This one was weird. I’m not really sure yet if I liked it or not. A lot of my discomfort with it had to do with how it fit in with the other movies in this series.
The story itself was good, but a little simplistic, I thought. It’s basically the story of New 52’s Earth-2 before the appearance of new Flash and GL and such, I think, with some obvious changes that seem to mirror the Darkseid War. I agree with those who would have liked to see more of the New Gods characters along for the ride. Most of the fun of the Fourth World stuff is all the politicking and plotting against each other by the likes of Desaad, Steppenwolf, Vermin Vunderbar, Granny Goodness, etc., and the League using some of those maneuverings to keep Earth out of the crosshairs. Both the DCAU and the Young Justice universes did a much better job with that than this series of movies has done (of course, as long-running series they had more time to do it, so there’s that). The way it works now seems like it’s simply copying the Marvel movie universe with Darkseid replacing Thanos as the big bad.
Also, it seems like this should have been more of a two-movie thing to not feel like they were rushing to clean up this movie series. There is a lot of story that just sort of got pushed to the side - side stories from the Justice League, Bat-family, and Teen Titans movies that were starting to go somewhere and then just got abandoned due to the sudden invasion storyline.
A lot of the issues I have with the movies are just issues I have with the feel of the New 52, to be frank - it’s always felt to me like we’re watching some enormous “slightly-Elseworlds” feeling universe with less feeling and more militarism to it, with the original Superman thrown into the mix as a sort of narrator/witness character. Obviously the movies don’t take that latter facet into account, which is good as it’d be too confusing. But it’s not the same level of fun and great storytelling that the post-COIE world had for me.
I’m a little old school, and I’m still not completely on board with John Constantine being in regular DCU continuity, to be perfectly honest. He’s one of my favorite characters and it’s enjoyable watching him intertwine with the Justice League at times, but I frankly miss the old Vertigo days. I will say that the darker tone of New 52 and this series of movies is a better place for him than… say… the early- to mid-90s era where I did most of my reading, so I’m not too bugged about it.
And to that point, I don’t like a lot of the blood and gore that these movies have had. I don’t think I’m a prude or anything, it just seems a little unnecessary.
Smaller note: Nightwing has always been one of my favorite characters, so it was very disturbing for me to see him go the way he did in this movie - as well as watching the end of Batgirl, etc. Some great characters could have been made better use of, I think.
Anyway… it’s still fun to see these high-quality animated movies come out, I suppose I’d just have liked to see them tie it all up better.