Animation Assassination (Current DC Animation Sucks)

DC Animated Movies used to be refreshing breaks from Googling comic books I was wasn't able to buy and watching comic book cartoons after the network replaced them with "Johnny Test" reruns. They were classic, beloved stories from DC's long 80-plus years of history condensed into hour-and-a-half animated adventures. But somewhere down the line DC decided that if people didn't like how The New 52 affected their comics, well, then they'll have to deal with the New 52 affecting their animated movies.

From September 18th, 2007 to May 7th, 2013, DC Animated Movies were unconnected adaptations of famous DC Comics stories ranging from the well-known like "The Death of Superman" and "The Dark Knight Returns" to collaborative stories like "Justice League: Doom" and "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths". But in July of 2013, the landscape changed with "The Flashpoint Paradox" based off of the 2010 event "Flashpoint". In the comics, "Flashpoint" was a time-travel based event that resulted in The New 52, a company wide relaunch of DC's properties under a new canon that left many readers upset and confused. While the film adaptation didn't connect to previous films, it still ended on the creation of a new timeline for the DCU, this time though it would see a majority of DC animated films following it fitting into the same universe.

From 2014's "Justice League: War" to 2018 and 2019's two-part "The Death of Superman & Reign of The Supermen", a majority of the DC animated movies all exist in the same universe. And the play-by-play of films goes like this: Justice League movie, a Batman movie, a Justice League movie, a Batman movie, a Batman movie, a Justice League AND Teen Titans movie, a Justice League Dark movie with Batman, a Teen Titans movie, and coming up two Superman movies. If that order sounds stupid to you it's because it is. Batman is in everything. Again. For God's sake, Batman gets three films, cameos in three JL films, gets to be the only main character in the JLD film, and only now are we getting a Superman animated film!? Sure, there are maybe six Batman-lead films before "Flashpoint Paradox", but Superman got five films, Wonder Woman got one, Green Lantern got two, and the Justice League had three. The old DC movies focused their attention on the heavy hitters of the DCU. The new movies may have introduced Aquaman, and Shazam, and The Justice League Dark crew, but all at the expense of featuring Batman as the lead character every damn time.

Now, to be give credit were credit is due, the voice casting isn't bad. I hate the animation of all these new DC animated movies, I hate the writing, and I hate how these new films are a sloppy, meshed together imitation of better stories by better writers who gave a damn, but I like the voices. "Justice League: War" is a harmless Michael Bay romp, "Son of Batman" is a decent introduction to Damian Wayne, and both the Teen Titans films are alright, but that's only the skin of this dead horse. And when even the worst DC animated movie pre-Flashpoint is better than any of these new ones, clearly there is a problem with your new strategy. In fact, after 2013, my favorite DC animated movie was "Batman: Assault on Arkham" (which is a better Suicide Squad film than "Suicide Squad"). That film isn't part of this new universe, it was set in the "Arkham" video game universe. And don't hit me with that "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay" animated movie because that IS part of the DC animated movie universe, but "Assault on Arkham" is not. Confused? So was I!

The poor quality of writing even spread to "Batman: The Killing Joke" and "Batman & Harley Quinn", two animated movies based off two of DC Comic's greatest achievements that still ended up sucking. The Killing Joke film made us sit through fifteen minutes of new material that climaxed with Batman making a girl young enough to be his daughter climax, and Batman & Harley took the DC Animated Series Universe (easily the greatest multimedia DC thing ever), broke it's timeline and said "why isn't Harley Quinn sexualized in this scene". See, even original animated films aren't protected. Could be the sensitivity of fans, or it might be because Jay Oliva, Brian Azzerello, and Bruce Timm keep fucking up these films! Well, at least "Gotham By Gaslight" is closer to old DC animation, even if they had to dig up the 2004 "Batman" cartoon studio to produce it.

I'm sorry if I seem bitter and angry, but for a time I used to think DC animation could do no wrong. Batman, Superman, Static Shock, The Justice League, Teen Titans, even weird ones like The Legion of Superheroes. And Bruce Timm worked on most of those. And now he's making Batman have sex with Nightwing's girlfriend and he's making Harley Quinn work at Hooters, like he has no respect for the characters he brought to life on TV when I was a kid. There are so many DC animated movies that I love, and I love them because in most cases they're led by the people that wrote them. "Justice League: The New Frontier" was based off Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel and he got to write the animated adaption, just as Gail Simone got to work on "Wonder Woman" and Judd Winick on "Batman: Under The Red Hood" and Joe Kelly on "Superman vs The Elite". Actual comic book writers writing comic book animated films. It's going to take a long time before Geoff Johns can actually direct a Green Lantern film in Hollywood, so why not let these hard working people have these films. Let Warner Bros and all those movie producers mess up Batman and Superman, at least let the people who care about those characters like Scott Snyder and Peter J. Tomasi and Mark Waid take some of DC Comic's best stories and put them on DVD. Or at least send Bruce Timm to your secret Porn Department.

Thanks for reading.

Who should get an animated movie!?