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OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Ended up being shown a bit of Justice League Action

It was weird. The first one, that starred Superman and Wonder Woman, was... worse than the worst episode of the original Teen Titans. Like it was bad like a bad episode of Ben 10. Bad like the DC DTV movies are. Really bad

The other one, though, was a perfectly enjoyable little space adventure with obscure DC weirdos and Patton Oswalt. Like an episode of Brave and the Bold starring Superman, and squashed into 11 minutes.

If these two chunks are representative of the show as a whole, it's gonna be about as mixed a bag as they come, good lordy

OnimaruXLR fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Dec 13, 2016

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OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Aphrodite posted:

It's for 10 year olds.

So there's no difference between Toy Story and Shrek 4-Ever After, is what you're saying?

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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To all the people saying that Batman Beyond depicts a future where Batman has failed...

...did you think he was going to fix crime forever, or something?

Is the Kingdom Come scenario, where has has a fleet of Bat-drones running de-facto martial law on Gotham preferable?

He's the guy who punches muggers and saves the world from immortal terrorists. He's not going to single handedly fix apathy, greed, and corruption.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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business hammocks posted:

Why is there a non-Japanese Alfred in the Japanese Batman movie?

I'm pretty sure all of the Batman characters are transplanted from the present into the past (of Japan)

Based on who is writing this movie, this is going to be much more in the vein of Brave and the Bold Batman with anime style than anything remotely resembling a more "grounded" approach

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Teen Titans Go is kinda stupid, but it's kinda stupid in a way that is funny occasionally. It's very much Family Guy for kids.

I don't have an issue with Thundercats Roar aesthetically in and of itself, but I have to wonder what happened to cartoons that... don't look like this. The Adventure Time Generation, while there are lots of good shows, seems to be marking a low point in terms of variety for tone and art styles for TV animation.

Voltron's about the only thing I can think of that stands out from the crowd.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I dunno how to feel about What If? being an animated show. All of the Disney-produced Marvel animation has been inoffensive at best. Is that really going to change on their streaming service? I'm inclined to think it won't, but I guess hope springs eternal

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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So if Marvel went to the trouble of announcing What If alongside all their other big upcoming movie releases and MCU-cast-helmed direct to streaming series, it's going to actually be good, right? Really good and not the kinda slapdash at best "wtf is this" at worst kinda poo poo that's been produced since the Disney buyout right?

RIGHT?

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I liked TTG VS TT except the part where the lovely DTV Teen Titans showed up. But I guess they can't use Young Justice since Raven and Starfire aren't a thing on there?

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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With a handful of exceptions, the DTV movies in general have been pretty terrible, but the DTV Animated Universe that started with "Here's the animated New 52" flick just seems like it's genuinely on the bottom rung of superhero cartoons. Even worse than all these super bland Marvel shows that have been put out post EMH/Spectacular Spider-Man. Like, Avengers United They Stand levels of bad.

I'll take breakdancing dreadlocks Joker or bizarrely sexy Magpie over over this poo poo any day

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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With season 3 being on HBO Max now I've been catching up on Young Justice and I have to say, my issues with this show have remained pretty consistent. The weird paramilitary vibe. The way the individual adventures never really come off as particularly satisfying. The occasionally freakishly unnatural sounding dialog (which wouldn't be weird if everyone always sounded like that, but they don't). Khary Payton being like 20+ characters. The 2-3 characters per season who have a big spotlight and are wildly annoying.

That being said, there are some strengths that it only really shows in the long form. Specifically seeing how characters change over protracted periods of time, like Superboy wanting to be the friendly dad type, and Grayson's anxiety about responsibility. There are interesting background changes too, that are only possible with the macro view the show tends to take. And because of that I think at this point I'm more cool with the show wanting to do it's own weird thing than wanting the second coming of the DCAU. And it's always fun to see them pull out the real weird obscure stuff, although the value of that has become far less novel in the ten years since the show started between DC CW and Marvel movies.

One thing I remain annoyed about is the prospect of getting invested into any of the ongoing plot threads (This time it's Cyborg) because I know that season 4 is probably gonna reshuffle the deck, again...

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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SlothfulCobra posted:

It's right next to Bruce/Barbara on things that you'd just quietly like to ignore, no matter what the creator intentions were. It doesn't really make sense, like how did anyone plan for Terry to randomly break into the batcave, and it takes away character agency and doesn't really add anything more to the story.

How much of Batman Beyond was playing off of how Marvel 2099 went over pretty well anyways? Or did somebody just inject 2099 DNA into DCAU staff? I think Beyond did better with characters and story but 2099 did better with the edgey future cyberpunk dystopia.

While it's fondly remembered (well, Spider-Man is) I don't think Marvel 2099 was particularly successful, and I never heard any of the Beyond team reference it in any of the stuff I've heard of from them.

As far as I know, Batman Beyond is what happened when WB told them to make "Anime Batman" to try and bite Pokémon's success, but instead of making a Batman influenced by kids anime, they made one influenced by Akira and Bubblegum Crisis.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Part of me has to wonder what the hell happened to DC in the 00s. I mean it was never quite as wholesome and whitebread as the old Marvel/DC dynamic made it seem, but they didn't quite take so many cues from it's fighting game dancing partner, either

I bet it's Johns fault

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Byrne (and I'm not even sure about that, but that's the impression I'm under) might've created evil businessman Lex but the animated crew made him sing, as a concept

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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X-O posted:

The only reason it's not thought of in the same light is because it didn't redefine Superman for a generation like Batman did. And that is because Superman didn't need redefining as until recently his character has been portrayed consistently across mediums. That and because of the villains. Nobody can match Batman's villains and that was a bigger part of the animated series being more popular than anything else.

Superman also didn't last long enough to have a disappointing retooling so that's a plus. But on the other hand it also didn't last long enough to produce a really good spinoff.

I think the things that keep Superman from reaching the heights of it's predecessor are pretty straightforward. With the exception of Luthor and Darkseid (and I guess Lobo) his villains are just not as entertaining. As good as the show can looks, it never quite reaches some of those especially gorgeous early BTAS episodes like Heart of Ice and Feat of Clay. And the shorter overall episode count means it's got fewer chances for jaw-droppingly awesome bits, those mostly being the more standout Darkseid episodes and the World's Finest crossover.

It's still good, great even (best Lois), but BTAS (and JLU) are magic. A more lavish production probably would've helped, as doing really crazy high concept scifi poo poo helps a Superman cartoon come alive, whereas Batman can survive more on dialog and moody looking aesthetics. Which is one of the reasons I'm so frustrated with the DC DTV movies having such a... thoroughly orthodox set of aesthetics.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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That Lois design by itself has me more excited for this Superman show than every single bit of news about the Batman show

What do you even do with Batman at this point? You've got balanced Batman in TAS, action-focused The Batman, team-up focused Batman on Brave and the Bold, and ongoing narrative over in Young Justice. Well, I guess technically that last one could probably be done a bit better, with an actual focus on the Bat family, but the fact that it's the golden age design in the illustration gives me doubts that we're going to see a lot of the expanded cast.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I don't mind Teela being the protagonist, but is she going to have a cool transformation? Because if she just goes around NOT transforming and smacking people with a stick that has a snake motif that's a bit underwhelming.

OnimaruXLR fucked around with this message at 00:17 on May 25, 2021

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I think BATB edges out the Harley show because Batman is great in it (maybe even the best Batman?), while Harley is arguably the worst part of her own show.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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NikkolasKing posted:

Many, many years ago now I was talking with people about favorite Batman character designs and it was interesting to note how, even though Ivy is a buxom temptress in TAS, she's very different in a lot of other stuff. She's not as sexualized in her TNBA redesign, and in The Batman she's a skinny nerd. The Batman is an underrated version of Ivy in general.

Wasn't she positioned to be Batgirl's nemesis in The Batman?

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I enjoyed Ninja Batman a fair bit and thought that Batman's characterization as unflappably dry in the face of a bunch of weird poo poo gave it arguably the most silver age flavor out of any animated Batman project other than the Brave and the Bold

I'm enjoying Young Justice a lot more now that we're focusing on the Sportsmaster family (that's a weird sentence) but honestly this episode felt kind of like it was pandering to me in particular, given it's focus on Cassandra CainWu-San and featured guest star of Josh Keaton portraying a spidery guy.

Onyx is basically a new character at this point by tying her into Amazing-Man, right? Kinda like what they did with Halo.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I don't think they're likely to touch the Spectacular Spider-Man because that's still Sony's baby (at least, inasmuch as it isn't on D+ yet)

Glad to see all these cartoon announcements. It's going to be weird if the X-Men continuation series has profoundly better animation than the original though :v:

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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The fun (well, "fun") thing about Fox's X-Men and Spider-Man shows is that they're a lot more representative of the comics in general than the DCAU was. There's a real "everything and the kitchen sink" approach, as opposed to trying to pick and choose the very best material and trying to elevate it. I kind of hope we see a bit of that in the new version. I'm not sure how long it is going to be running, but there's no shortage of material to touch on; Age of Apocalypse, Onslaught, New X-Men, Astonishing, House of M, Utopia... and that's just with the core team, we never saw too much of the New Mutants, X-Force (either incarnation), X-Factor, X-etc in the original Series. Hell, I know I would like to see an episode about the X-Statix.

And you have to admit, establishing Krakoa makes for a pretty kickass open ended finale compared to "And so the battle continues" while still operating out of the school

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I'm going to be honest, I was skeptical about X-Men Evolution from Day 1, and when Nightcrawler was turned into a German version of Fez from that 70s show, I outright hated it

Show gave me very intense "AND THE PROM'S TOMORROW!" energy, which isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but it felt like it's fusion of hi-school hijinx and superheroics was more poorly executed than say, Static Shock, or any of the actual comic books about super teens that I was reading at the time.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Skwirl posted:

Yeah it is weird so many adaptations of Spider-Man focus on him being a high school student when he only was one for like 2 years of the last 60 in the comics.

Peter has a relatively more acceptable excuse for never getting his poo poo together if he's indefinitely a high school kid.

Once he's an adult he should probably talk to Nick Fury, Tony Stark, or Reed Richards about getting a paid job and lodgings with security for Aunt May.

There's also the weird morass of different strongly held beliefs once you start getting into stuff like "Should Spider-Man be married?" and "Should Spider-Man have kids?" and whatnot. You would think that the creation of Miles Morales would help alleviate some of that pressure, but apparently not. There's always some Geoff Johnsian motherfucker who thinks the interpretation of the character HE grew up with is the way it OUGHT to be.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I think part of the reason Ultimate Spider-Man had such an impact (even compared to Ultimates, whose contributions were mostly stylistic in nature) is because it was running parallel to the JMS run, which was... let's call it a departure, to be generous, what with the totems and spider-eating vampire people and the Civil War tie-ins and the trading your marriage to the devil and whatnot. People who wanted a more orthodox Spider-Man story just naturally turned to Ultimate, including (especially?) anyone who might have started reading the ongoing books at the time.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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NikkolasKing posted:

I never watched the show because I am very much the "too much Wolverine" kind of X- fan. And isn't it kind of deliciously ironic that the one show with Wolverine in the title as a blatant ratings ploy was the least successful of all of them? (I guess there was that Kitty Pryde cartoon....how long did that last.)

So I can't say it's bad but the cover of a book does matter.

This show has two episodes where the premise is "Nightcrawler: He is basically the best"

I'm not nearly as much a fan of it compared to Spectacular and EMH, but it was a decent cartoon

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Young Justice Season 4 Episode 7: The story of how Barbara Gordon ended up as Oracle in this universe is really weird, and melodramatic in a totally different way from the Killing Joke. All in all I think it's a lateral move; she's not a victim who is then used as a prop in some other dude's stories, but the idea of anyone other than Harley Quinn taking a killing blow for Joker--even if it's to keep Cassandra from becoming a killer--strikes me as some real Bat brain logic.

Also I kind of wish we would get a kick rear end fight scene from Cassandra. That's kind of her whole thing. Then again the action in this show has never been it's strongest suit, so I'm not even sure they could pull it off if they tried.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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SlothfulCobra posted:

Nah, he was Australian in both. Which I guess means that Spiderman and his Amazing Friends is in the same universe.

Honestly, making Wolverine Australian seems like it works. The character plays more into Australian stereotypes than Canadian, and since that particular team roster had an international focus, Australia is more exotic than Canada. The movies also cast Wolverine as an Australian. And X-Men: Evolution, too.

Logan is a friend to the animals, and if he was Australian, Weapon X would probably never have recruited him, because you have to be stupid to be friendly with the fauna they got down there

Besides, Captain Boomerang doesn't need the competition

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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The United States posted:

I don't think we should expect the kids cartoons to operate the same as the big budget four quadrant blockbuster movies, it's not like the Avengers on Earth's Mightiest Heroes or Avengers Assemble are murdering foes left and right.

However Young Justice did that thing where it moved to HBO Max streaming and suddenly has a bunch of blood and gore so it's in this weird limbo where it's not for children anymore, just manchildren, so....

Didn't that start when it was on DC Universe, though?

I think the main problem is that Young Justice is basically the closest thing we have to a superhero telenovela. That poo poo is heavy on the dramatic, light on the melo. It's good enough to watch, but I wouldn't wrestle anybody to get extra seasons the way I would for other shows. So instead of a more reasoned defense for not executing an already-defeated enemy, we get the "IT'S TO SAVE YOUR SOUUUUL", the same way Conner and Megan can't have a remotely chill relationship and Beast Boy has to have PTSD and depression in the most exaggerated ways possible

OnimaruXLR fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Nov 28, 2021

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I've often complained about the supposedly-classic run of Teen Titans (Wolfman and Perez) and people usually tell me that it's considered remarkable because it's the DC Soap Opera book to Marvel's soap opera book (X-Men)

Maybe the YJ team are taking that approach to it's literal conclusion, considering how the Teen Titans cartoon took the "young superheroes having fun, occasionally intense, youthful adventures" gimmick that the Young Justice comics were built on

Maybe Justice League Unlimited did it first by having there be a politics-heavy story about Amanda Waller in a show that wasn't about the Suicide Squad

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Young Justice Season 4 Episode 9: Our new focus group features Zatanna who is acting as magic mentor to Traci 13, Mary Marvel (who is trying to be a wizard and not just Mary Marvel for some ominous sounding reason), and some guy who I guess is Dr. Fate's alter-ego at some point in the comics. They get into a tussle with Klarion, who has got major backstory with Vandal Savage, and there's some new Lord of Chaos on the prowl. Also Beast Boy may be taking sleeping pills to just spend his entire depression unconscious. Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy sit around outside watching fake Star Trek, which strikes me as odd, given that it's not entirely clear what role they had in Superboy's "death" still

Not really feeling it compared to the ninja team episodes. Also, since when is Blue Devil Irish-from-Ireland and not just Irish by ancestry?

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Young Justice Season 4 Episode 10
-Beast Boy has been in a state of deep depression ever since he got back from Mars, which is understandable, but nothing has really happened except people looking at him funny. Dude is abusing sleeping pills. How has no one done anything anything more than going "YOU OKAY, SPORT?"? Wasn't El Dorado a counselor? Is this all leading up to the animated version of Heroes in Crisis?
-I kind of thought that Mary's reluctance to going Shazam was going to be tied to one of the assorted dark Mary alter egos, but instead it seems to be tied to a power addiction background story that uh... sounds more interesting than what is actually happening in the show?
-Dr. Fate has always kind of sucked in this show but going "meh not interested" after Klarion and baby dark Chylde cause that kind of damage makes him look even worse than the Order factions in Shin Megami Tensei. Also the climax to this episode makes the entire preceding course of events seem kinda pointless.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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I honestly think you can watch the first two episodes of X-Men 92 and get a good feel for the entire rest of the show. It might widen it's scope, but the vibe never changes that much.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Cassandra herself was done pretty well, but Shiva was stupid and hosed up, and Barbara says and does some weird poo poo. I almost wonder if it was done to make Tigress look better in comparison.

Out of the mini-arcs this season has consisted of, that one was easily the least annoying. Although I will admit, this most reason episode with the out-of-left-field epilogue for GL The Animated series wasn't too bad. We'll see how it does when it can't lean on that particular spring of positivity, though.

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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ThermoPhysical posted:

The most recent arc with Rocket shows her problems raising her autistic son and parallels that with Orion's anger in some weird way.

Yeah, I was actually thinking, isn't drawing a parallel between neurodivergence and being the literal scion of pure evil kinda problematic?

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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All I know is I liked/loved Gargoyles and Spectacular Spider-Man, and am only reluctantly tolerating this newest thing. There are a lot of other crossover talent other than Weisman, too, so I'm not sure where the fault is.

I can't help but wonder if it's an inherent problem with the directives of the show. It's like they want to do a wide, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink DC anthology show (with an even broader scope than Justice League), but at the same time have a bunch of melodrama focused around a handful of core characters. I also get the feeling there's maybe an element of wanting to do a Suicide Squad show, since that's arguably the third most important DC Comic behind Year One and DKR, which informs YJ's weird paramilitary black ops vibe. Neither Teen Titans or Young Justice comics had any of that poo poo. So you've got the moral ambiguity and high stakes of superheroes doing cloak and dagger poo poo, with all the relationship melodrama and annoying adolescent personalities of Teen Titans... it is an alchemy that has less than pleasant results.

I will say, though, that the episode of the Atlantis arc written by Khary Payton was less painful than the show usually is. Somebody give THAT guy a cartoon. Hell, let him run a Cyborg solo show, I'd argue he's done more for the character than everyone else who's touched him put together

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Y'know, people might not think Wanda's had the best treatment in the MCU, but she's still doing way, way better than most of her other incarnations

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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How many times does Terry save what can be described as "the world" in Batman Beyond? There's the crossover with Justice League, the movie, and maybe fighting Kobra (which someone else could probably do, very easily, as they are collectively a bad Hydra clone) but most of the time he's just trying to clean up Gotham, which isn't really in the wheelhouse of say, a Green Lantern, a New God, a half-Thanagarian soldier, or an Atlantean

Superman would probably do it, but man, that dude is busy. Also, we don't know how long Starro was controlling him, so for all intents and purposes he could've been like "There needs to be a hard limit on Justice League membership for.... I dunno, global security reasons or something"

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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King Baby posted:

Gordon is the best part of Harley Quinn for me. I love how his big plan is just to drive around town with a “Come Back Batman!” Banner. Then he freaks out when he sees Batman sitting because “Batman never sits!” A throw back to that old meme from years ago…

I thought it was a bad WB/DC policy, not a meme

Then again it could easily be both

OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Movie Magneto having an English accent makes sense to me since he went into Nazi-hunting after the Holocaust and probably went hard on becoming a globetrotting man of mystery

What I don't get is how comics Magneto went from child Holocaust survivor to simple farmer and family man to erudite intellectual Nazi hunter and proto-mutant supremacist. He must've had a very eventful few years after slaughtering the mob that killed Magda and them.

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OnimaruXLR
Sep 15, 2007
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Anyone watch the Super Sons DTV movie?

Anyone... have a theory why after like an all time great run of animated TV shows the DC DTV flicks are such uneven, frequently terrible, nonsense?

should I blame Geoff Johns? I'm gonna blame Geoff Johns

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