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Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two Review

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Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two. The film will be released on digital, 4K UHD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, April 23.

If there’s one DC Comics storyline that deserves a three-part animated adaptation, it’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. The continuity-correcting crossover is a sprawling epic packed with characters from many worlds. There’s a lot of material to work through, and a lot of moving parts to juggle, so a trilogy avoids the compression and pacing problems that DC’s direct-to-video animated films so often suffer from. But while Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two provides plenty of room to work, it never really creates the feeling that these events matter. It is a crisis without any feeling.

Or history, for that matter. This Crisis adaptation concludes the most recent offshoot of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies brand – the so-called Tomorrowverse – whose previous entries had taken a slow-burn approach, focusing on younger, inexperienced versions of the well-known heroes. But 2020’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow, 2021’s Batman: The Long Halloween and their sequels provide a shaky foundation for a crisis. The lack of established lore and a wide cast of heroes was painfully palpable in Crisis Part One, and little has changed in Part Two.

Even though the film depicts a band of heroes fighting a losing battle to prevent the end of existence, the film struggles to create a sense that something is at stake. It doesn’t help that much of part two is built around series of heroes defending anti-antimatter wave towers from rampaging supervillains or endless hordes of shadow demons. These scenes quickly become tedious, making part two very much the tedious connective tissue that ties together the opening and closing acts of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

It would help if the action scenes were more exciting in the animation and choreography departments. Instead, these fights are fierce and lifeless. I actually like the overall look and style of Tomorrowverse, with its thick black lines and vibrant, comic book-esque colors, and the way all of these films share a unified aesthetic. But in motion, Crisis Part Two is stiff, flat and uninteresting.

For all its faults, part one at least made the wise choice to anchor its story in the specific character of Barry Allen. Although that resulted in a film with too many non-linear time jumps, the film still had Barry’s emotional journey as a common thread. It belatedly created a sense of legacy for Barry as it explored the key moments of his relationship with Iris and their ultimate, shared sacrifice.

By comparison, part two doesn’t have one central point. This sequel never seems to be able to decide which hero should be the protagonist. Is it Jensen Ackles’ Batman, a loner exposed to worlds where he let others join his crusade? Is it Darren Criss’s Superman, still finding his place as the world’s greatest protector? Is it Meg Donnelly’s Supergirl, a refugee from a dead world who is given a second chance at life by the Monitor? Any of them could have been an effective protagonist. But because part two jumps listlessly from one subplot to another without ever giving any storyline the attention it deserves, no hero can shine as much as Flash does in part one.

The main characters aren’t the only ones who get short shrift in Crisis Part Two – the film is bizarrely uninterested in drawing on the multitude of heroes and villains at its disposal. There are exactly two notable cameos, and one of the characters has so few lines that it’s a wonder the producers bothered with it at all. Connecting the different corners of the DC multiverse is part of the joy of previous Crisis on Infinite Earths stories – whether it’s the original Marv Wolfman and George Pérez comic, or the five-episode crossover event in the live-action Arrowverse shows from The CW. But that joy seems to have completely escaped director Jeff Wamester and writer Jim Krieg.

To be clear, throwing in cameos for the sake of having cameos is usually a fool’s errand, but in the case of Crisis, seeing familiar faces join the fray really adds to the bigger picture. (Some of the most moving scenes from The CW’s Crisis include Brandon Routh reprising the role of Superman and the late Kevin Conroy finally playing Bruce Wayne for real.) For a movie that so consistently struggles to give us a reason to care , Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two could have only benefited from bringing more iconic animated heroes into the conflict. We can only hope so Part Three: Reunion of Conroy’s Batman and Mark Hamill’s Joker is a sign of better things to come for this trilogy.

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