Injustice – ★✩✩✩✩

Certificate – 15
Directed By – Matt Peters
Starring (Voiced By) – Justin Hartley, Anson Mount, Janet Varney, Brandon Michael Hall, Kevin Pollak, Anika Noni Rose, Reid Scott, Edwin Hodge, Gillian Jacobs, Oliver Hudson, Laura Bailey, Faran Tahir.
Running Time – 78 Minutes (1 Hour 18 Minutes)

I never read comic books growing up, but with my dyslexia, I found an avenue to help improve my reading with Tom Taylor’s incredible Injustice Year One Part One and from that moment, I was hooked.

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10 parts and five years later, it was easily the best story I’ve ever read and when you add the popular game, it would’ve been an incredible animated series as the comics lead us to the first Injustice game.

So I was excited that finally, DC Animation was aiming with this story with a film, it might not have been a series, but this would’ve to do.

How wrong was I?

To give an overview of Injustice, it’s a Superman story about what happens if everything was taken from the Man of Steel after The Joker tricks Superman into killing Lois Lane and destroying Metropolis. This leads him to take a stronger new way of keeping earth safe changed, ruining his friendship with Batman, driving a divide across the Justice League and the DC Universe.

Superman dive into darkness takes a prequel comic series and a video game, where the war goes to space, mystical realms and Greek gods. Yet for the sake of an under 80 minute time, this is all ignored to do a worst version of Superman: Red Son?

Speaking of which, that’s a comic to film adaptation that’s really good, as is their last release the double-part Batman: The Long Halloween, which I gave five stars and you can read the review here.

However, this is DC animations worst film since their adaptation of The Killing Joke. I don’t understand with the material at screenwriters Ernie Altbacker fingertips, with the comics and even asking Taylor for advice, he could get it so wrong. Then again, he did write Batman: Hush, another poor adaptation.

I understand it’s hard to compress five years and a game storyline into a film that’s over an hour, but that’s why you make a series or series of movies.

Multiple characters are removed or not present, essential characters like Black Canary and Alfred, and important storyline threads like the Kryptonian super pill.

Elsewhere, the animation is different from other DC movies but is following the duo Mortal Kombart movies. A smart move considering they’re both created by NetherRealm.

While the story gets a lot wrong, two elements that were spot on was the Green Arrow/Harley Quinn relationship and Plastic Man, as both brought a lot of humour into the bleakness of the graphic novels.

Some of the voice work is solid with the two standouts being Hartley and Mount as the boy in blue and the dark knight.

Are There Bonus Features

There is only one to watch, which is a featurette discussion with the producers and screenwriter about the film and creating the story.

Verdict

It was just a pure disappointment all around; if they weren’t going to do it properly, they shouldn’t have bothered.