Movie Info
Movie Name: Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
Studio: Warner Bros. Animation
Genre(s): Animated/Comic Book/Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date(s): May 5, 2020
MPAA Rating: R
It’s last call for the Earth and the Demon wants another round
When it appears that Darkseid is moving on Earth, Superman proposes a preemptive strike against the warnings of Lex Luthor and John Constantine…and then everything went sideways. Now, two years have passed, and Earth and its people are on the brink of extinction under Darkseid’s rule. With the core of the Earth being tapped, Earth will not survive much longer and it is up to the surviving members of the Justice League to form a new team in a last-ditch effort to save the world and stop Darkseid.
Directed by Matt Peters and Christina Sotta, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War is a DC Comics animated action-adventure movie. Following DC Animated film Superman: Red Son in 2019, the film is the final entry in the DC Animated Movie Universe series of films started with Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox in 2013 and adapts aspects of Justice League: Darkseid War and Final Crisis. It was released to positive reviews.
DC has always fired full cylinders on their animated features. Be it adaptations like Superman: Red Son or the DCAMU films which include this movie, the animated movies are rather high quality and carry weight to them. The Flashpoint inspired films are a lot darker and edgier than some of the other films (this film is R-Rated), and they bring an adultness to the movies that doesn’t feel like anime but also doesn’t feel like your typical straight-to-video movies. Due to aspects of the script, a ******spoiler alert****** is in effect for the rest of the review.
Suicide Squad…living up their name is style.
Justice League Dark: Apokolips War is an ending and with an ending, you are never sure what exactly is going to happen. In a normal movie, the heroes generally win in the end and the next battle stands before them. This movie doesn’t feel like that. You have a number of slaughtered heroes to start out the movie and the danger just keeps growing. Some favorite heroes are hacked-up and turned into enemies while villains like Luthor and the Suicide Squad do the very “un-comic book thing” and actually fight when the fate of the world depends on it (that is something that always bugs me in comics when you have a betrayer when it means death for them and everyone).
The animation and vocal cast is good. Most of the cast are returning from previous entries and through the years, many strong actors have been recruited. Featured actors include Matt Ryan, Sean Astin, Taissa Farmiga, Tony Todd, Jerry O’Connell, Rosario Dawson, Jason O’Mara, Rebecca Romijn, Rainn Wilson, and John DiMaggio among others and the animation for their characters is top notch as well.
I bet this fight would be on pay-per-view on Apokolips
Where the movie suffers a bit is that it is an ending as stated above. The end of the movie has Earth still dying and all of the actions and sacrifices leading to nothing being saved in the big picture. This almost negates all the previous films in the series and to make matters worse, Flash just undoes it all to make another new flashpoint and a new universe. It’s like a get-out-of-jail free card for writing yourself into a corner. I would have rather seen the movie end with the character questioning their future and what it was all for.
Justice League Dark: Apocalypse War is a decent ending to a nice run of animated movies that stand-up to some of Marvel’s live action films. Since they are animated and since there are so many of them that come out (with much less fanfare), it feels that they are a bit under-seen. With gaps between Marvel movies, it would always be a worthwhile series to take up to get your superhero fix…and remember why DC was so great. The film was followed by Superman: Man of Tomorrow also released in 2020.
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