The story links the dawn of the Silver Age of comics, and the formation of the Justice League of America, with the dawn of the Space Age, set against the political background of the Red Scare. It focuses most heavily on Green Lantern-to-be Hal Jordan and on the Martian Manhunter, but touches on Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash as well.

What Works

Cooke’s drawing style and the 1950s retro look to the artwork both translate well to the screen. The voice talent does a great job as well: At no point did I find myself thinking, “Hey, that’s Lucy Lawless,” or “Funny how Hal sounds just like Angel.” In many cases, I actually had to look up the names of actors whose voices I probably would have recognized if I’d been less involved in following the story.

The first 10-15 minutes are somewhat disjointed, but it soon settles into a solid narrative, and the battle which takes up the final third of the film is quite impressive. On the surface it’s about the new generation of super-heroes banding together to face the apocalyptic threat of “The Centre,” but it’s all really about two things: hope and trust.

Some of my favorite bits from the book are still there: Barry Allen racing across the country to stop Captain Cold in Las Vegas, pausing for a nanosecond to kiss Iris on the cheek before continuing. J’onn J’onnz absorbing American culture by watching TV, transforming into the characters he sees—including Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny. Wonder Woman explaining how she freed the captive women in an Indochina village, and let them deal with their captors as they saw fit.

What Doesn’t

There are two main places where the movie breaks down:

First, the spaceflight sequence in the middle. There was just way too much wrong with it in a “Physics don’t work that way!” sense. I can buy the secret pre-Apollo launch; that’s a staple of the genre. But it would help if the rocket moved like, well, a rocket. Though I have to admit it didn’t bother me watching it with a huge audience of comic fans. It was only when I watched it again at home (M80 was kind enough to send me a review copy) that it really pulled me out of the action.

Second, the political themes came off a lot clumsier than I remembered. It has been a few years since I’ve read it, so it could simply be rose-colored glasses, but it’s probably just the result of trying to condense a 450-odd-page story down to 75 minutes.

Overall

It’s definitely worth seeing. And it’s convinced me I need to dig through my long boxes and re-read the original. (I also need to fill in the details on my Flash site’s write-up.) There are a number of subplots which fill out the backstory and the main themes which had to get cut for time. (An audience member on Saturday asked about the Challengers of the Unknown. They’re there—but only Ace Morgan gets much screen time.)

If you haven’t read the comics (or, as they’re careful to describe it, the graphic novel), I highly recommend it. It’s available as a single hardcover or as a pair of paperbacks. There’s more on the adaptation at the official website for the movie.

The main story, as it turned out, focused on the Flash dividing his time between the two teams as they work cases that turn out to be related. It’s an OK story, up until the end, which features the most boneheaded use of super-speed I’ve seen in a long time.

The two teams end up in major, world-shattering battles, one in Berlin and one in Greece, simultaneously. Naturally, the Flash has to be in both. So he’s running back and forth between the two battles (changing costumes along the way), going faster and faster…

It all comes down to a moment in which he gets stuck with two do-this-now-or-the-world-ends tasks that (of course) no one else can accomplish. And rather than doing one of them, then running a few thousand miles to do the other, he continues to switch between the two battles! On one page, he’s running toward villain A. On the next, he’s running toward villain B, thinking “I pray a little that my mind doesn’t split in two before this is over.” Then he’s running toward villain A again.

They didn’t actually alternate panels, but I think that was mainly a concession to the fact that they used a different artist for each team, and it’s easier to break down artwork by page than by panel. The inner monologue certainly implies that he’s still bouncing back and forth, and the following page shows the two teams — himself included — looking at each other through opposite sides of a portal. He then passes out, “exactly midway between teams.”

Now think about this for a moment. Even for the fastest man alive, it’s going to take less time to run twenty feet, grab something from Villain A, then run a thousand miles over to Villain B and grab something else than it will to run a foot toward villain A, run over to the other battle (changing his costume on the way) and run a foot toward Villain B, run back and run another foot toward Villain A, etc.

And in all that? Only one slightly-usable picture of the costume.