Justice League: Throne of Atlantis review

PS - STEEL. You'll figure it out.

Just watched Throne of Atlantis, and it was a real DISAPPOINTMENT, especially when compared to the Masterpiece that is Flashpoint Paradox.

Throne of Atlantis is plagued by a poorly developed storyline that seemed to transition from point to point without any real foundation being layed. Lazy story-telling, shallow character development and supremely poor editing.

With FlashPoint Paradox we really got a real sense of Flash’s pain of losing his mother, his personal sacrifice and an insight into his awesome power as the Flash.

The emotional weight of the scenes in FlashPoint Paradox were felt by audiences worldwide, it was absolutely fantastic and artfully done. Heck some of us may have even shed tears when Batman got the note from his father. These are the defining moments in animated movies, moments that pull at your heartstrings and make you feel for your beloved Hero’s.

Throne of Atlantis failed miserably with these defining moments. Aquaman’s mother died and I barely felt the weight of her death. Aquaman’s development was also hurriedly done, he just seemed to suddenly gain understanding of his powers from scene to scene, there was no real trials or tribulations that added depth to his character.

Some of the fight sequences also had me pissed, particularly the fight at the end where the full quota of the Justice League members were being man-handled by OceanMaster. OceanMaster took down Supes without even breaking a sweat on dry-land! I know Supes has had weaknesses to magic in the past but OceanMaster made Supes look like a rag doll on dry land!

On the plus side the Animation quality was good, I truly love the style with which Throne of Atlantis and FlashPoint Paradox were drawn, and hope to see it continue into the future. It was also good to see the brief romantic parts between Supes and Wonder Woman. Batman and Flash both look sleek and fierce as well.

But those positives were not enough to keep me from wanting to strangle someone after I was done watching Throne of Atlantis. I hate missed opportunities and DC missed an opportunity with TOA. DC had a chance to really make an Aquaman animated movie that resonated with the DC universe (new and old). The overall framework and plot was there to build a truly decent movie, but they destroyed it with poor development and shallow story-telling.

Poorly Writing or Poor Editing or maybe both. This felt more like a cartoon network 1 hour special than an epic animated movie.

Marvel is well into their multi-phase roll-out of live action content and DC is still struggling to get animated content right.

Message to DC: your animation art/style is great IMO, now you need to focus on proper story-telling and continuity. Please get James Krieg to write your screenplays, pretty please, or at least explore why his screenplay for FlashPoint Paradox was so much better than Throne of Atlantis!

JAXX

@jaxx and @hardigan I was at the premiere on Monday and the movie rocked. I highly recommend this film. Anyone have questions please email. I drove from Oxnard to Beverly Hills to watch it and I can say the writers did an excellent job. Over Kudos. Hope this animated movie is a huge success.

@JAXX you gave a better Review IMO. I Agree with everything you said it was a big dissapointment in terms of the editing, storytelling ect. Throne of Atlantis is hailed as a brilliant comic saga by Geoff Johns. What this movie does is takes some key parts out of the comics and animates it in chunks without having a flow or detail needed to give the audience the hook that this movie so desperately needed.

First off I want to say this film is intended for an older audience, including swears you just wouldn't see in a children's animation. Unfortunately if you are of that target audience and you may have seen films like Flashpoint Paradox you will pick up on this films failings.

Throughout the first half of the film the Justice League is looking for the fabled Atlantians and Arthur Curry. When they finally meet Arthur Curry there is no introductions, no natural exchange of any kind that you would have expected from paying attention to the first half. Superman even relates to Arthur's background as if he magically knew it within moments of them meeting, without them even having any prior conversation of any kind.

As you already said about Arthurs connection to his mother falling flat, it fails to reel us in.

By the time Ocean Master is leading the forces of Atlantis to the surface starting with a giant tidal wave that we momentarily get worried about as the heroes discuss how to stop it, only for that moment to be brushed off by the wave actually doing nothing other than being used as a dramatic entrance.

The surface armies then meet the Atlantians and some how already know they are Atlantians, and then fighting ensues. Joining into the battle the greatest of our DC Superheroes, heroes that are renowned for their sense of moral justice to not kill (setting them apart from other superhero genres), arrive and go on to kill mercilessly loads of the tricked Atlantian soldiers fighting for ocean master.

Combat and animation is well done, Ocean master seems to get the better of every leaguer way to easily tho as it leads up to Aquaman to stop him.

Character development was worse then Son of Batman. No league characters feel fleshed out even the ones that they focus more on (victor, arthur) feel rushed. Superman is once again less the embodiment of heroism and more the heavy hitter. With his focus more on a romance with Wonder Woman then as an idealist world improver (at least this time he doesn't beat the crap out of people that don't answer him straight away like in War). Batman seems to take brooding to the next level adding talking aggressively and somewhat down to his team mates that he now barks orders to.

Aquaman, the main focus of the film, was not done bad, but not done good either. Whenever they would get something right with him they would either ruin it with pacing issues or fall flat in story. A shame too because it really is an opportunity wasted.

The Good
+ Animation
+ Voice Acting
+ Music

The Bad
- Character Development
- Emotional Attachment
- Opportunities Missed

The Down Right Ugly
-- Pacing
-- Lazy Editing/Writing (Whoever is to blame here)

Overall:
It feels like they had the great source material and hoped that alone would be enough to take key moments from, piece it together into an animated film and carry over some continuity from War. The result comes across as almost doing the bare minimum, rushed and lazy, it has the negative effect of their goal to make Aquaman cool and relevant. On the bright side by now knowing this isn't anywhere as good as flashpoint, and not as good as war, you may still have fun watching this. It isn't the worst DC animated film out there but it is a disappointment to be sure.

2/5

The ridiculous stuff with the superwave at the end more or less killed this for me. Definitely a step up compared to WAR, though.

... and as far as i see it, it just was lacking a view minutes more story here and there, which would have fixed a lot of the problems i had with the second half.

Btw did Superman and WW always breathe underwater in comics?