Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three brings an end to the Tomorrowverse, continuing to showcase why this franchise has been a disaster for DC.
Director: Jeff Wamester
Genre: Superhero, Animation
Run Time: 94′
Global release Date: July 16, 2024
Where to watch: on Max, digital, 4K UHD, & Blu-Ray
“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper”. Yes, that T.S. Elliot quote may be somewhat overused, but I don’t think you’ll find a sentence that more perfectly encapsulates Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three and the trilogy as a whole, and not just in the cynical manner you might expect.
See, despite this film being the third-part in an sci-fi, superhero action epic, instead of featuring big, bombastic setpieces, it’s mostly just people in rooms talking about all the destruction going on around them and how to stop it. It’s a bizarre film, one that feels like it should be interesting to talk about and dissect, if it wasn’t for one major problem. It’s just so boring.
For years, DC’s animated movies were arguably the most stable part of their film output. Whilst few seemed to really stand out, they all upheld a consistent level of quality, adapting a variety of well-known and well-liked comic storylines, with the occasional dip into some really interesting territory, experimenting with genre or style, such as in the excellent Batman Ninja (2018). Those days are behind us, and we’re left with the Tomorrowverse, a bland, unimaginative series of films that began Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020), and has only managed to get more and more stale with each new entry. The Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy has long been positioned as the franchise’s grand finale, and thankfully that means with the release of its final instalment, DC are finally free of the shackles that the cinematic universe brought with it.
You might think I’m being overly harsh, but in my opinion, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three exemplifies everything wrong with the superhero genre in 2024. The film continues to tell the story of a large-scale multiversal “crisis”, with the various versions of Justice League members teaming up to try and stop the Anti-Monitor from destroying all of their worlds. Despite focusing on a large-scale, multiversal war that’s raging across the DC universe, the film has no idea how to make any of this interesting. All it can muster up is cameo after cameo, throwing in references to old animated shows in the hope that someone will latch onto them. Its flat, boring artstyle makes every universe look as dull as the next, and each action set piece feels lazier than the last.
Despite this being the final movie in a three-parter at the end of a cinematic universe, I don’t care about any of these characters, partly due to just how many others the film wants to keep introducing. Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three is too sprawling, there’s very little in the way of a focus. Even when it comes to story structure, it takes the bizarre route of having its character essentially just spend an hour standing around discussing the end of the multiverse, rather than take any kind of initiative. Now, I will admit that I do somewhat admire the film’s lack of interest in giving us a typical superhero-movie climax, and it is certainly an interesting choice on paper, but again, it’s the lack of interesting characters and dull writing that means that these scenes go from conceptually fascinating to remarkably dull.
Now, all this isn’t to say that there isn’t the odd great idea sprinkled throughout Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three. It begins with an action scene between the Justice League and a group of dinosaurs, which is brilliant, for the obvious reasons of dinosaurs being the coolest things ever. On top of that, there’s one scene set in the universe of Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995), which features Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reprising their roles as Joker and Batman respectively, with the latter doing so for the final time before his unfortunate passing. It’s an excellent, beautiful moment in a film that I desperately wish did more for me.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three seems like it will be DC’s last animated venture before James Gunn swoops in and ensures everything is linked to his live-action universe, and it’s a shame that this is how it had to all end. At their best, DC produced some truly exciting and original animated features, which actually pushed the medium and genre in bold new directions. Not everything stuck, but I’ll take a fascinating failure any of the day week over a boring and safe film that’s satisfied with simply just sticking to the conventions. The Tomorrowverse as a whole just never seemed like an idea that DC had any real confidence in, seemingly rushing through it at breakneck pace simply so they could do this three-parter, which, in a time where “multiverse” is the new buzzword, surely seemed like a slam dunk.
It just goes to show, though, that simply following trends and playing it safe is never enough. These films need to feel passionate again; they need to have interesting stories worth telling, told in unique and innovative styles that actually make the most of the medium, instead of just feeling like they’re animated because they have to be. There are lessons to be taken away from Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three; I just hope DC actually sees that. Superhero fatigue and the decline of the genre is a very real thing, but the way that you counter that is by telling more interesting stories, not by just giving up with a weak whimper. Hopefully, now that the Tomorrowverse is behind them, DC can finally start giving us some exciting projects again, and bring their animated output back to that standard that I know they can deliver. I really want to believe they still have it in them.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three is now available to watch on Max, on digital, and Blu-ray. Read our reviews of Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One and Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Two.
