The new season of Justice League Unlimited is upon us. Last season was one of the biggest surprises for me: with the expanded cast of characters I figured that the storytelling would have been dumbed down. Instead, it was the best season of the show ever, with twists and turns and fascinating character interactions. I hope the writers can make this season work half-as-well.
The season opener of Justice League Unlimited starts with Luthor escaping to join the “Legion of Doom.” We get some heroes that appeared last season in non-speaking roles: Aztek and Fire; along with a storyline that echoes to an older adventure of the JLA (when they were thrown back in time to World War II, to stop Vandal Savage from changing the course of the war).
As usual, there’s a lot of winks to longtime Justice League (and Superfriends) fans: we get a new “Hall of Justice” that echoes the older cartoon (not to mention the swamp-location “Legion of Doom” headquarters). The plot has a team of villains going after an object on Blackhawk Island: the good old Spear of Longinus (also known as the Spear of Destiny, a longtime plot device of Justice Society stories, among others). We also have a possibly insane Luthor (or a dormant Brainiac) and a really nice justification for Gorilla Grodd’s “Legion of Doom.”
If there’s a failure in the episode, it’s the voice acting: I’m not sure who is voicing Fire, but it doesn’t work at all: it felt like issues of comics where the accents are all over-accentuated (like French accents that are all “Zee money iz on zee countertop” type stuff). The credits don’t seem to identify the voice that I can see. I suspect I’ll now be cringing whenever Fire shows up.
Beyond that, there was enough chracterization and action to make this a good opener for this season: we’ve got some overarching plots that should carry the series for many episodes and new characters are being introduced. I really could ask for more. Except a better voice for Fire.
Next episode: Tweet! Tweet!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 at 8:07 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Entertainment, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Responses to “Justice League Unlimited: I Am Legion”
Actually, I know Brazilian portuguese and the accent is dead on, specially since Fire is Brazilian. It is not the accent that is wrong.
November 19th, 2005 at 2:27 pm |
Wow, I didn’t realize that. I knew Fire was Brazilian, but the accent really did throw me for a loop. I guess I’m so used to fake accents that real ones sound fake. ;)
November 20th, 2005 at 8:31 am |
One interesting note… it seems one of the Series Directors is either Brazilian, Portuguese, or a descendant of those (Joaquim Dos Santos). Maybe his wife did the voice acting? ;)
November 20th, 2005 at 8:50 pm |