Sunday, May 05, 2024

My Review of Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths - Part Two (2024)

 


Written by James Krieg
Directed by Jeff Wamester

The Spectre: "I see. Then this is all your fault."
The Monitor: "Yes, it is. All living things, in all realities, are about to die. And I killed them."

I have to admit that unlike some people, I really enjoyed the first part of this trilogy/ender for the Tomorrowverse but I kind of struggled with this second part. Fan pleasing appearances to one side, there was almost too much exposition and too little with moving things forward.

At the start of this second part, you'd think the story would've pivoted towards Batman (Jensen Ackles) but nope, he's not as front and centre as you'd want him to be. Instead this segment largely resolved around The Monitor (Jonathan Adams), Supergirl/Harbinger (Meg Donnelly) and Psycho Pirate (Geoffrey Arend) as the volatile relationship between the three of them became undone, largely down to the Anti Monitor (Ato Essandoh).

In flashbacks we saw the Psycho Pirate coming from a violent family, going to a private school, being bullied, discovering his powers and then learning how to use them for his own personal gain. He even had Doctor Fate (Keith Ferguson) as a prisoner until the Monitor showed him a different path.

Likewise with Supergirl being plucked from her own time stream to take on the Harbinger role but the Monitor's refusal to directly intervene against various worlds being wiped out of existence really came back to haunt him. The Anti Monitor got into Psycho Pirate's head and he got into Supergirl's and lets just say that things ended badly for him here.

Disaster definitely seemed to be the order of the day as along with worlds being erased from existence, there was also shadow demons attacking heroes when said heroes werent attacking each other. I mean this did end with even Batman, Superman (Darren Criss) and Wonder Woman (Stana Katic) being taken out of the mix, leaving things very gloomy for the final part of this trilogy.

As for the rest of the story, I'm glad interacting with John Stewart (Aldis Hodge) was enough to get John Constantine (Matt Ryan) to remember who he was and drop the Pariah persona. It's too bad we didn't see more of Constantine throughout this second part but hopefully he'll have a bigger role in the last one. He may need to help save the day with the remaining heroes around.

- I did love the opening scene with Batman versus the Joker (Troy Baker), Killer Croc etc as well as Batman Beyond (Will Friedle), Batgirl (Gideon Adlon), Damian Wayne/Robin (Zach Callison), Huntress, Dick Grayson/Robin and Batwing.
- Nice team up with Kamamdi (Will Friedle) and Solovar (Darin De Paul) as well as Wonder Woman and a different Earth Hippolyta.
- Constantine mentioned being punished for over hundreds of years when getting his memories and making himself look younger.
- The Anti Monitor got a somewhat different look from the way he's depicted in the comics.
- A release date for Part Three has yet to be confirmed but a preview did show us Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill's versions of Batman and Joker for the last time. 
- Chronology: From where the first part left off.

I wanted to enjoy Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths - Part Two more than I did but it was largely very muddled in parts and felt like it was treading water at times. The highlights however were the Batman Family related scenes and Constantine getting his memories back, so not all bad then.

Rating: 7 out of 10 

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