Last night I watched Justice League: The New Frontier, the latest animated straight to DVD movie released by Warners Animation. The first one released was Superman: Doomsday, which I wrote about previously.

The movie, based off a comic book, was animated in an old style manner to mimic the art of the Golden Age. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to it since I’m a huge fan of the modern Justice League animated series, but it worked quite well.

The plot of the move revolves around The Centre, an initially unseen enemy that wishes to eradicate the human race because of their destructive ways.

The movie takes place during the Red Scare in which in addition to fear of communists, the public maintained a fear of superheroes. Because of possible ramifications, the superheroes in general are hesitant to use their powers. However since fending off The Centre required the joining of forces of both the American military and various superheroes, an understanding had to be reached. To deflect a standoff between the two groups, Superman gave an impassioned speech as to how they all needed to let go of their fear of each other and band together to fight the common evil.

I really liked the movie - good plot, good animation, and better than the Superman Returns movie (but like I said before, anything is better than that). It makes you think though - maybe what this world needs to combat the constant fear of one another is a common alien enemy. But that wouldn’t be practical, would it.

The next animated movie due to be released straight to DVD is Batman: Gotham Knight, an anime-style Batman movie in which Batman is voiced by the original Batman voice actor from the animated series, Kevin Conroy. Woohoo!