie?
Or was it because they were part of DCAU (DC Animated Universe)? But then again, I don't know if Teen Titans was part of DCAU.

Although I can understand your reason not to review them as they weren't that good. Mediocre would be kind enough to describe those movies.
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

DC Universe Animated Original Movies is a specifically branded line that starts with Superman: Doomsday, so anything before that doesn't count. And yeah, they'd be part of the DCAU, which is separate from all these movies.
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

I'm glad Chris is still enjoying Agents of SHIELD. I've still got issues with the series. I like that J August Richards is coming back next week. I think given time the series will find it's footing a bit more, but right now the writing just still feels rough and inconsistent.

Conversly I liked this season of The Walking Dead. It's about as eventful as every other season of The Walking Dead so I'm not sure why Chris feels it's all filler. It's certainly not worse than season two where they look for that little girl for 15 episodes or so, and spend time just hanging around the farm.

Add: Every time someone screamed "Sophia!" that season I was waiting for someone else to scream "Walt!".
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

so rapidfire thoughts on all these movies I have seen:

Dooomsday: that comic arc had two things, a really boring fist fight between a boring antagonist and a poorly written superman and the entire DCU reacting to the death of their greatest icon. this movie had a Kevin smith in-joke. boo-urns

JL:NF: I dig the modern age sensibilities set in the 50's vibe this has going.

Wonder Woman: entire film is: Trevor: chauvinist bullit, WW: Straw feminism, Trevor/WW: i guess we've gone through enough action beats that we care about eachother now, lets go have a fight scene from Jason and the Argonauts. best bit is Diana teaching the little girl how to sword fight.

GL:FF; glad they skipped over the origin story for training day with DBZ climax. everything needs more Sinestro, though.

S/B:PE: it's fine until Luthor goes off the rails at the end.

JL:C2E: for all the good James Woods does, I don't buy Owlman's motivation. Those struggling with nihilism should take up boxing (to quote a recent conversation I had). the justice league TV series tackle the 'mirror universe' idea oh so much better than this movie.

Under the Red Hood: still the best of these movies and the best execution of the 'comic arc adaptation' motivation behind a lot of these movies. Take the story and boil it down to it's every core and deliver on it with maximum intensity. the casting excellent, greenwood reprised the batman role for Young Justice and was equally awesome in that, I wish DiMaggio gets another crack at Joker.

S/P:A: too much crap for one movie

ASS: shows how great that the origianl comic was that it can go through the Shamylan's Last Airbender style of compilation adaptation and still come out amazing.

Year One: worst Batman performance ever. hits all the major beats while still finding time for the goes nowhere catwoman subplot from the comic. give me more Gordon.

JL:doom :based on the arc that gave us Batman as God-King of prep-time, still well executed despite a shoe-horned Cyborg.

S vs E: based on the series that was Superman editorials giant up-raised middle finger to 90's comics everywhere and earns merit on that alone. However, it does not include the 'complex world of time travel and hyper-intelligent apes' speech that SHOULD be the mantra of every creative team DC comics.

DKR: includes every. mother. fucking. talking heads on the news sequence. but can't give me the bat-monologue or dystopian future setting. what the hell, guys? the two part format leaves this whole affair kind of bloated, this is an arc that could have been condensed well but wasn't.
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

I'll also do a run down.

Superman Doomsday: It was pretty meh, but the actual fight against Doomsday was pretty intense. I think 10 minutes is pretty long for a single fight.

Justice League New Frontier: I thought it was pretty trippy but I didn't have any serious problems with it. I didn't like how easily Superman got taken out, though, and having it double as Green Lantern's origin story felt a bit shoe horned in.

Batman Gothan Knight: A decent enough tie in to the Nolan movies.

Wonder Woman: I thought it was solid.

Green Lantern First Flight: I liked it and it gave us this gem.

Superman/Batman Public Enemies: It was pretty fun seeing all these characters show up to take on Superman and Batman. I also like the interactions between the two title heros when they're actually being buddy-buddy rather than forced to fight each other.

Justice League Crisis on Two Earths: I liked it. James Woods was great, naturally.

Batman Under the Red Hood: I thought it was really good. John DiMaggio knocked it out of the park. The movie is also notable for being the first time Jason Todd has appeared outside of the comics. For the longest time I didn't even know he existed because I only knew of Dick and Tim thanks to the animated series.

Superman/Batman Apocalypse: I liked it. Darkseid is cool and Supergirl was hot.

All-Star Superman: It was good, but yeah it was too episodic.

Green Lantern Emerald Knights: I liked getting to know new characters I'm not very familiar with. Mogo was great.

Batman Year One: ...Hm, I actually don't remember that much about this movie outside of a few Gordon bits. I know I didn't dislike it. I'd rather have Cranston as Luthor in Man of Steel sequels.

Justice League Doom: I love Vandal Savage and anything he's in. I loved the part where Mirror Master says they can find out Batman's identity while he's in the cave, but Vandal is all "Oh I already know." Some stuff was neat, though there were weaker moments like a lot of the final fights. 100% agreed about what you said regarding Bane's tube.

Superman VS The Elite: I really like this one and Superman's depiction in it. It focuses on him as an icon, as THE superhero everyone looks to because of his... absoluteness. When the public starts to favour these 90s anti-heros, it's up to Superman to show the world just what it means to go off that deep end. And it ain't pretty.

Killing villains is a bit of a tricky subject. The idea is that Superman and his pals don't consider themselves above the law. They're not concieted enough to believe they have the right to determine who lives and who dies. The police and soldiers and what not do kill when necessary, but they are bestowed that right by the law. If Superman killed, it'd just be straight up murder. So the government should either deputize super heros, or just reinstate the death penalty (like they did in All-Star Superman).

Dark Knight Returns: I like it as a Batman movie, but Miller's treatment of Superman is still BS.

Superman Unbound: I left this movie wondering what exactly was so "unbound" about it. Brainiac is one of my favourite villains, however that really only goes for the DCAU version. The movie was just kinda meh. The scene where Lois flipped off Brainiac was great.

Justice League Flashpoint Paradox: Man this movie is brutal (can't believe they did that to Billy). Seeing how things got messed up was neat and overall it was a good watch.

As for movies I'd like to see, put me on team Blackest Night.
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

Here's my thoughts of some of the listed movies as I own most of the copies:

1. Superman Doomsday, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies AND Apocalypse have too much things going on into each movies, and got convoluted towards the end - even though the action scenes were okay, and great casts for the latter two movies, which included Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Geordie LaForge (LeVar Burton).

2. Batman Under the Red Hood was really good, Bruce Greenwood (Captain Pike) was quite a replacement/substitute for Kevin Conroy as Batman, and John DiMaggio does the same with the Joker for Mark Hamill.

3. Justice League New Frontier was a great time period piece, and it showed that how that time period affected the views of many of the heroes in the face of change. BTW, has anyone known who was playing Batman in that movie? Here's a hint, he was Cyrus Lupo from the last two seasons of "Law & Order".

4. Justice League Crisis of Two Earths, in some degrees, joined my first point for cramping everything they could in that time frame (that included the Martian & the President's daughter subplot), and there was also an unexpected choice for the voice actor chosen for Superman, Leroy Jethro Gibbs from "NCIS" (Mark Harmon), asides from William Baldwin voicing Batman. James Woods was rather twisted, but the motive sounded rather weird.

5. I can't argue with you about the sheer laziness in making Bane's venom tube as his weakness when he faced Batman during final confrontation in EACH iteration, and it was rather lame to keep using that same gag on him just about every time (except Nolan's version, thank goodness).

6. Speaking of the "NCIS" connection, Ducky Mallard (Dave McCallum) was the voice of Alfred in the Deadshot portion of Batman Gotham Knight, I wonder if anyone who have noticed it.

7. There was a rumor floating around on moviepilot.com about Bryan Cranston as one of the candidates on being casted as Luthor rather than Gordon in the Superman/Batman movie, the other was being Mark Strong. Whoever that is, we'll see who would be whenever the official announcement is made.

8. Wonder Woman had a good storyline as a movie, but much like most of the DC Universe Animated movies, the plot seemed to be either jumping the gun or the shark by adding other characters, i.e., bringing Ares and made it look like it's male centric wasn't helping.

9. Green Lantern First Flight, again, cramped too much into a single movie, especially with having Senestro becoming the Yellow Lantern was way too fast. Even that fight scene in S/B: PE began with Mongo and Grundy and then brought in everyone else took a span of 10 minutes to settle some issues. They could have splinted into two parts or focused a certain part of the stories.

10. Batman Year One & Dark Knight Returns were titles I've heard about but never saw the comics, so the animation movies were my first official contacts with them. I was impressed with how they stitched the story together seamlessly. It's to why these two titles have been a huge influence to the live action movies. Earlier I've mentioned about the Cranston/Luthor rumor, but here's my question for the MAHQ nation, who plays better Gordon, Gary Oldman or Bryan Cranston?

11. Is it just me or "Martian's weakness with fire" has been part of each version of Justice League anime movies/TV series? It's like "Mogo doesn't 'socialize'" joke and the Bane tube, they just won't let it die.

12. GL Emerald Knights sold me from the first story on, but it's an irony on the casting of Bophunga, as Randy Savage hasn't really been doing much since 2009 while Roddy Piper was still active every once in a while, tragically Savage died about two weeks before the movie was released.

13. I would like to clarify about some of the things that was said by Kevin in the podcast. First, with regards to the "Crisis on Two Earths" storyline, Bruce Timm had done the "Justice Lords" (paralleled world of Justice League) in the 2-part episode of "Justice League" animated series, so Dwayne McDuffie (God bless his soul) had tried to expand that story further into the Crime Syndicate arc between the two Justice League animated series, but that didn't go anywhere, so that's why we have extended story come about. Also, it's not WWF, as the initials would allegedly be confusing between World Wildlife Fund and formerly World Wrestling Federaton (now World Wrestling ENTERTAINMENT - WWE). I was as shocked as Kevin was when they had Michael Rosenbaum voiced Barry Allen rather than Wally West, as much as I would like to see Barry Allen in another Justice League movies (i.e., New Frontier), it's Wally West that had me familiarized with Rosebaum. So, that was rather disappointed.
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Re: Ep. 061: DC Universe Animated Original Movies

Am I the only one that thought Ultraman in Crisis on Two Earths looked more like a jersey shore version of Superman? xD

I really enjoyed that movie more. Though as you've said. More because James Woods is excellent as Owlman. Especially his death as he is about to deactivate it, instead smugly says "It doesn't matter."

I really loved Under the Red hood. And Jensen Ackles is perfect as the titular role. And brings the emotions to the final scenes. But I honestly felt Bruce Greenwood didn't really match it very well in those final scenes. That's just me though.

Flash Paradox was soo good and so hardcore. But I did feel that Shazaam got cheated. The fight between him and Wonder Woman should have been much closer. Though it got me in the feels when Superman watches his first friend, Cyborg, die.

And personally I would love to see either Red Son or Kingdom Come get animated. Though the latter should definitely not be crammed into a 75 minute film. I just really want to see Soviet era Batman. xD
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