BEFORE: This one's running on HBO right now, so it's easy-peasy to add it to the mix. Think of this one as the substitute for "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay", I guess.
Tara Strong is a notable and versatile voice actress, and this week I've heard her voicing Batgirl, Luthor's bodyguard/assistant (carrying over from "Superman: Brainiac Attacks") and tonight she's Raven, one of the Teen Titans. In other movies and TV shows she's also been the voice of Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Mary Jane Watson, Black Cat, Scarlet Witch, Invisible Woman, X-23 and Twilight Sparkle on "My Little Pony". All I know is, she's the glue that made my DC Comics theme week possible - otherwise I might have had to drop in all kinds of mortar to make these bricks connect.
THE PLOT: A villain's maniacal plan for world domination sidetracks five teenage superheroes who dream of Hollywood stardom.
AFTER: It's not just Tara Strong, a lot of the main cast here consists of professional voice actors, which, judging by the number of credits each one has, is probably a pretty sweet gig, and not just for the reasons I mentioned yesterday. Tom Cruise, one of the biggest stars ever, has only 44 IMDB credits (one of those is a cameo and one is a music video) but some of these voice actors have 200 or 300 credits - yes, that includes TV series and video-games, but there's apparently a lot of animation being made all the time, and once you've got a track record as a versatile voice actor, the checks may not be huge, but at least there could be a lot of them. I had difficulty figuring out where I've heard some of these actors before, because I don't count appearances credited as "additional voices" or "ADR group", because that would double my workload.
If you thought the "Deadpool" films were full of inside references and humor that's self-deprecating of the whole superhero genre, well, you ain't heard nothing yet. Deadpool even gets name-checked here because Slade gets mistaken for him by the Titans, which is even funnier when you realize that Deadpool might be Marvel's riff on that DC character in the first place. (Slade is usually called "Deathstroke" in the comics, a name possibly inappropriate for a kids cartoon, and even Deadpool's secret identity, Wade Wilson, is a take on Slade Wilson, Deathstroke's real name.). Rob Liefeld is credited with "creating" Deadpool, but did he? Or did he just rename a DC villain and give his costume a color change?
In some ways this is what you get when you mix the tone of "Deadpool" with the comic-universe crossover power of "The Lego Movie" and the self-referential and self-promoting nature of "Ralph Breaks the Internet". It's a movie (that at all times knows it's a movie) about making a movie, neatly introducing the kids out there to the concept of "meta" or even "ultra-meta". I don't know if this is a good thing or not, because it demonstrates that the whole superhero genre has been forced to eat itself in order to survive, so it's either a sign that the end is near, or the start of a new self-parody genre for comic book movies. How can I take this movie seriously if it's not even interested in taking itself seriously, not for one moment?
There are plenty of inside jokes for comic-book fans, from poking fun at the Challengers of the Unknown (a rather obscure DC team that probably inspired the Fantastic Four) to the casting of Nicolas Cage as the voice of Superman. Remember, at one point Cage was lobbying to be the next actor to play the hero, only Tim Burton never got the film past the concept/screen-test stage. And they even talk about the failed "Green Lantern" film, if only to say, "we don't talk about that..."
People who can't distinguish one comic-book universe from another might even have trouble telling this one apart from a Marvel movie - from the comic-book page flipping opening logo to the Stan Lee cameo (respect) some parents might end up asking their kids why Spider-Man or the Avengers aren't in this one, causing some rolling of the eyes from the kids. But remember, characters from both comic-book universes were seen in "The Lego Movie", and they HAVE made joint comic-book appearances in everything from 1976's "Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man" to "X-Men vs. the Teen Titans" and most recently, "JLA/Avengers". (Some discount these crossovers as non-canon, because sometimes the scenario depicted crossing between two different universes, other times the impossible team-ups were never explained at all.)
OK, so I agree not to take this one seriously. Because otherwise I'd point out that the time-travel doesn't really work, as the Titans try to get a movie career that would only be available to them "if there were no other superheroes". So they travel back to the origins of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, et. al. and mess with the timestream to come out ahead (saving Krypton and preventing the Waynes from walking down Crime Alley I can get behind, but killing Aquaman with a plastic six-pack ring? Not cool, or heroic.) They return to the present only to find the world in shambles and on fire, because there were no superheroes to prevent that. Point taken, but haven't we established that the existence of superheroes caused the rise of the super-villains? So without heroes there wouldn't be armageddon, their world would just be more like ours - with climate change, political turmoil and reality TV. Oh, wait, that does sound bad, I see what you did there.
But let's say you did travel back and kill Hitler as a baby, then traveled forward and realized that you somehow made the present day WORSE instead of better (I know, but just work with me for a second...). The only way to fix this isn't to go back and protect Hitler, you've got to find a way to un-do what you did, which means if you go back again, you've got to stop YOURSELF from killing that baby, or else you've got to erase it by not doing it in the first place, like by killing yourself as a baby so you never did time travel in the first place. Either way, you've created a paradox and broken the time stream, so that's one reason not to mess with time travel at all. This is the kind of NITPICK POINT I would make if I were taking this film seriously, so let's all be thankful that I'm not.
Plus there are parodies of, or shout-outs to, everything from "Back to the Future" to "The Lion King". But how come this movie remembers the plot points of "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice", but manages to forget that Robin WAS in a big-screen movie, it was called "Batman and Robin". Different Robin, sure, and maybe a different movie universe, but it DID happen, even if kids today regard it as a joke. BTW, since I'm not up on my Teen Titans animation history, which Robin IS this, anyway? Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake or Damian Wayne?
But I did like the song "Upbeat Inspirational Song About Life", even though it was clearly an attempt to be the new "Everything Is Awesome".
Also starring the voices of Greg Cipes, Scott Menville, Khary Payton (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Hynden Welch, Will Arnett (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature"), Kristen Bell (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Eric Bauza, Michael Bolton (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Joey Cappabianca, Greg Davies, John DiMaggio (last heard in "Batman: The Killing Joke"), Fred Tatasciore (ditto), Halsey, Tom Kenny (last seen in "The Battle of the Sexes"), Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Gilbert"), Vanessa Marshall, Phil Morris (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Patton Oswalt (last heard in "Sorry to Bother You"), Alexander Polinsky, Meredith Salenger (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Dave Stone, James Arnold Taylor, Lil Yachty, Wil Wheaton, with a cameo from Stan Lee (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Kryptonian crystals
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