Justice League: Secret Origins Review

DC fans I thought that since my review of Superman: The Last Son Krypton went down a treat that I would review something else that's animated and features the man of the steel. So after racking my brain for all of five minuets I remembered that there was a three part series opener for the Justice League animated series and since I plan of taking another look at THAT live action movie soon anyways now is a good time for me to review Justice League: Secret Origins.

The plot of this epic three part episode is there's an alien invasion secretly happening on earth and it's something that both Batman and Superman cannot handle on there own. I'll admit that in terms of origin stories which is this basically is this is as epic as it gets and lot of that comes down to the fact that we've had a lot of time to get know both Batman and Superman so if they face a threat that they can't handle then we know it's something bad.

Starring in these episodes is George Newbern as Superman , Kevin Conroy as Batman , Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman , Carl Lumbly as J'onn J'onzz , Michael Rosenbaum as The Flash , Phil LaMarr as Green Lantern , Maria Canals as Hawkgirl , Susan Sullivan as Hippolyta and Kevin Michael Richardson as Imperium Leader. Yeah this cast pretty much reads like a who's who of DC alumni and that to me makes alot of sense since it makes the team up feel more special.

It helps that the acting from all of the actors is also really freaking solid which given that one of them is the legendary Kevin Conroy is not really a surprise since he's always great as Batman. I'm shocked that they didn't get Tim Daley back to play Superman since he's the voice that alot of people would have grown up listening to on the animated series but George is solid as the character. In all honesty there's not that much I can say about the acting that hasn't already been said because it's that good.

Now like with my review of The Last Son Of Krypton i'm not going to say who did the animation in this episode because i'm honestly thinking about reviewing the whole Justice League animated series so it's obviously going to be the same company. That said tho I did find the animation in this opening set of episodes to be pretty good it's not as good as the animation seen in Batman: The Animated Series but that series was so good that nothing could even come close to it.

What I found to be really awful is the CGI opening i've always hated this opening and alot of that is because of the fact that the CGI seen in it is just freaking awful. I've seen better CGI in cheap direct to DVD films and I know that they were limited by what was available at the time but if something's bad we should still call it out for being bad.

I said this before in the review but this is how you do a Justice League origin story you give them a threat that only all of them can take on. What you don't do is exactly what they did in the live action movie were either Batman , Superman or Wonder Woman could have defeated the bad guy here the villain is something that requires all of these heroes to work together and that's exactly what you need in a Justice League origin.

Now this is the second or third time that i've watched all three of these episodes and everytime I watch them I always get caught up in how good they are. For me this isn't just a great JL origin story but it's a rather solid origin story in it's own right and i'm not honestly sure why that's the case since there have been a lot of solid origin stories throughout the years so why this one stands out is honestly something that I can't really answer.

For me what really stands out about these episodes is how well the action is and that's not something I get to say during a premier set of episodes. Here tho the action is at it's best during the third episode when you get to see the league fully working together because it shows you how powerful they really are and it gives you a reason to want to see them succeed and that for me is a truly great thing and one that i wish other JL movies and shows did.

Overall this wasn't a bad start to the series it does everything an origin story should do and then some but it does it's fair share of problems like the fact that even tho this is meant to be one story it still feels like three episodes and so with that in mind these episodes get a combined rating of 7 out of 10 from me.