Beings with supernatural powers join together to fight against supernatural villains. This team of supernatural beings include John Constantine, Zatanna and Jason Blood also known as the demon Etrigan. Justice League Dark is what it sounds like. It's the dark side of justice. A group of supernatural heroes who band together loosely to take on occult threats, supernatural threats - threats that the real Justice League may be powerless against. I put up this disclaimer before reviewing anything related to comic books and that is, I am not a very avid comic book reader because of it's unavailability here. I keep myself at pace via websites and I am certainly up to date regarding the DC animated movies. Believe it or not, but I've watched all of them.<br/><br/>SCREENPLAY - The story and the dialogues are very 50/50 but thank you DC, for making it R-rated. The banter is pretty good. Especially Deadman and Batman. They have the best punch-lines and Batman's "hmmm" always cracked me up. Without going too much into detail, a part of the movie felt a tad bit like Kingsman. If it's a reference to the comics, which the readers can point out, then it's cool but to me, it felt a bit clichéd. The expository stuff was surprisingly kept at a minimum. There was some of it of course but, I've seen in the other animated movies where everything just comes to a halt and some character is just hurling exposition. The callbacks between Zatana and Constantine sometimes felt over-used. I have watched the T.V. Show of Constantine, so I know what happened in Newcastle but they were ranting about things that happened all over the world. I mean, maybe it's entertaining for the comic-book readers but from a writer's point of view, using the same trope too many times reduces it's effect. <br/><br/>ART-DIRECTION - Let me get rid of the gripes I had about the animation. First of all at around 17 minutes into the movie, Deadman is opaque and transparent even when he hasn't been made visible by Constantine. Second, sometimes the expressions of the characters didn't change with the dialogue. I know it is nitpicking but you'll begin to notice after some time. If that would happen to a live actor, I would call it a wooden performance. Now, the pros. The action sequences were amazing. Especially the second last fight. That really got me pumped up. Earlier there used to be a lot of cut- away's during a fight sequence. The difference here was that each individual fight was done for a longer time before interjecting it with a scene. That increased the intensity of the fights by a notch.<br/><br/>VOICE-ACTING - There were a lot of known actors and actresses doing the voices like, Rosario Dawson as Wonder Woman, Alfred Molina as Destiny and of course Matt Ryan as Constantine. It's so sad that his show got cancelled. It was the only DC character I was invested in, especially due to his performance. Nicholas Torturro was amazing as Boston Brand. I know people will be hypothetically punching me for saying this, but he felt like the Deadpool of the lot. All the others were great as well, no complaints in the voice-acting department.<br/><br/>FINAL VERDICT - At one point I was thinking that what is Batman doing in the middle of all this magic and hocus-pocus. Just then all these magical elements started to deconstruct his character and I was like,"Oh! That's why he is there". It is quite rightfully rated R because there is a lot of violence, but personally, I wanted a little bit more. Maybe I am sadistic but if you agree then give me some assurance that I am not as sadistic as I think I am. Do give this one a watch. I am sure DC fans will, but if you're a fan of animated movies, I am sure this one won't disappoint. I just watched this after finally watching the much maligned Justice League.<br/><br/>Everyone has already had their say on Justice League, but this is very different. The Justice League appear but briefly. Batman is here but really in the background. Without the Justice League/Batman tag, this story would never have been made.<br/><br/>We have an occult story, but I haven't a clue overall what was going on. It just didn't grip me. Seemed to have a bit of a Lord of the Rings story merged in with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc. That doesn't make it bad, but mostly derivative. It wasn't exciting or interesting.<br/><br/>It was quite adult, and I'm no prude, but even I thought some of the language was unnecessary as many kids will end up watching this. It was misplaced here, and really devalued the work.<br/><br/>However the characters were kind of cool, espeically Deadman and John Constantine. That's what's good about this alone.<br/><br/>Probably now these characters are introduced to us, any later episodes will be more interesting. This was a start, but hoping for better moving forward.
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371 weeks ago