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Darkseid Descending!
Original Airdate - December 3rd, 2010
Batman assembles a new, motley Justice League to
thwart a pending Earth invasion by Darkseid. The
rag-tag group can hardly get along--let alone
battle a near god--but when they become Earth's
last hope, they have to learn to pull it
together.
Directed by Michael Goguen Written by Paul
Giacoppo
Review by klammed
Media by Warner Bros. Animation |
Cast
Diedrich Bader as Batman Bill Fagerbakke as
Ronnie Tyler James Williams as Firestorm
Jennifer Hale as Killer Frost, Ice Grey
DeLisle as Fire Tom Everett Scott as Booster
Gold Billy West as Skeets John DiMaggio as
Aquaman Michael Leon Wooley as Darkseid
Nicholas Guest as The Question, Martian
Manhunter Will Friedle as Blue Beetle
James Arnold Taylor as Guy Gardner
Music
Theme Written and Performed by Andy Strumer
Music by Michael McCuisition, Lolita Ritmanis,
Kristopher Carter
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Media
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Review
Teaser: Oh, this was funny. For fanboys who enjoy a
sense of continuity and homage, what this show has shown
itself to aim to please, we have Jennifer Hale voicing
her fourth animated incarnation of Killer Frost, this
time an ice queen left over frosty after the cold manner
in which she was dumped by Ronnie Raymond, our
coach/chemistry teacher. Huge mixture as well of Silver
and Modern Age elements littered through the scene:
Louise Lincoln as Frost with Crystal Frost’s costume
design, laptops in the classroom a la Batman Beyond, and
of course the dreaded break up method.
Main
Episode: After the big, dramatic two-parter that was
Siege of Starro in the middle of the season, we come
face to face with an adventure of similar epic
proportions, but dealt with in a decidedly different
way. ‘For all intents and purposes, a god’ Batman
reminds us midway through the episode. You might be
permitted, therefore, to think that once again we would
see !epic and !drama (exclamation marks included), with
nice, emotional, character driven moments. No such
thing. Darkseid, Apokolips, New Gods, teasers leading up
to it thrown into the mix, and what we get instead is
homage to the Justice League International era, and that
subversion of expectation that this show has come to
embody.
Our dysfunctional, motley crew ascend
into (descend onto?) the Justice League Watchtower. Blue
Beetle acts like a fan boy tourist, while Ice in her
absentminded way doesn’t seem like the brightest spark
in the universe, which by the way, brings great levity
through the episode (listen out for her during the
battle scenes as well). I thought Aquaman’s reference to
the previous League was a good touch, especially with
this Aquaman commenting on how the previous team had not
disbanded on the best of terms, and the direct shift to
decidedly C-list heroes. Even Martian Manhunter is not
presented as the noble, sombre character we are
accustomed to, but a highly neurotic Martian who has
isolated himself to the point where he pays more
attention to the comparative trivialities of the
Watchtower air-conditioning than, say, a world crisis.
Reduction of the epic stature of the more renown heroes
in the universe which we know to exist but have yet to
truly appear must surely be followed by reduction in the
presentation of the universe’s most epic foe. What
better way to do it than to pit him against less than
stellar heroes?
There isn’t much to say about the
battle itself, because there wasn’t much of a battle.
After a sudden, stirring speech by Martian Manhunter, we
get a cut scene to our heroes captured as the invasion
forces trudge through the city past them. The
anti-climax was in itself quite funny, and I personally
enjoyed it as an alternative to the victorious battle
scenes of Siege of Starro which we had earlier on in the
season. They do get free, thanks to Batman, and head to
an auxiliary Batbunker, and nice poke at the many Batman
has seemed to have over the years at convenient reach.
The careful, planned strategy presented in the nifty
sequences with the over narration degenerates rather
quickly due to the unwise, but perfectly in character
actions of Booster Gold. Heroes being heroes, they do
get the upper hand for a while, and we get some neat
action sequences which help both in showing us the scale
of the invasion, until Batman meets the fist of Kalibak,
and Darkseid, for lack of better expression, descends.
Michael Wooley did a great job here as Darkseid,
though the delivery seemed a bit stilted at times, I’m
not sure if that in itself was intentional. His
deliberate calmness was fitting though, in a being who
essentially had nothing to fear. The Omega Effect beams
gag was well played, I may have actually giggled at the
screen. This would now be the second animated sequence
in which Batman is able to dodge Darkseid’s beams,
though this time not as well as in the DCAU. Dues ex
machine style, he gets dragged back to his own world,
which might have been a little too convenient, but there
were enough action scenes through this to suffice
without dragging it out into another two parter. As this
show is all about doing things differently, we don’t
have the big guns like Superman showing up in this
episode (who knows, maybe he was on another part of the
earth, maybe he was off-world). And kudos to the
creators for not restricting themselves to the format
they had tried with Starro or even .
The ending
was just about as happy as you could get for this new,
oddball team, with J’onn and Skeets delivering the final
punch line. While this episode may not be the most
accessible in terms of enjoyment to those who haven’t
been weaned into the world of Batman Brave and the Bold,
it is recommended nonetheless, especially those who have
had the benefit of viewing the episodes prior. Darkseid
Descending is another prime example of how this show
takes, borrows, and mocks the superhero conventions we
grew up with.
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