Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Justice League: New Frontier DVD - SPOILERS

Did anyone else get this? I bought the Best Buy edition with the Green Lantern figure.

Vastly superior to Superman/Doomsday. So much better. And the voices were spot on - especially Superman, Flash, Batman and GL.

Great teaser for Batman:Gotham Knight too.

I'm waiting on my HD-DVD version from Amazon. It'll most likely be the last HD release from Warner.

Got it. Watched it. Started (haven't finished) the commentaries and other features.

It's a clear step up in animation from Superman: Doomsday. Not just because it's based on Cooke's designs -- it's just better. The opening sequence is the Hal/Ace dogfight in Korea, and its extraordinary. So is the J'onn/Slam/Batman church/cult scene. Amazing composition, design and action. A scene with Ace and Hal hotrodding through the desert in a Corvette is just absolutely awesome.

The voice work is perhaps the best that I can recall from Timm and company. My god, Kyle Maclachlan should always have been Superman. David Boreanaz IS Hal -- impossibly brave, but NOT insensitive. And Jeremy Sisto as Batman--his voice sends shivers up the spine. Which Batman would love. Neil Patrick Harris should play Barry Allen in real life, not just voice the animation! He's wiry, high energy, speaks in clipped tones, has something to prove, and insecurities to overcome. The women's voice work is outstanding, especially Brooke Shields (I know!) as Carol Ferris. The design and atmosphere are just about everything one would hope for. The 50s come alive as the age of optimism and paranoia that they were.

Much will be said about the slimming of the story, and it is painful. I SO wanted to see the Challengers, mainly for the dynamism of the animation I know this team would bring to them. Well, technically we SEE them, but they don't have a story. Task Force X is gone, save for Flagg, who is a cypher here, rather than the shell holding in the damaged goods from the novel. Faraday, however, IS Cooke's Faraday, and even gets to use the dramatic exit of the last of the Losers from the novel.

A major change is Hal making the Mars flight with Flagg. The malfunction is unexplained, perhaps caused by Faraday's shot at J'onn. I rather like the concept, though, of Hal making the flight but the ship failing on the edge of space. It's a more dramatic expression of Hal's frustrated dreams than the novel had, I think. The conflict in the cockpit between Hal and Flagg captures the spirit of the book. And Flagg still gets to sacrifice himself.

The other thing I miss about the Losers, Task Force X and the Challs is that those scenes developed the villain in the novel, especially the connection to dinosaurs. In the film, that connection really isn't made very well, and while the Center pops in occasionally, one really misses the foreboding, dread and overwhelming power that the non-super scenes brought to the antagonist. John Henry has the smallest of cameos, but Cooke arranged it for maximum effect on J'onn.

All of the brilliant visuals from the novel are here -- J'onn watching television, Superman and Wonder Woman in Viet Nam, Batman fighting in the church, Superman cutting through the crap at the Cape, Wonder Woman's bloody plane, Hal's psychedelic penetration of the Center, Hal hurling the Center into space. It's all here, and in almost every case, the animation does the book justice.

What the film does so well is showing WHY Hal Jordan MUST become the Green Lantern, and he does so just in time to complete Abin Sur's mission and save the Earth. The compression of the film's story (relative to the book) actually enhances Hal's story arc. Only slightly less important, we see the Flash overcome his insecurities in the shadow of Superman and Wonder Woman, his fear for Iris, to be the hero who saves the day. It's all the more poignant knowing that someday, he will have to pay a price. The film brilliantly brings to life the "newness" of these Silver Age heroes. I don't know that Green Lantern or Flash have ever been done so well, or ever could be done better.

I wish that someday, Timm and Cooke would have the time and money to produce the "untold" tales of the New Frontier. With a little bit of tweaking, the stories of the Losers, Task Force X, John Henry, the Challengers, etc. could fit into the template they have here.

yep. saw it at wondercon. it was good. held together surprisingly well i thought for all the cuts they made.

i didnt read the story and i really thought the movie was kinda boring.
that said, it was good to see other DC characters as other poseters have mentioned.

Well, it was everything I wanted it to be. I loved it!!! And I agree that the voices were shockingly spot on... I'll give a shout out to Lucy Lawless/Wonder Woman since she is the only major voice not mentioned above.

See that is the only voice I didn't like. I could still see in my head that it was Lucy Lawless coming out of Wonder Women's body. The other voices I saw Hal or I saw Barry. Not the actors.

Still a great adaptation though...

Y'know, that's funny, b/c I know what you are talking about. At first I "heard the actors and not the characters" for each of WW and Superman, but I kept thinking, "wow, they're perfect for these roles."

I actually got used to the WW voice a lot faster than I did the Superman voice (Kyle MacLachlan's voice is imprinted in my brain even moreso than Lucy Lawless').

I thought MacLachlan as Superman was perfect and I heard Superman, not the guy from Dune.

Anyways, I think that is ripe for a sequel to show all the other parts that were missing since it seems that Titan:Judas Contract has been put on hold. Dare I hope for Legion:Great Darkness Saga?

I thought Lawless was OK, not great. Her voice just sounded small in the film, too small for such a large character (and I mean that literally). I think she could have done it bigger but didn't; presumably, the producers and voice directors got the performance they wanted from her. She's a great actress (which kinda surprises me!) -- her work on BSG has been excellent.

It's also true that they really cut the WW part down alot. In the commentary, Timm admits he was ready to cut Diana completely from the film, since her part doesn't directly advance the conflict with the Center at all. In fact, I felt that they cut out too much of the Cold War anti-hero context and its connection to Center-inspired paranoia and mania.

Judas Contract is on hold? I was looking forward to that one! Rats.

I think Paul Levitz sort of pooh-poohed the idea of a Great Darkness film but he always sort of downplays his writing efforts.

By the way, did anyone get the 2 disc version of New Frontier? Is it worth the extra couple dollars? I don't really care about 3 random JLU episodes so the other few features would need to be pretty decent.

Man, I totally heard the guy from Dune! The sci-fi sense memory made me tingle on the inside (not in a gross way...)

A movie of GDS would be so awesome. Except the anticipation might be better than the actual result.

Lawless won me over with her verbal smack down of Superman in the first WW scene. When she told him to get out, I felt the urge to get up and leave the room myself.

Can't wait to see it, It's on my Nexflix queue but there's a wait for it. A co-worker (who has an ex girlfriend who used to work for DC) Gave me the deluxe slipcover book a while back. It is a cherished treasure. I even got my Highschool english teacher friend to read it. She loved it.

I recently watched the Ultimate Avengers movie and thought it pretty much sucked. DC definitely does a better job with most of their cartoon and movies franchisses than Marvel seems to.

Kyle McLauchlan as Superman huh? I guess I can see that. I have to say I thought Tim Daly was excellent in the Bruce Timm Superman cartoon from a number of years back. If you haven't seen them, check 'em out they're quite good. His Batman cartoon as well (waaaay better than the current Sat. morning Batman cartoon).

I just got New Frontier yesterday along with Hogfather from amazon.

I never read the book by Darwin, so i only have the movie to go on.

HOT DAMN MERCY MA'AM! I loved this movie. For the era it set the tone just right, it brought out your major characters without making them over the top (Frankly, i never could stand J'onn, but he doesn't seem like a waste of time here, so thats a big leap).

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, you could have left them out and i wouldn't have missed them, cause lets face it, Hal stole the show. Between Hal and Barry, this movie was what i have been looking for in a flash and gl story.

Given the length of the story and the limitations imposed by time, it worked for me. I know that some folk are unhappy due to having read the graphic novel first, and i wouldn't take that away from them, but not having read it let me go into the movie with no bias and it rocked.

Haven't seen the movie yet, but you should really pick up the graphic novel, rick! I guarantee you'll love it!

One of the best things DC has ever produced!

One of my favorite re-reads. I'm simply enthralled by it, I feel a participant instead of an observor when I read this.

Just finished watching the copy I added to my iPhone. Was amazed by how much I enjoyed it since I didn't care for the mini it is based on (sorry but I am not a fan of Darwin Cooke as an artist). I'd put this up there as one of the best comic to animation efforts if it didn't feel so rushed. Just another 15-20 minutes would have made it the perfect film.

BLASPHEMY!

Blasphemy or not, it's the truth. Had it not been for the horrendous art I may have given the series a try. Comics are a visual medium after all. The writing could have been on par with The Great Gatsby or Grapes of Wrath but it has to have the visuals to match.

Well, to each his own, Scott. At the moment, I pretty much view Cooke as the second coming...of Kirby! I scanned a couple of the pinups from the Absolute NF volume and hung them as art on my office wall.

Thanks to my sick weekend I caught up on some viewing, including all of the JL:NF set. At first, I was a little miffed that I bought the 2-disc set. Then I watched the 2nd disc. The first feature is a profile of the supervillains in the Legion of Doom narrated by Malcolm MacDowell. His voice is so amazing. He could read the phone book and make it sound insidious (which it is). Any video where you get Denny O'Neill and Len Wein talkin' supervillains is gonna be good.

Second, there's an odd Darwyn-narrated feature on all the stuff left out of the movie. What blew my mind, though, was Cooke's description of a tie-in between NF and the JLA that I had never noticed and never heard before. Apparently, Cooke was thinking about how the Centre ended up being kinda similar to Starro, the first canonical JLA villain. Both are giant creatures with mind control powers, Starro appeared after the Centre. So, Darwyn wanted to hint that maybe Starro formed from some of the remnants of the Centre out in space. Sure enough, in the panel after GL shot-puts the Centre into space, there are exploded pieces, one of which is star-shaped. This tickled me no end, mainly because it was now worth paying for the 2nd disc. Also, it's a funny insight into Darwyn's mind, and ego.

Finally watched it and I've got to say I was a little disappointed. I couldn't disagree with LL more, I absolutely LOVE Darwyn Cooke's art. The kind of stock animation style in the film didn't do much for me. It felt stiff, angular and lacked much depth. I felt Cooke's soft, rounded sketchy style really lent a lot to the mood of the book and it was simply missing from film. I was also disappointed by the omission of the Challengers of the Unknown thread but I can understand that something needed to be cut to avoid a 3-4 hour film. I may watch it again someday but I think I'd just rather re-read the book.

I did enjoy the history of the JLA extra though.

I finally bought it and really liked it. I haven't read the actual comic though.

This is available through Netflix for online viewing now. I thought it was quite good. I've never read the original comics beyond some excerpts so I was a bit surprised at the level of violence. Not offended by it but it was far cry from the edits done on the Batman Beyond "Return of the Joker" direct-to-video from a few years back.

Loved the book...loved the movie. His art is a guilty pleasure for me.

Yep and I've just watched it for the first time.

It was REALLY good!

What a terriffic spotlight on Hal Jordan/Green Lantern!

J'onn also comes off as a shining star.