Justice League: Gods and Monsters

2015 "From dark heroes, justice will dawn."
7| 1h16m| PG-13| en
Details

In an alternate universe, very different versions of DC's Trinity fight against the government after they are framed for an embassy bombing.

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Reviews

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System
Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
OneEightNine Media Batman: Bad Blood is garbage, watch this instead I wish I watched this sooner.This movie has been literally sitting in my DVD collection for almost a year and I just let it sit there because I thought this it was going to suck. Frankly, the design for Batman looks lame and the animation style I saw in the trailer wasn't doing it for me so after someone gave me this as a gift, I benched it without a second thought. Anyway, like sometime last week a was cleaning and saw this animated movie just sitting there and I thought, why not? Damn. Just damn, this is probably one of the best DCU movies I've seen in at least 2 years. Bad Blood, the recent Batman movie was garbage so it was nice to discover this gem. The film is both epic and entertaining. It gets away with a lot of things because this isn't the classic take on the Justice League. As you can tell, this is a totally different team, with totally different origins and etc, etc, just watch it. You'll thank me and it will help wash out the bad taste of Bad Blood from your mouth.
Neil Welch Scientists are being murdered, and the Justice League is being framed for the killings. But this isn't the familiar Justice League: this Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman kill without regret in order to maintain "justice." Many of the DC Comics animated features use varied character designs, often based on the comics they are adapted from. This feature is happy to adopt the house style established in the Batman, Superman, Justice League, and Batman Beyond TV series. But that is where any similarities end: this is an "Elseworlds" movie, using much of the established mythos but twisting it (Superman is found and raised by Mexican immigrants, Batman is vampire Kirk Langstrom, Wonder Woman is Highfather's daughter Bekka, and so on).This is a good movie - a story which moves along well, with good action, animation and voice work - but make no mistake, this is not one for the kids. This is not so much for the mild swearing, it's because it is frequently quite graphically violent.
Cheese Hoven Anyone watching the Justice League animated movies in order: The New Frontier, Crisis On Two Earths, Doom, Flashpoint, and War, will notice that they have become darker and more nihilistic one after another. Now we arrive at Gods and Monsters, the depressing continuation of this trend.Of course, they are all "anti-heroes" now, to put it kindly, although a combination of violent vigilantes and fascist army is probably closer to the truth. Batman's a vampire (how imaginative! A vampire bat!), and embarrassingly Superman (sporting a goatee which I guess is meant to make him look badass?) is a Mexican illegal immigrant, a move obviously intended to make a politically correct point, although not really exploited here. Truth Justice and the Mexican way ! Yay! Oh and his real father is the murderous General Zod.Even worse is the new sword-carrying Wonder Woman. Her family has been massacred by Highfather, who in the real DC universe is the embodiment of goodness, while Darkseid, who Highfather betrays here, is supposed to be the embodiment of evil. (Hence the name)Poor old Jack Kirby must be rolling over in his grave to see his creations being so abused. He understood the difference between good and evil, light and dark, something that modern writers (themselves gone over to the dark side?) no longer see.So by what perversion of the word 'Justice' can this trio of murderous misfits call themselves the 'Justice League'? I refuse to call these impostors by their assumed superhero names, since they are NOT the beloved characters they purport to be or anything close, so I dub them Sword Woman, Goatee Man and Vampire-Batman.This morally inverted universe could be interesting if there was some realisation at some point by the characters that they were actually the bad guys and see them turn it around. Now That could have been thrilling. The problem is that we are supposed to be on their side from the start and see their personality flaws (ie that they are all bloodthirsty killers) as badass.The film is basically a series of massacres, each more brutal than the last. Leaving aside the destruction of Krypton, massacre #1 is the "Justice League" wiping out a terrorist organisation. At least 50 people are horrifically killed by the JL, when they could just as easily have been captured by this super-powered trio. Some are hacked to death by Sword Woman, some crushed to death thanks to Goatee Man's heat vision (which he uses indiscriminately) and one has his blood sucked by Vampire-Batman. Nice. But that's OK its alright since they are "terrorists" and therefore deserve to be summarily executed by our heroes.A token protest by ordinary people is then shown as well as a critical report by Lois Lane, but this legitimate concern is depicted as a bunch of small-mindedness.Massacre #2 is of a group of scientists, some beloved characters in the comic world. Oh and a kid who just happens to be a young version of Cyborg. Again the film goes out of its way to make this as sadistic as possible.Massacre #3 is the aforementioned backstory of Sword Woman.Massacre #4 is a continuation of the massacre of scientists, this time inside Magnus's house. The violence is even more graphic with one poor victim being literally ripped in two. Note that our heroes were not able to save one person.At this point I was pretty stunned but was still expecting some big turnaround to come. This, after all, has received some 5/5 reviews.Massacre #5 is when Goatee Man and Sword Woman decide "heroically" not to give up but instead fight the army. To be fair, this sequence is less graphic than the earlier ones; we don't actually see any soldiers being killed when their tanks and helicopters are smashed by our heroes. Maybe these all were drones. But I guess showing soldiers dying would make the shallow ending less palatable.Then comes an almost literal Deus-ex-machina. Lex Luthor (channeling his inner Stephen Hawking) appears out of thin air and explains to the JL what's happening and they go and fix the "villain".Cue general rejoicing. Lois Lane recants her former opinions. The JL are now exonerated. So what if they have killed dozens of soldiers unnecessarily in addition to over 50 "terrorists" and failed to save a single scientist? They saved the world! Oh, from a threat powered by Goatee Man's rocket ship and protected by their "Justice" tower's force field. But nevermind, that's not anything to worry about.Terrible. But the only question is, how on earth has this dreck gotten some many good reviews?
bill DC's animated movies in the recent years has been pretty bad starting from Justice League: War and onward. Assault on Arkham was the only one that was decent in my opinion. Justice League: Gods and Monsters is a return to form for the DC animated movies with it's interesting story, great action sequences, and interesting alternate take on the DC Universe.A lot of the negative reviews for this movie was written due to this alternate universe not feeling like the original DC Universe. When they first released the different character looks and change of identity, I too was hesitant being a huge DC Comics fan. But I decided to keep an open mind and go with what they are doing and I have to say, after seeing the movie, it has left me wanting more of this universe, especially Wonder Woman's side of history as I found it to be very interesting being a huge fan of the Fourth World and New Gods story line.The story itself is very dark, much darker than most of the movies that DC has done. The movie isn't pointlessly violent but uses it's violence to really help the viewer immerse into it's worldI really liked the look of the old Animated DC TV series but done with modern technology so everything looks sharper and smoother. I did find at times, a few parts of the movie did not look as sharp as majority of the movie but it's so small, it won't disrupt the viewing experience.This film is a great entry into DC's long list of Animated Movies and should not be missed by any DC fan. Even if you aren't a DC fan, this will be worth your time as animated movies like this do not happen often. (It is good to watch the 3 mini filmy trailers before watching this movie as it will help you understand the world better.)