Superhero Media: Justice League The New Frontier

When people ask me "what a good Justice league movie looks like", I refer them to The New Frontier, a Warner Premiere adaptation of a comic of the same name which bridges the DC Golden and Silver ages of comics. Set in the 1950s, most superheroes are inactive due to the McCarthy trials, with Superman and Wonder Woman mopping up the last of the Korean conflict and Batman keeping a low profile in Gotham. Pacifist pilot Hal Jordan is shot down and forced to kill an enemy soldier on the last day of the war, to preserve his own life. Meanwhile, an experiment gone wrong brings J'onn J'onzz from Mars to the Earth and a new superhero known as "The Flash" is seen in and around Central City. Despite being an animated feature, The New Frontier is grim and brutal in parts, contrasted with the classic 'four-colour' style of artwork and horn-heavy soundtrack, it can make for intense viewing at times. Despite these brutal sequences and elder god villain, the theme of the film is certainly "hope", with the overriding idea that people are stronger when they work together punctuating the narrative.

With so many characters, few get much of a chance to develop, but the versions of the characters presented are excellent. One of my favourite scenes involves a disagreement between Wonder Woman and Superman over the execution of war criminals, Diana criticizes Clark and steps down off a table to reveal that she is the taller of the pair. Of course Wonder Woman is taller than Superman, she's an Amazon and he masquerades as human. One day, I hope to see this moment recreated in a live-action film, just for the jaw-drop moment it will create. The scenes of Martian Manhunter acting as a detective, using his powers to solve pedestrian crimes made me track down Silver Age comics to enjoy this trope a little more; again, this would be great to see in a film one day. The villain of the piece is 'The Center', a cyclopian entity the size of an island, with vast psychic powers and a plot to destroy humanity before they destroy the planet with nuclear arms. To do this, the Center starts with a subtle approach of doomsday cultists, but ends with an all-out dinosaur attack on Cape Canivaral. 

The New Frontier does an admirable job of bridging the Golden and Silver Ages of DC comics, but, perhaps more importantly, it provides an explanation of how and why the disparate heroes of the setting come together to form the nascent Justice League, answering all of those annoying questions non-fans can't seem to shut up about. You know the ones I mean, "why do they need anyone other than Superman?" and the like. Well maybe they have to fight a psychic island and the indomitable will power of Green Lantern and mental might of Martian Manhunter will be of more use than just punching things really hard. Maybe Superman's close relationship with the US government limits his effectiveness in "grey area" situations, so the more anarchic approach of Batman or the unsupervised heroics of the Flash are of more use. Seriously, Justice League comics have been around since the 1960s, is it that hard to translate this into a live action film? Tall Wonder Woman. Highlight difference. Stronger together than apart. Green Lantern is a decent guy. Done. Send me a check in the mail, Warner Bros.