Pierre Reviews Crisis on Two Earths

Let's start with the best part...

The Spectre short was AWESOME!!!

Not only did it have an Aparo feel to it, but the animation was VERY strong.

If you get the 2 disks edition with the Spectre short story... do yourself a favor and watch the Spectre short AFTER watching the Justice League story.

A co-worker did the mistake of watching the Spectre first... and now he has a tough time watching the Justice League story.

Not that the Justice League part is that bad.... but it pales in comparison to the Spectre one.

But I will get back to that last one later on.

What about the Justice League: Crisis on 2 Earths??

It was good.

In my book it was about close to being as good as the New Frontier movie. Close... but not quite.

The opening credits were pretty cool.

The animation was generally good. And it even was great in a few places. But it also made me cringe in a few places.

Some of the designs were pretty cool, like Ultraman or SuperWoman... but also some of them made me cringe whenever I would see them... like Power Ring, Johnny Quick or Wonder Woman.

Although the EVIL Black Lightning was AWESOME. AWESOME I SAYS!!! And I nearly pissed in my pants when I saw the EVIL Martian Manhunter.

One of the fun part of that movie was that it had a lot of fun cameos. After the movie... you are still thinking about who was who in some cases.

As for the voice acting.... James Wood was AWESOME!! The best part by FAR of the cast. Although SuperWoman was not bad too. But the worst of the worst HAD to be Batman. It HAD to be. The voice acting for Batman was at best very VERY weak.

Which drives me nuts when I think that they HAVE the perfect cast for these characters to begin with... but insist on re-inventing the wheel with each new projects and casting new people for no other reason then... because.... makes no bit of sense.

And I could go on and on about how it drives me nuts how they keep on re-designing the characters all the time... but I will keep that for my next blog.

Overall... it was not a bad movie. It was mostly fun to watch... but it was nowhere near as good as some of the best JLU episodes. The "Task Force X" or any of the "Black Canary" episodes were way stronger then this.

But it IS much better then pretty much any episodes of the first JL season.

And you even get 2 good JL episodes on disk 2.

You also get a "preview" of Batman; Under the Red Hood.... Which isn't much. You essentially get some storyboard panels... some location/character designs... and the various producers/creators trying to hype up their project. Trying to convince you that this will be amazing, that this will be the best Batman movie ever.

But in my book.... they failed miserably at convincing me to try out that next project. So I will pass on it.

Although they have also showed us some Jim Aparo artwork from his days when he was pencilling the Batman comic.... which was pretty much the only good part of the "preview" for me.

But it may just be me.

And also... you get the AWESOME Spectre short. Remember... I mentioned early on how I would get back to this.

For the Spectre short... they have gone back to what I consider the BEST Spectre ever... the Spectre as he was done when Jim Aparo was drawing it. Now that IS the ultimate Spectre to me.

And the short movie did a GREAT job in capturing the essence and the feel of that period.

And they avoided the BIGGEST mistake that was made when they made the Superman/Batman Public Enemies DVD movie. In Superman/Batman, they tried to draw the project in the style of Ed McGuiness... and they not only failed miserably... but it made the animators job impossible by doing so.

But for the Spectre... they avoided that mistake.

They did not try to draw like Jim Aparo... but they managed to capture the ESSENCE... the FEEL of Jim Aparo's work. And it worked great. The result was breathtaking.

Although.... I am surprised that there wasn't much talk about the Spectre short on the various comics forums.

Oh well.

So in short... is it worth buying the JL; Crisis on 2 Earths DVD??

The answer is......

YES!!! (As long as you buy the two disc edition...)