Though this is not the first animated movie based on the DC comics Justice League characters, it sure is the better one. Compared to the previous "Justice League: The New Frontier", Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths benefits from a more action driven storyline and mature writing that hearkens back to the style of the award winning Justice League animated TV series.
Where New Frontier felt a bit squeezed and underdeveloped, Crisis on two earths gets the story pacing just right allowing for a fair mix of subtle character drama and high flying superhero smash-ups. The film starts on a pretty "typical" note as we see Lex Luthor and a Joker look-alike called the "Jester" break into a top secret facility and steal some device called the "Quantum trigger", prompting the DC superheroes to stop them. However things are not as it seems as apparently this is all taking place in an alternate reality where Luthor and the Jester are the good guys and the "heroes" are actually the "Crime syndicate", a corrupted bunch of super powered beings vying for world domination. The Jester is brutally dispatched as Luthor escapes to another alternate reality to enlist the help of our favorite super hero team, the Justice League.
By now, this show is sure to remind long time fans of the Justice League episodes "a better world" in which the Justice League encounters evil alternate versions of themselves. Crisis on Two Earths carries that theme but that's where the similarities end. Dwayne McDuffie manages to craft a story that stands out on its own while carrying all the elements of what made the DCAU. Most DC animation fans would have heard the rumor that this movie was supposed to be set in the same time-line as the DCAU Justice League and justice league unlimited series. Aside from the great looking new character designs (Superman looks way handsome and Wonder woman has never been hotter) and the new voice cast, these are the same characters we know and love. It might take a while to warm up to the new voices for Superman, Batman and the rest but once past that, you'll realize that the cast does a wonderful job of fleshing out their characters to be both familiar yet fresh. The Crime Syndicate is a bunch of extremely interesting villains, the perfect foil for the heroic justice league, with James Wood's Owlman stealing the show with a perfect performance.
No recent works of "Moi Animation" company comes to mind but their animation on this project happens to be the most fluid among all the DC animated movies so far. Every single scene has motion, even people in the background and in scenes of conversation where it would have been so easy to just settle with a few talking heads or a static matte painting. Not a single bit of "lazy animation" even down to simple walking. The level of detail in the artwork is maintained consistently and looks similar to the style of Green Lantern: First Flight and 2007's Wonder Woman; though one or two scenes could have been done better (for example, some scenes where walls are smashed. The part of the wall to be broken is obviously colored differently from the rest of the wall). Co-directors Lauren Montgomery and Sam Liu combine their talents to bring out the best in every scene from the subtle drama to the hard hitting fights.
The best part about Crisis is that it works on both surface and a deeper level. Though the bad guys actually get more character development than the good guys, Martian Manhunter gets a well executed romance arc which comes across as very real and rather heart-warming (though it might seem a little uncomfortable at first). Among the well written script, straight forward narrative and human drama, Dwayne McDuffie manages to throw in some philosophy about free will, determinism and a theory on how choices give rise to alternate worlds (a driving force behind Owlman's insidious plot). Instead of just focusing on the main characters, the story also takes time to explore more of this alternate earth, the mindset of its people and the authorities that turn a blind eye to the deeds of the crime syndicate out of plain fear. Both this and Owlman's plot, as well as Luthor's determination to keep fighting the crime syndicate, all follow the running theme of rising up in the face of futility and attempting to challenge the unchallengeable.
Bruce Timm and the rest of his production team have definitely outdone themselves this time. For fans of old, this show fits snugly between the end of Justice League and the first episode of Justice league unlimited (it explains how Wonder Woman suddenly got her invisible jet and how the JLU recruitment initiative got started) so whether you choose to watch this as a stand alone movie or as a part of the DCAU Justice League series, both ways work. For new fans, if you had to try out just one of the DC animated movies, get this one. My only caution is to Batman fans as Batman kind of gets his butt kicked quite often here. (Guess that goes to show how human he really is since he's the only one on the League without actual superpowers hence forcing him to rely on smarts to take down his much stronger opponents).
