Directors: Sam Liu, Lauren Montgomery
Stars: William Baldwin, Mark Harmon, Chris Noth, Gina Torres, James Woods, Jonathan Adams, Brian Bloom, Bruce Davison
A good Lex Luthor from a parallel Earth comes to the Justice League to beg them for assistance in fighting the Crime Syndicate, made up of analogues of the Justice League.
Being a Star Trek fan I like the concept of parallel universes, although it was a shame that none of the duplicates had a goatee. I like the concept of a good version of villains and an evil version of the good characters, and I know it’s only a short movie but it would have been nice to get a better idea of how the members of the Crime Syndicate went down the directions they did to contrast the differences between the good and evil versions. The story itself was good and the actions scenes were great. I liked how Owlman and Batman contrasted as well. Martian Manhunter got a nice story, although I felt the resolution to that was lacking.
Although he was absent from the majority of the first half, Batman really stole the show towards the end and this film features one of the great closing lines to a fight I’ve ever heard (although perhaps it has more impact for me because I studied philosophy). I also appreciated about how, after working out that Lex was being truthful, it didn’t take long for the Justice League to help him. There was a small discussion but ultimately it boiled down to, ‘we’re heroes, this is what we do,’ and I think that’s wonderful.
The other Earth was presented quite realistically as well. It wasn’t a grim dystopian world and many of the problems it had were problems similar to our own. The story had a good progression to it and the parameters of the conflict shifted a little bit as the film went on. I enjoyed it a lot but I’d almost love a sequel that took place entirely on the parallel Earth to show how it came to be that Luthor and the Jester (Joker) became good guys and Ultraman etc became bad guys.
