by G. E. Uke, Reporter

While at SDCC 2023, I had the opportunity to sit down with several members of the creative team from the next DC Universe Movie – Justice League: Warworld. Director Jeff Wamester, Executive Producer Butch Lukic, Producer Jim Krieg and Screenwriters Ernie Altbacker and Josie Campbell kindly shared their thoughts about the metaplot, the continuity of the movie, and the underlying messages the film was trying to convey.

Speaking to them in advance was very help, as I learned two things that were *NOT* made clear during the course of the movie. Before diving into a review of the film itself, I’d like to briefly cover those things. 

First, Justice League: Warworld isn’t one of those speculative movies that creates an alternate reality separate from the main DC timeline. It is, in fact, the most recent thing happening in official Tomorrow-verse canon. Second, the premise of Justice League: Warworld is: “would the Justice League still be heroes if they hadn’t gone through their formative experiences?” And the answer is mostly no. 

This is important, because viewed through that lens the movie has a much different tone. Without that preface, the first 70% of the film feels like the writers came smashing through the studio wall one morning in a cloud of drywall dust (like the Kool Aid man) and said: “we just did a bunch of acid together and now the premise of Warworld is that it’s going to be a total mindjob.” 

The plot of Justice League: Warworld is that the Justice League has been abducted by a bunch of white martians working for a supervillain named Mongul (Robin Atkin Downes, mainly known for voice acting in other DC movies). They are taken to an artificial planetoid in deep space and plugged into a series of virtual reality scenarios curated by an enslaved Martian Manhunter (Ike Amadi, mainly known for DC movies and video games). This causes them to forget their identities. The purpose of each scenario is to harvest negative emotional energy, which the Warworld then uses as fuel. The Warworld is a planet-sized gun, and Mongul really wants to fly it around the galaxy blowing up planets, but he can’t figure out how to make it go. Despite a number of glaring plot holes, this concept is pretty cool. 

A large part of Justice League: Warworld‘s mystery comes from the fact that initially this plot isn’t explained. Wonder Woman gets tossed into Westworld, Batman gets tossed into a Conan-esque setting, Clark Kent gets turned into a gumshoe in a noir detective drama, and absolutely nothing makes any sense. It actually looks like a compilation of short stories with different art styles, right up until the Martian Manhunter begins engineering their escape. But BEFORE that happens we get to see the Big Three as they might have been, without their formative experiences. Diana is a heroine. Bruce is a selfish manipulative asshole. Clark is a timid but good hearted nobody. BAM. Let the ego bruising commence. 

If the acting of Justice League: Warworld has one weakness, it would be that most if not all of the characters were secretly the T-1000 in disguise. DC can’t fool me. I know they were all robots just pretending to be people. All of the characters’ faces registered maybe three or four emotions the entire movie, and their voices don’t match the situations they’re in. That means they were either T-1000 models in disguise, or sock puppets. And I didn’t see any arms shoved up their rears, so the T-1000 it is. 

In all seriousness, the voice actors did a pretty solid job. But I got the impression they were reading their lines without being able to actually SEE the movie, so they had no context for what was going on. This is more of an aesthetic thing than any failing on the actors’ parts. Wonder Woman (Stana Katic, aka Kate from Castle) sounds just like the character I watched as a kid, Batman (Jensen Ackles, aka Dean from Supernatural) sounded a bit too young compared to his previous iterations, Superman (Darren Criss, aka Blaine from Glee) was surprisingly well-cast, and Lobo (John DiMaggio, aka Bender from Futurama) had the appropriate surly biker aesthetic. Jonah Hex (Troy Baker, aka Booker from Bioshock Infinite) is normally a hero, but in Warworld he’s cast as a villain. And Mongul…is exactly the same unintelligent B-lister he’s always been, except with a more scary voice. 

Rating:

All in all I give Justice League: Warworld – 3.5/5 stars. It started out strong and the premise was good, but the disappointing art style and lack of intelligent writing and emotional gravitas made the rise of Skynet and the fall of humanity that much closer to becoming a reality. 

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