#Flash thinks Danny is Kryptonian

[artstaeus3600]

Bio Dad Danny!

Part 3 Everybody! And Happy new year!

When Danny got back from the summoning he immediately started shutting down anyway for cultists to get his summoning in this universe, and with that out of the way went back to how life was before the now known dub "summoning", he still had to take summonings from other universes but he always left Fright Night to babysit and surprising enough Conner wasn't Frightened by the Halloween Ghost, he hopes that the Justice League (he had to look up their name) would only use his personal summoning for emergencies (and always away from Conner).

Conner's first birthday was coming up and Danny already had Dani and Dan coming over for the day plus Dan said he was bringing Clockwork to introduce the baby to him. So Danny went out as usual with Conner to go get the Cake for the next day it was a little bakery only a 30 min walk from his place, it was good exercise if anything. But of course there had to be another subpar villain causing trouble seems to be one of Superman's if him being there was any consolation.

So Danny tried hurrying to the Bakery but before he could a green rock landed near them, Conner immediately started crying and squirming in his baby wrap, while Danny was strict with the soul crushing sadness and pain that came from the rock, he lands on his knees hunched over Conner he tried to back the tears in his eyes, his face rigid with focus that he had to get away from the thing causing them pain, then all of a sudden he was picked up and dropped off far away from the fight with a group of people by the Flash.

Glad to be away from the stone, Danny put his focus on calming down Conner by cooling his fingers and letting the baby bite on them, what Danny hadn't noticed was that the Flash saw how they reacted to the Kryptonite and the relief when they were away from it, but flash wasn't done helping People to safer zones so he continued till the Fight was over but by the time they were done and he went to go check with the black haired man with his child they were gone. Flash then had to question, was Superman the last Kryptonian?

Danny upon getting back to his apartment held his breath momentarily cuddling close with Conner trying to rid the last of the feeling of what he now realizes was the death of planet and it's civilization. "I guess we'll have to get you your birthday cake tomorrow, huh, bud?" Danny looked adoring at his child.

Part 1 , Part 2

@honeysuckletook @chrysanthemum9484

[deadsetobsessions]

Hi! Party Planner! Danny has struck again.

——

Danny clambered onto the top of the building, eyes fixed onto the dimming Gotham City sky line. Electric blue eyes froze in concentration as his targets grappled into view. he quickly scaled the last rungs of the fire escape ladder to stumble onto the roof. Danny waved his arms, and his targets, catching sight of him mere moments later, began swinging towards him. Danny adjusted his bag strap.

“Hello, concerned citizen, what do you need assistance with?”

Danny faltered. Who the fuck was wearing Batman’s cowl?

Robin (with a sword) scowled at Batman before turning his attention back to Danny.

“Uh. Right,” Danny muttered, giving ‘Batman’ the most obvious and glaring side eye he could. Regardless, if the little Robin did not protest this Batman’s presence… it was good enough for him. “I’m a party planner.”

Robin spoke before Batman could. “And what of it?”

“The… uh, League of Evil or something, wait,” Danny fumbled while opening the bag and pulling out some papers. “Ah, Legion of Doom. Them.”

Little Robin and fake-Batman perked up. Fake-Batman tensed visibly. Danny grumbled. “Anyways, they’re contacting me- by they, I mean Lex Luthor- to see if I could plan a party in… God, why are Gotham’s names for shit so depressing?”

“Get on with it.” Little Robin snapped. Danny was reminded of Dani instantly and let it slide.

“Ah, right, they want me to plan a party in “Slaughter Swamp” on the seventh of next month. So… keep an eye on that, okay?” Danny asked Robin.

“Are you supposed to be telling us this?” Fake-Batman asked.

Danny shrugged, running a hand through his hair, practiced fingers brushing aside that little white streak of hair he got from the portal.

Little Robin’s gaze snapped up to his hair.

“It’s fine. They haven’t had me sign an NDA yet.” And, well, the devil is in the details but Danny is the devil.

“I’ll handle it.” Fake-Batman promised. Danny threw him a skeptical look.

“Uh-huh. Right.” He turned back to sword Robin, who looked torn between the supposed slight towards Batman and pride at Danny’s apparent trust in his abilities. “Look, here’s the stuff I have on them- copied them- and good luck and all that.”

He handed the file and some data in a usb stick to Robin, dipping away as soon as he could. He had a party to plan, and matching Luthor’s purple-gold aesthetic to Cheeta’s yellow and black spotted material wasn’t going to get done by themselves.

——

“Even the civilians outside of Gotham could tell you’re not Batman.” Damian scoffed as he watched their party planner slip back into his apartment.

“Hey, I thought I did pretty well!”

“I do not claim to know what hallucinogens you’ve inhaled, but do not come near me. I don’t want your stupidity to catch everyone else unawares.”

“Hey!”

“Get it together, Kryptonian. We still have half the night to patrol.”

Damian swung off, mind whirling along side Kent’s little hamster wheels for a brain. He’ll have to inform father. And Timothy. Red Robin had a grudge to settle with Scarecrow and will aid in Damian’s plot to obtain sugar gliders in exchange for the information. Yes.

——

Clark, thinking his Batman acting was bad: :(

Danny, has never met Batman: this can’t be Batman, he’s being midwestern polite

——

Also, I just want to say that the Flash has Georgia State patrol energy.

[tiny-space-platypus]

Half baked idea time!!

DC/dp au where it's like late teens/warily twenties punk Danny being tired as shit. Like this man just wants to sit on a roof top, patch himself up, maybe smoke then go back to having to do inner dimensional politics or another fight. But Danny can't have that instead every time he tries a hero either thinks he's going to kill himself and tries to intervene or some sort of fight breaks out and his stupid core makes him have a mighty need to assist. Also, where the hell did all these heroes come from, ancients knew they weren't there when he needed help. He's just a tad bit bitter about the only time he's getting attention from heroes is the only time he doesn't want it. He goes everywhere just trying to catch a break.

Or

Danny tries to find some peace and fucking quiet only to end up freak out the league because dear god this kid is going through it and they need to get him before he becomes a supervillain or something.

Metropolis

Chills for 5 minutes seeing Superman nopes the hell out of there cursing in kryptonian. He deals with his kind enough in the realms he doesn't want to deal with the living either. "Nope! Not today! Not dealing with you today!"

Superman is freaking out because there's a kid that was sitting on top of the daily planet only to disappear speaking his language??? He also had a really slow heart beat? Was that child alright??

Coast city

Danny's on a large skyscape sitting on the edge watching the streets below as he patches himself up and lights a smoke only to have it glow green and ripped from him.

"You know, this stuff isn't exactly good for you. Especially on skyscrapers. Besides you seem a little young to be smoking."

Danny who looks like he wants to tackle Hal pit of the god damn sky for interrupting his break. "I feel like I'm too young for a lot of things but here we are"

Hal starts some sort of space cop speech and Danny decides fuck this and jumps off the building mouthing "Acab" with a salute and disappear giving the green Lantern a heart attack. Since he thinks he's about to save a kid from falling to his death only for the kid to not be there.

Central City

Danny is yet again trying to relax on a skyscraper only to be interrupted by the flash. At least this time the hero doesn't take his smokes instead just sits next to him. It's nice actually, the quiet white noise of the city below shining how stars would in the sky. Eventually Danny would finish his smoke and put it out before shoving the bud in his pocket. (He won't litter) as soon as Danny stood up the flash grabbed him forcing him back to sitting.

"Look kid, I don't know what's going on but there's gotta be a better way than this. I'll help you if you need help just-"

Danny now staring at him. A little dumbfounded then laughed.

"I'm not trying to kill myself. Just wanted to smoke in peace." Danny looks down at the ground from 150 meters up "besides I've fallen from worse"

"Great! Wait what?" The Flash looked relieved for a second then proceeded the second part of what Danny just said. The flash only looked away for less then a second which gave Danny just enough time to disappear scaring the shit out of the hero.

Bludhaven

Danny after having a rather rough fight as phantom with his parents. Bleeding and mumbling curses as he patches himself up on another skyscraper. "Stupid ecto-gun, stupid laws, stupid, stupid"

Just as Danny started to patch a literal hole in his side Nightwing would make his appearance. "Back away-"

Danny snapped at the hero. "You've got to be fucking- I'm trying to kill myself, Yes I'm injured, no I do not want help, yes I'm fine. Will you be going now?"

Nightwing paused then sat next to the kid a little disturbed. As he watches this kid doing stitches on himself. "Bad day?"

Danny snorted as he finished stitching himself up with fishing wire. "Bad life" He then started smoking again making the vigilante frown. This kid was nowhere near old enough to smoke but the kid was also giving himself stitches on a roof so not the worst thing this kid has done so far. "Wanna tell me what happened?"

Danny shrugged. "My parents shot me again"

"I'm sorry what? Again?!"

[ourrechte-blog]

Ash dusted Danny's jumpsuit as he landed roughly on the pavement, panting. Another ghost captured, another fight won, but not without scraped knuckles and sore muscles. He switched back to his human form, the ghostly glow fading from his body.

"Danny! There you are!" His sister Jazz shouted, running up with an annoyed look. "You missed curfew again. And your room is a disaster - I had to make your bed this morning."

Danny sighed, rolling his eyes. "Sorry, there was a ghost causing trouble downtown. I had to stop him before he possessed the mayor or something."

Jazz put her hands on her hips, unimpressed. "Well, next time leave yourself a reminder on your phone. You can't keep doing this Danny."

Sometimes, I just wish I can be appreciated. The thought bubbled up unbidden. All he did was protect this town day after day, year after ghostly year, and still his friends and family treated it like a hobby he couldn't be bothered with properly.

A striking figure in a sultry outfit suddenly materialized beside them. "So you have wished it, so shall it be!" She proclaimed with a wicked smile.

"Desiree!" Danny yelped, instantly recognizing the wishing ghost. "No! I didn't actually mean to –"

——————

The Watchtower's conference room was buzzing with activity as the members of the Justice League gathered around the large table. Batman's gruff voice cut through the murmurs, "I said no. I'm only a part-time member."

Flash, never one to back down from a challenge, leaned forward with a mischievous grin plastered across his face. "Come on, Bats. You're the most qualified for this job." His words carried a teasing lilt, daring the Dark Knight to refute his claim.

Superman, ever the voice of reason, nodded in agreement, his crimson cape billowing behind him like a regal banner. "Batman, be reasonable. You are quite literally the most qualified person for this job." The Kryptonian's tone left no room for argument, his unwavering belief in Batman's capabilities shining through.

Turning to the others, Flash suggested a show of hands, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "How many of us have worked with others before now?" Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Hawkgirl raised their hands in response. "Now, who has led subordinates?" Hawkgirl and Batman were the only ones with their hands still raised, their experience evident. "Now who here has trained anyone?" Superman and Batman kept their hands up, and Flash smirked triumphantly, his point proven beyond a doubt. "See, Bats? You're the most experienced in leading. I mean, it's not like someone more qualified is going to show up."

Just then, a bright flash of light illuminated the room, and Danny found himself deposited at the table, blinking in confusion as the sudden transition left him disoriented. Flash chuckled, his ever-present sense of humor shining through. "Well, it's not like a million dollars is going to pop up." When nothing else happened, he shrugged nonchalantly. "Worth a shot."

Batman, ever the opportunist, seized the moment to evaluate the newcomer, his piercing gaze fixing on Danny. "What's your leadership experience?" The Dark Knight's tone brooked no argument, his demand for information clear.

Still trying to make sense of his sudden relocation, Danny furrowed his brow in confusion. "What?"

"What's your experience in leadership?" Batman repeated, his tone leaving no room for misunderstanding.

Gathering his thoughts, Danny explained, "Well, I'm the only person with powers among my friends, and they help me catch my enemies." His words carried a hint of uncertainty, as if he wasn't quite sure how to quantify his experiences.

"Anything else?" Batman pressed, his unwavering gaze demanding a more comprehensive response.

Danny scratched the back of his head sheepishly, "Uh, there was the time I convinced one of my enemies to team up with me to escape from this really tight spot. Actually, now that I think about it, I did that a lot of times, you know? Like, ghosts can be super stubborn, but if you play your cards right and appeal to their egos or whatever, they'll totally work with you for a little while. At least until the situation is resolved and then it's back to kicking their butts, haha!"

Batman arched an eyebrow, his expression inscrutable behind the cowl. "Charisma," he murmured, a hint of approval coloring his gruff tone. "Go on."

Danny perked up, his eyes lighting up with enthusiasm as he recalled more instances of his leadership prowess. "Oh, yeah! There's also the time I talked my entire rogue gallery to help clear a path so I could take down this evil king that wanted to conquer my town," he exclaimed, his voice laced with a hint of teenage bravado.

The young hero leaned back in his chair, a casual air about him as he continued, "And there's the time I lead my class to raiding a flying pirate ship when I couldn't use my powers to do it. It was totally nuts, but we pulled it off somehow, even though we're just a bunch of dumb teens, you know?"

Batman arched an eyebrow, his expression inscrutable behind the cowl. "Resourceful," he murmured, a hint of approval coloring his gruff tone. "Anything else?"

Danny perked up, recalling another pivotal moment. "Oh! And I talked my clone into freeing me when she was made to kill me, and I basically used up everything I had to protect her. And then she flew off after we escaped her creator. I'm still worried about her, you know? Like, what if she gets into trouble or something? She's just a kid, even if she was grown in a lab or whatever."

Batman's expression remained inscrutable behind the cowl, but there was a hint of approval in his gruff tone. "Compassionate. You're hired."

Danny blinked, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Wait, hired for what, exactly?" He glanced around the table, suddenly aware of the scrutinizing gazes fixed upon him.

Batman's chair scraped against the floor as he rose, his cape billowing dramatically. "Being the leader of this group," he stated matter-of-factly, as if it should have been obvious.

"Wait, what?!" Danny exclaimed, his eyes widening in disbelief. He whipped his head around, seeking clarification from the others. Superman offered a reassuring smile, while Flash grinned, clearly amused by the teenager's bewilderment.

Turning back to Batman's now vacant seat, Danny opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling to find the words. "He, uh, he does that a lot, huh?" he finally managed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

Superman chuckled, his deep baritone resonating through the room. "Indeed. Batman has a flair for the dramatic, but his judgment is sound. If he believes you're suited for leadership, then you must have impressed him."

Danny exhaled slowly, still trying to process this unexpected turn of events. "Wow, okay, I guess I'm the leader now? This is so nuts. Like, one minute I'm just trying to catch some ghost causing trouble, and the next I'm leading a team of actual superheroes? This is totally wicked, but also kind of terrifying, you know?"

Danny made a wish. A stupid wish really. One that he'll undo the minute he tracks down Desiree. Until then though, he's the leader of the Justice League.

[inthememetime]

There are plenty of posts where Justice League and Constantine sees Danny's Ghost King Form in all of its Eldritchy glory, from on being Lightning Based to one being compared to an event horizon, as he takes down the ghost that was giving the League problems and it basically freaks them out.

So when I stumbled upon this picture

I knew that this could be an excellent form worthy of a King if it was tweaked to fit Danny with ghostly elements, and maybe ice themes sprinkled with something Space related.

Like Vortex or Undergrowth is giving the League trouble, then this thing straight out of the Old Testament shows up, takes down the Ghost, and turns back to Danny who didn't know he just melted the League's brains.

Or, maybe during The Legion of Doom / The Light tries to summon the Ghost King for power/ take over the world, and Danny comes along looking like that and scares everyone there shitless.

How do you think that will go down?

I have had this in my drafts for So Very Long... Im sorry!!!

Holy *^$π, Batman!™

I LOVE the image, and 100% agree, it's an awesome base to work off with Danny.

I think it would be hilarious. Matter of fact, I wrote a fic about it. 😁 If you have an AO3, let me know and I'll gift it to you.

Ao3 here

Be Not Afraid- or Whatever

Summary: The weather god- though Constantine swore it was 'just' a ghost- had pinned down the entire Justice League. While they'd managed to trap Vortex in a two square mile area and evacuate civilians, and even arrested the cult responsible, they in turn were trapped in a small warehouse, protected only by the blood blossom spray and salt circle Constantine made.

With no way to fight it, they had only one choice: summon another ghost. Enter Ghost King Danny Phantom, stage right.

    Rain, wind, and hail pounded heavily against the metal roof and walls of the tiny back office of a warehouse. 

    Earlier today- just this morning, in fact- it had been a bright and warm summer day. The Flash flinched as a piece of hail broke through a window. Constantine didn't flinch, intent on his task. Superman was still unconscious, Batman picking out shards of kryptonite from a bullet that had hit its mark too well. 

    It was silent but for the occasional pained gasp from their Kryptonian friend, and Constantine's low mutters in what sounded like Ancient Latin to Barry's untrained ears. 

    Thunder roared, and the single lightbulb went out. Wordlessly, Batman cracked a pair of glowsticks, passing one to him so he could hold it up for Constantine. Clark groaned quietly. 

    A cult of summoners swearing fealty to Vortex, Lord of Storms, seemed easy enough to stop; Batman made the plan and coordinated with everyone. He and Superman rescued hostages and dock workers alike as Batman and Constantine took down the cult. 

    It was supposed to be easy. Simple. It was anything but. 

    The smell of the weird floral spray Constantine used- Blood Blossoms, the magic user had said- was beginning to fade. A drop of sweat fell down Constantine's face. His lips were pressed tight, white against the odd pallor of his face. 

    "John," Barry whispered, "how much longer?"

    Another window broke. Batman swore quietly. "Good news is, we've got the blood sacrifice ready," he joked under his breath. He winced then, and pressed his hand against the bandage on his arm. 

    It had bled through again, but the others were needed for Clark. In a rare event, the alien was the most injured on the team. 

    The cultists had purchased bullets laced with kryptonite from somewhere, which didn't hurt Constantine any more than a regular one. The same couldn't be said for Clark. 

    The magic-user hesitated until water started to bubble underneath the door, threatening the complicated circle of chalk and blood. He spoke, and this time it wasn't in Latin. Barry couldn't recognize it. 

    The temperature began to drop further while the air around the man began to shimmer, almost. Ozone gathered in the air, and the darkness increased until he couldn't see anything. Even the glowstick was a pinprick of light so tiny he couldn't be sure it was real. 

    A low rumble sounded and a radioactive green pool started to open. One massive clawed hand grabbed the edge. Constantine's voice cracked- but didn't stop. Another hand pulled out, and another, folowed by one more. 

    They were white as snow up to the wrists. One massive wing shot up, far too big for the office, followed by another, both black as night and covered with starry patterns. The next thing Barry made out was a crown of twisted black iron and glittering jewels, wreathed in green flame, atop two large horns, blue like sea ice. 

    The figure continued to rise as John spoke, revealing a second, then third set of wings and a mane of white hair which flowed in a wind he couldn't feel. Four sets of eyes opened, some solid green and glowing, some pitch black, some solid white, and the last a myriad of colors. 

    The thing's face was almost tan, almost the color of mortal flesh, but green scars like lightning bolts marred it. A thud alerted him of one massive foot, then another, both white and clawed. 

    The rest of its body except a shining white D was black as the void. When it opened its mouth, he had to look away, unsure if he feared or loved it, found it beautiful or terrifying. 

    Abruptly, the light from the sticks was back. He didn't dare look at Clark or Batman to see how they were doing; every instinct said he was in front of a predator, and showing the weak of the herd would be a death sentence. 

    Finally, Constantine fell silent. 

    "What's up? Kind of a weird place for a summons, you know," it said, and Barry swallowed. It sounded like a child, an old man, a windstorm, the shriek of a blizzard, the thunder of roaring waves all at once. 

    "I have summoned you, King of Ghosts, to take your servant back to your realm," Constantine managed, voice only wavering a little. 

    It leaned forward. "And the price?"

    The thing sounded almost teasing. Amused. 

    "What would you ask of us?"

    "Autographs," it immediately said. "From Martian Manhunter, Superman, Cyborg, and Wonder Woman."

    Wait. What?

    "I'm a big fan," it added. 

    "Should all of us survive today, we will do so," he agreed. 

    "Sweet. Gimme like 5 minutes. Maybe 10, Vortex is a bit of a bitch. Also, be not afraid or whatever. I'm one of the good guys."

    It was gone, then, and abruptly Barry sucked in a breath. Sounds of a fierce battle echoed from outside for several minutes before the storm abruptly stopped. 

    Slightly singed, the Ghost King returned. "Hey, does Supes over there need a doctor? I know a good one in the GZ."

    He swallowed. Batman cleared his throat. "We only need to get the kryptonite out of him, he'll be fine."

    "Okay!" It chirped, then reached over and, without so much as ruffling the suit, reached into the alien and pulled out a small handful of shards. "I'll be back in a few weeks for those autographs- I'd say tomorrow, but time is weird. Bye, guys!"

    "Wait- can I ask for a way to contact you? If you'd be willing to help in the future," Constantine asked. 

    "Yeah, sure. My Chirper handle is @realdeadguy, all lowercase, no punctuation," he said, "and you can call me Phantom if you want."

    -

    "Guys!"

    Sam groaned and Tucker covered his face with a pillow. 

    "Dude, we know you just got back from a summons, but it's 3 am."

    Danny rocked back and forth, wings twitching. "I met the Justice League! They're so cool! Batman was there! Batman!!!"

    "I thought you were all about Su-"

    "And I saved Superman's life, isn't that awesome?! I kept the kryptonite, look, real-life rock from space!"

    "Rocks aren't alive, Danny," Sam muttered. Then, a second later, "wait, what?! You met the Justice League? Was Wonder Woman there?"

    "No, but I asked for an autograph."

[otakuminami]

We’re getting ready for the final battle this episode

Spoilers

I feel like not a lot happened this episode it was more of a set up for the big fight we’re going to see next episode.

Tomar-Tu is so cute! It’s so sad that Tomar-Re had a son he never got to say good bye because he died a hero. Also, I’m not really familiar with the Green Lantern comics, but I find it really cool that a father and son are a part of the Green Lantern corps. I just find it interesting. First Razer now the this, I really need to read/watch up on them.

Why can Lor- Zod just ask for information? Like again I’m not really familiar with Green Lantern comic lore but that just seems odd that you can just visit the prison without further questions other than if you have a record.

Ok so M’gann found out, and like I thought she jumped at the possibility that Conner was alive. I’m kinda worried about the fall out.

I slightly think that that will be the time the reveal the fake Wally dream thing to Artemis which will be dramatic but then again there’s not enough time to complete it in this season so next season (that will (probably) have a time skip) would be too long but that adds more drama.

Poor Danny! I was wondering who was in that box. It’s so sad that not only was he trafficked but experimented on.

Danny saying that it hurts to use his abilities as a living machine but says he can handle it because he wants to help the people who are helping him just almost makes me want to cry.

I was like he better not die or I’m going to cry.

M’comm…

I swear to god if you killed that boy and not like knocked him out I’m going to be so mad.

I like that they brought back J’emm and that he’s helping because he feels in dented to Conner (and probably M’gann too). I wonder if M’gann and J’emm are going to team up and take down M’comm. Either way I feel like M’comm is going to be taken down before the season ends. I don’t know how but it feels like he’s going to be defeated.

Also they brought back Orion too. This will be interesting because he’s Darkseid’s biological son which will be an interesting interaction with his minions.

Also, am I the only one getting the vibes that Orion has a thing for Rocket. The whole Rocket would be good for this. It’s either that or he feels more comfortable with someone he knows. It could go either way honestly.

The flashes of memories from the first season just made my heart swell. I have to rewatch soon!

Bart!

Oh no!

Why is he stepping on you?!?

Please tell me he’s not going to die! I can’t take it!

Ok so I feel like there wasn’t a lot that actually happened so my predictions!

I feel like the bad guys are going to be defeated but something is going to happen to Superman because of the Red Sun because it’s kinda odd that they brought him along unless they were thinking he could broker a truce being Kryptonian. Also the whole I killed Superman thing Conner got going on.

Like I said before M’comm will probably be defeated.

I also feel like something is going to happen to Bart. Not necessarily him dying (I hope) but like some change.

Also I feel like the whole Wally being in the Phantom Zone theory has become even more of a possibility to me because

The team and Wally both appear the same way as the Kryptonians and Phantom girl and if Conner thought he was died like I’ve seen people mention then he would still look normal because Superman looked normal in the Conner killing Superman hallucinations

And the whole opening a portal that ANYONE can get through on both sides is an odd choice because they could have always written if a different way so there was no chance of anyone else getting out besides Conner and General Zod and Ursa

I just had a horrible thought

What if Bart runs into the portal taking Lor Zod with him?

My poor heart

Anyways what I’ve noticed is that every arc this season has been in a way brought back BESIDES Artemis’s and Zatanna’s

You got J’emm and in a way, the legion and Superman from M’gann and Conner’s. You got Orion and Danny from Rocket’s. You got Aquaman back as Aquaman from Kaldur’s. All for the final battle.

If you want you can also consider that this whole thing is happening because of Zatanna and her arc because of the Conner bus vision and the help from Doctor Fate and the magic from her arc.

So I wonder how Artemis’s arc is going to play into this because there has to be a connection.

[aion-rsa]

Zack Snyder’s Justice League vs. the Whedon Cut: What are the Differences?

https://ift.tt/38SVA8s

This article contains Zack Snyder’s Justice League spoilers.

Whether you love or hate his style, there is no denying Zack Snyder is an original. From 300 to Watchmen, and Man of Steel to Justice League, his characters often hover above the screen as much as occupy it. They’re mythic figures who’ve stepped off a Botticelli canvas, or at least Frank Miller comic book panels, and they’re imbued with such a sense of scale from their director that the aesthetic is nigh impossible to duplicate. That is only clearer now thanks to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a restored four-hour edit of Snyder’s original vision for the DC superhero movie team-up and their universe at large.

Admittedly, you’ve seen the movie’s tale before, back when Warner Bros. released a truncated, heavily reshot version into theaters in 2017. But that two-hour theatrical cut of Justice League, assembled by director Joss Whedon, really is a night and day different film. It shares many of the same scenes and story beats, but it lacks Snyder’s singular grandiosity and tonal consistency.

Comparing all the significant changes between the two versions—which we’ll hereby distinguish as the “Snyder Cut” and “Whedon Cut”—creates a fascinating juxtaposition of the different choices filmmakers can make with similar material, as well as the drastically disparate visions the directors had for these six superheroes and the larger DC Extended Universe. So join us as we contrast all the major changes (and by and large improvements) made by Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

The Opening

One of the most surprising changes made by the Snyder Cut comes immediately. Back when the ostensible Whedon Cut of Justice League opened in theaters, one thing many assumed was unchanged from Snyder’s vision was the opening credits. With imagery clearly filmed by the director—including unused footage from the Superman funeral sequence in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—the downbeat credits were edited to Singrid’s rendition of “Everybody Knows,” a cover of a song from one of Snyder’s favorite musicians, Lenoard Cohen. I’m also fairly certain only Snyder would film a homeless man with a cardboard sign saying “I tried” in a superhero movie (the destitute figure may still appear in the Snyder Cut in an overhead shot when Cyborg is later surveying the bleakness of the world).

Indeed, quite a bit of the Whedon Cut’s opening credits scenes are used elsewhere in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, including breathtaking imagery of the Superman symbol draped in black over London’s Tower Bridge. But the new edit foregoes a traditional opening credits sequence for a more restrained montage that returns to the climax of Batman v Superman, and to the moment when Henry Cavill‘s Superman dies. In pained slow-motion, we again experience the moment of Doomsday’s spike piercing Superman’s heart and see how his scream reverberates throughout the world.

The Snyder Cut is more directly linked to the previous movie with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, complete with hair, hearing Superman’s cries from deep in the bowels of the Kryptonian ship. Meanwhile the echoes of Clark’s anguish reverberate all the way past Zeus’ magical cloak to Themyscira where the Amazons (rather impressively) have an entire army guarding the Mother Box they obtained 5,000 years ago. When the Mother Box hears Kal-El’s death rattle, it begins to crack, drawing a terrified Amazonian closer to its new glowing light.

And finally, we end with the cries being heard by Cyborg. It is on the image of a hunched over Ray Fisher that Snyder chooses to include his “directed by” title card, indicating a strong sense of solidarity with the character and the actor who plays him after Cyborg was largely sidelined in the Whedon Cut. Clearly this is going to be a different movie.

Batman

Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne remains the focal point, at least in terms of leadership, of both the Snyder and Whedon cuts of the film. But right down to how they’re introduced, these are subtly diverging interpretations of the character. In the Whedon Cut, Batman has the first scene of the movie that isn’t shot on an iPhone. It gets Affleck in costume immediately and features archetypal Gotham City imagery as Batman uses a criminal as bait for a Parademon, an alien from the planet Apokolips that Batman is already familiar with. He’s so aware of these creatures that Batman ignores the thief spelling out the subtext of Justice League’s first act: With Superman dead, where does that leave us?

By contrast, you intrinsically feel that absence in the Snyder Cut. Whereas Whedon and WB got Batman in the costume faster for a tongue-in-cheek action sequence with screaming crooks and flying aliens, Zack Snyder’s Justice League ignores the Batsuit for a clean two hours. Instead, it opens with Bruce Wayne already “north” in a remote part of Europe near the arctic. We get the impression he’s been traveling for weeks on a horse and over mountains, sporting a bushy beard as he reaches the fishing village Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) has provided supplies to.

The scene where Batman meets Aquaman is more or less the same, but tonally Snyder evokes a funereal quality by letting the scene breathe in Bruce’s desperation instead of Arthur’s flippancy. And rather than Bruce noticing an inserted mural of Mother Boxes being what upsets Arthur, it’s Bruce pulling a trick from Momoa’s on screen wife on Game of Thrones which sets Aquaman off: he reveals after his hosts have made fools of themselves that he too can speak Icelandic. (There is also no longer a joke where Bruce says, “I hear you can talk to fish.”)

This somber opening is strikingly different and a vast improvement (see the Aquaman section for more). After Arthur rebuffs Bruce’s request to team-up, Bruce’s defeated return trip home is also subtly changed. For starters, we see his journey to his private jet where Alfred is waiting. In the Whedon Cut, the pair’s conversation after Bruce has shaved is a reshot sequence with some admittedly amusing character-building dialogue, like Alfred saying, “I miss the days when one’s biggest concern was exploding wind-up penguins.” The Snyder Cut’s version is more expository and ominous. As neither has seen a Parademon yet in this version, Alfred doubts whether Bruce needs to build a team based on the ravings of a now incarcerated and visibly insane Lex Luthor. Batman says he isn’t just doing this based on Luthor.

“I made a promise to him on his grave,” Bruce broods about the Kryptonian alien he hounded to near death in the last movie.

The next time we see Bruce Wayne is in a scene that appeared in the Whedon Cut, if slightly different. It’s when Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince breaks into his “building” with million-dollar security. However, the Whedon Cut led viewers to believe this airplane hangar-like space was the Batcave (even though it visually looks quite different). The Snyder Cut confirms it is a decrepit warehouse near the docks in Gotham harbor. Gone also is the cheeky line, “Yeah, it looked expensive,” from Diana when Bruce mentions the cost of his security equipment.

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In this off-site Batcave area, it’s also established by Alfred that he and Bruce Wayne have built new gauntlets that absorb energy (they come in especially handy later when they save Bruce from Superman’s heat ray vision).

The first time the gauntlets are used occurs when Batman leads a nascent Justice League beneath the tunnels of Striker Island in Gotham harbor. Up until that point, most of Affleck’s scenes remain the same, even if they breathe or are edited slightly differently. Batman recruits Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) to join the Justice League while talking about competitive ice dancing, and looks positively exhausted when Barry sees the Bat-Signal. The early Commissioner Gordon scenes are also the same, albeit now without composer Danny Elfman’s Batman theme from 1989.

In the tunnels, Batman’s scenes diverge again though. There is more of the misterioso act when Victor Stone (Cyborg) says, “I heard about you. Didn’t think you were real.” The Dark Knight answers, “I’m real when it’s useful.” Additionally, Batman doesn’t really mentor the Flash in this sequence or in any other going forward. Gone is the Flash admitting he’s terrified at seeing Steppenwolf and Bruce advising he “save one” person and will then know what he needs to do.

Instead, the Flash says, “I guess that’s the bad guy” in the Snyder Cut, and Batman stoically responds, “Good guess.” Bruce also drops his sense of humor, losing some solid bits like “Sorry guys, I didn’t bring a sword” when the Knightcrawler starts shooting up Parademons. Now he simply says, “My turn.”

However, Bruce remains the stoic team leader, harnessing a steadier team dynamic. There are no insert shots of Commissioner Gordon telling Batman it’s good to see he’s playing well with others after the Striker Island fight, and rather than berate Wonder Woman and his team members into bringing Superman back from the dead, Bruce and the rest come to the same conclusion, silently.

During the sequence where Cyborg reveals the Mother Box can bring Superman back from the dead, no one says Kal-El’s name out loud. The Flash even asks, “Is everyone thinking it or am I going to have to say it?” The camera pans around the table and lands on Bruce, who is watching Cyborg’s projected image of Superman’s cape. It’s a nice moment for Affleck, who looks much more alert in this version than the Whedon Cut. The dialogue in the Snyder Cut can often be perfunctory and expository, but the vast four-hour running time leaves room for the actors to indulge in quiet moments. The only person who doubts the idea is Alfred who in another scene warns Bruce, “If you can’t bring down a charging bull, then don’t wave the red flag.”

Batman counters, “I’m operating on complete faith now.” Quite the about face from the last movie.

The team otherwise staying on the same page, even after the Superman fiasco (more on that below), is a stark difference with the Whedon Cut. Here Bruce invites the team into the Batcave proper after they lose all three Mother Boxes, with teammates regrouping; in the Whedon Cut there is a strained attempt to create tension. Particularly between Bruce and Diana….

Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot has spoken in the past about how she was unhappy with the Justice League reshoots. While still not knowing the full details of what occurred behind the scenes, Zack Snyder’s Justice League makes apparent why she’d be disappointed with the direction of her added scenes.

To be fair, Wonder Woman is still objectified to a certain degree in the Snyder Cut. Her non-warrior attire still revolves around several low-cut dresses, and there is still a (much more understated) flirtation between Diana and Bruce. In an early scene of her and Bruce discussing their prospective teammates in front of a computer—with an awkward stab at humor where she coaxes out of Bruce that Arthur said no—there’s a moment where their hands trip over the mouse at the same time, like they’re in a teenage rom-com. Similarly, when Barry and Victor are digging up Clark Kent’s grave, Barry asks Victor if he thinks Wonder Woman would “be into younger guys.” Victor dismisses the thirstiness by saying, “Barry, she’s 5,000 years old. Every guy’s a younger guy.”

But these moments are few and far between. In the Whedon Cut, they’re constant with Alfred teasing Bruce about Batman inviting Wonder Woman to a candlelit team-up dinner, and a gross gag where Flash saves Wonder Woman during the Striker Island fight but then awkwardly lands on top of her body and gets flustered. Perhaps most frustratingly though, her character arc is reduced to a lot of flirting with Bruce, and coming to see he is right when he chastises her for “still being hung up” on Steve Trevor. She then helps him undress from his armor and shares a drink with him, like co-workers with a forced “will they or won’t they” chemistry.

All of that is gone in the Snyder Cut, which instead focuses on presenting Wonder Woman as the most ferocious and noble of the film’s six superheroes.

Her first scene is much the same as in the Whedon Cut, although it’s another film school-ready example for what a difference post-production makes. We see a group of eco-terrorists take a school group hostage, and Wonder Woman stops them. But in the Whedon Cut, the scene is nimble and brightly colored with a tongue-in-cheek quality, right down to the way Elfman uses an orchestra to play Hans Zimmer’s previously electric “Wonder Woman” theme. In the Snyder Cut, the sequence lasts nearly eight minutes in a desaturated, gray color scheme. The sadism with which the terrorists want to kill their hostages is belabored, and Junkie XL uses a fearsome version of Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme while introducing one of his own, which relies on a haunting choral harmony.

In the new cut, Wonder Woman not only throws the bomb through the roof but jumps with it to make sure it explodes faar above the skyline. And when she returns, her power move to stop the head terrorist from killing the school children is to obliterate him into dust, with his hat blowing out the window and before the faces of shocked and unnerved London police officers. Meanwhile Wonder Woman then turns around after slaughtering this man (plus another terrorist who’s head she smashes into a wall) to rather jarringly smile at the school children. She leans down before one girl to say, “You can be whatever you want to be.” It’s actually sweeter than her saying “[I’m] a believer,” but I’m not sure it works given the new tone of the scene.

The next time we see Diana is a longer version of the scene where she discovers her mother has fired a burning arrow into the Temple of the Amazons in Greece. Snyder actually uses an impressive long one-take shot where Diana remains in focus, cleaning a statue at the Louvre, while her co-workers stay out of focus and needle her with questions. It’s a genuinely dryly funny, restrained moment, unique for this genre.

There is also an all-new scene of Diana going to Greece and retrieving the arrow from the temple. It’s one of the better additions that feels like a pseudo-Indiana Jones scene of Diana using the arrow to unlock a hidden chamber beneath the ruins, and then descending with a torch. Below she discovers a spooky room filled with spooky murals containing even spookier images of Mother Boxes and war… and a godlike monster DC fans will recognize as Darkseid.

Diana’s narration of what these images tell her is also different (more on that in the Darkseid section), with no lakeside chat with Bruce. Rather than using romantic imagery, Snyder favors to-the-point storytelling between colleagues as Diana tells Bruce in his new Batplane that the Age of Heroes defeated Darkseid. That age is over.

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While Bruce is recruiting Barry, Diana has a nice scene with Alfred about making tea before Victor Stone summons her by hacking the Bat-computer. She has no idea who he is in this scene (as opposed to having seen him earlier in the Whedon Cut), and there is no conversation where she convinces him to meet her. Instead, he designates location, summoning her. Their next scene together is more or less the same as in the Whedon Cut.

Overall, Diana has few added scenes and is honestly one of the less developed characters in the Snyder Cut despite being one-half of the team’s leadership. So the inclination of giving her more to do than discover Darkseid/Steppenwolf’s backstory was a prudent one, but all it left her with was smiling longingly as Batman drives off in the Batmobile during the third act. Ugh.

The Amazons on the other hand…

The Amazons

While Wonder Woman’s scenes in the Snyder Cut largely remain the same, the Amazons are given subtle but fierce new texture in their few added moments.

The movie opens with the Amazons tirelessly on guard when the Mother Box awakens. The next time we see them, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) is arriving to inspect the phenomenon for a prolonged build-up to Steppenwolf’s attack. When one soldier tells their Queen maybe the box will go back to sleep, Hippolyta remarks, “Evil doesn’t sleep. It waits.”

Steppenwolf eventually attacks, leading to one of the best moments in the Snyder Cut. When he says his Parademons will feed off their fear, Hippolyta calls to her Amazons, “Daughters of Themyscira, show him your fear!” In a tribal yell matched by Junkie XL’s score, they chant back, “We have no fear!” Slaughter commences.

The battle is much bigger and more reliant on slow-motion, including shots of Hippolyta flipping off walls and hesitating to bury the other Amazonians alive. Yep, when she tells her sisters to seal the cave, it’s a death trap. The door collapses, and then the whole structure also falls into the sea. There is then A. Long. Beat. of Hippolyta thinking she’s killed Steppenwolf before he and his Parademons ascend from the sea to slaughter more of the Amazons.

The Amazonians’ defeat is largely the same, although there is now a long denouement, with the Amazons having a musical prayer that grieves their dead and brings magic to the arrow they’ll fire to warn Diana. The Amazons and Wonder Woman iconography are also much more heavily featured in flashbacks to Darkseid’s first attack on Earth 5,000 years ago. We get better shots of Zeus and Ares (David Thewlis from Wonder Woman), and Amazonian Venelia (Doutzen Kroes) being filmed like she’s one of Snyder’s 300 Spartans in the ancient war. But all of that is just background for…

Steppenwolf and Darkseid

Steppenwolf is one of the most dramatically improved characters in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Beyond more spikes being added to his armor (and his chin being slightly shrunken from its ridiculous size), the Ciarán Hinds-voiced baddie’s motivations are wholly different. In the Whedon Cut, he was a generic “conquer the world” supervillain who was defeated thousands of years ago on Earth by an alliance of men, Amazonians, and Atlanteans. He then returns and refers to his Mother Boxes as “mother.”

While he still chases magic boxes he wants to use to conquer the world in the Snyder Cut, he’s at least a little more nuanced and a lot more despairing toward the whole endeavor. Steppenwolf is revealed to be a meek middle management malcontent with dreams of coming home. As we eventually learn in dialogue exchanges over BvS’ weird molten metal intergalactic telecommunication technology, Steppenwolf is a pariah back home on the planet Apokolips. Long ago, he was party to a failed coup against comic book creator Jack Kirby’s ultimate space fascist, Darkseid (Ray Porter). Think Thanos before there was a Thanos.

“I fall before you,” Steppenwolf moans during his first conversation with Darkseid’s minion DeSaad (Peter Guinness). “Let me make a plea that I may come home after I take this world in [Darkseid’s] name.” But DeSaad will not hear it, saying Steppenwolf is basically on probation for helping an attempted coup against Darkseid millennia ago, even if Steppenwolf then changed sides and killed Darkseid’s other betrayers. Now Steppenwolf has a debt of a 150,000 worlds he must conquer in Darkseid’s name if he wishes to return home.

Basically, Steppenwolf is a putz. Hence he can be both menacing and pathetic when he first attacks the Amazons and remarks of them, with a hint of resigned boredom, “Defenders? Defenders have failed a hundred thousand worlds. They always fail.” And it’s with exhaustion he decides to create his home base on an irradiated scrap of Russian land because it’s toxic.

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Darkseid, by contrast, is introduced to be Emperor Palpatine meets Sauron. Aye, there’s a real Lord of the Rings level of ambition to Diana’s flashback to the Age of Heroes. Rather than Steppenwolf, it’s Darkseid who first steps foot on Earth, turning some of the soil into the scorched cursive hellscape that Kirby fans will be intimately familiar with. We also get a better look of his foes, including an alien Green Lantern whom Darkseid personally kills by cutting off his hand. The green ring flies away before the fiend can grab it.

The sequence is filmed to mirror the opening moments of The Fellowship of the Ring, with Darkseid’s defeat harkening back to the glorious day the people of Middle-earth were victorious. However, personally speaking, it doesn’t reach that height, with Darkseid coming off like more of an overpowered Orc who’s out-flexed by Ares. Yep, David Thewlis’ villain from Wonder Woman is revealed to be the guy who whoops Darkseid’s ass in the end, planting an axe in his shoulder blade and leading the Greatest Evil to be carried from the battlefield, screaming.

Much later in the movie, Darkseid is introduced properly when Steppenwolf reveals he’s learned Earth is home to the Anti-Life Equation. It’s a pretty vague secondary MacGuffin in the context of the Snyder Cut, although Steppenwolf says it would give Darkseid power over the multiverse—it’s unclear why Darkseid did not know it was on Earth when he lost to Ares and the band of heroes, or why he never could come back for it.

However, Darkseid then appears on the telecom with Steppenwolf, causing the Spiked One to take off his armor for the first time and show his bare flesh in fealty to his space dictator. Darkseid promises Steppenwolf he can come home once he’s taken Earth and brings Darkseid the Anti-Life Equation.

We also get a glimpse of how Darkseid plans to use it. Elsewhere in the movie, Cyborg has an inexplicable vision the moment right before a Mother Box is used to bring Superman back from the dead: It’s of an Armageddon much darker than the Knightmare scene in Batman v Superman. The sequence begins with the Amazons finally off Themyscira. They’re burning Wonder Woman in a funeral pyre after putting two coins on her eyes for the boatmen. Hippolyta cries.

Elsewhere in a montage, Superman grieves over the scorched body that can only be Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Darkseid appears to place a not-so-comforting hand on his shoulder. Later we see the ruins of the Hall of Justice that diehard Superfriends fans will recognize, with an evil Superman flying over it with heat ray eyes. Finally, we see Darkseid himself murder Aquaman with his own trident…

This appears to be an inevitable future of “the Snyder Verse.”

Aquaman

But that is not the destination of the current film. The Snyder Cut, after all, has to lay a lot of groundwork that’ll make us care about these characters in the here and now.

Aquaman is the first to get that treatment in his early scene with Bruce Wayne (detailed more above). The Whedon Cut includes Arthur Curry saying, “You’re out of your mind, Bruce Wayne” as he gets into freezing cold water to swim away. In the Snyder Cut, we don’t see him shoot off. Rather Arthur disappears quietly beneath bubbles between shots. Snyder’s desire to emphasize the godlike wonder of these characters is then underlined in neon when several villagers see him off by singing a worshipful Icelandic hymn in Aquaman’s honor.

If the point is missed, after several minutes of crooning, one woman walks up to caress the sweater Aquaman took off and sniff it, savoring his undoubtedly godlike musk.

The sequence of Aquaman saving a crew from a shipwreck is almost exactly the same in the Snyder Cut, although there are no added jokes about him calling the captain “Ahab” in the bar. Additionally, there’s a really nice grace note of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “There is a Kingdom” playing when Aquaman goes to brood stoically before a raging storm. It’s exactly the same as in the Whedon Cut, but Whedon makes it generic blockbuster filler with a White Stripes song playing in the background. Snyder goes for a mournful, reflective tone that resembles the better elements of his version of Justice League.

Afterward Aquaman makes his first of two trips to Atlantis in the film—meeting Vulko (Willem Dafoe) in a scene that was entirely deleted. It turns out the effect of Atlalnteans only talking in air bubbles was always a Snyder affectation, although what was lost in the Whedon Cut (and eventual Aquaman movie) is that all the properly born Atlanteans speak with English accents. Dafoe’s Vulko is a bit hammier, seeming adjacent to Dafoe’s wonderful turn in The Lighthouse. But Amber Heard’s Mera speaking her lines in a purely Posh London accent after a whole movie of her using an American one in Aquaman is a real trip.

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What brings Arthur back the second time is Steppenwolf diving below the waves for the Mother Box. He learns of its location (which is unexplained in the Whedon Cut) by torturing Atlanteans whom Parademons have dragged from the ocean, reading the water dwellers’ minds with some gruesome sci-fi spider robot.

Steppenwolf’s actual attack on Atlantis is much more coherent in the Snyder Cut. With action beats given time to pause, and Steppenwolf’s surprise appearance underwater less hilariously cringe-inducing. Mera also gets a cool moment where the villain has her pushed against the wall and says she can’t run away, “I wasn’t trying to,” she responds. Previously, we saw her use superpowers to suck water out of air pockets; now she uses it to suck the blood out of Steppenwolf’s face. He of course throws her back into the water and almost kills her if not for Arthur’s chivalrous, splash-page rescue of his future love interest.

Most of Aquaman’s subsequent scenes play out the same, although he is much less brutish and frat bro-y. There are at least three fewer “yeahs” and “alrights!,” and there is no scene of him sitting on Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, blurting out he’s scared and horny at the same time.

The Flash

Interestingly, the Flash is both the least developed of the superheroes in the Snyder Cut and also the most unchanged by Whedon. It appears that Ezra Miller’s seemingly improvised humor was the element of least importance to Snyder, and the most useful thing Snyder filmed for Whedon’s purposes.

Maybe that’s why the Flash’s first scene in the Snyder Cut does not occur until nearly 70 minutes into the film. It’s also a wholly different introduction scene to what we saw in the theatrical cut. In the restored sequence, Barry Allen is applying for a job as a dog groomer at a pet shop when the unnamed woman who just left—or as fans know her, Iris West (Kiersey Clemons)—is almost pancaked by a semi-truck. The driver, in a rather crude cliché, is a simpleton reaching for his food on the cab’s floor when he slams into Iris’ convertible.

Luckily, Barry sees it coming and slows things down for another somber needle drop on the soundtrack. The whole thing plays like a more wistful, alternative rock version to one of Quicksilver’s big scenes in the X-Men movies. In extreme slow-motion, Barry catches a hot dog from an exploding hot dog vendor, placing it in his pocket, and then catches Iris out of her shattered car. When time returns to normal, Iris realizes she was saved by this cute dork, who then rushes back in time for the pet shop owner to be unsure who broke her window in the blink of an eye. Barry’s feeding the hot dog to her canines.

Otherwise, by and large, the Flash’s scenes remain the same until near the end. Snyder has removed Whedon’s unfunny addition of Barry drawing glasses on the eyes of someone in line while waiting to see his dad at prison, but the Miller/Billy Crudup scene remains the same but longer. Bruce Wayne still breaks into Barry’s loft and tells Barry his superpower is that “I’m rich.”

In the Striker Island action sequence, rather than “save one,” the Flash leads an exodus of civilians to the surface. And when debris nearly falls on them, he creates a shield by running so fast he looks like lightning in the sky blocking the falling rubble. He also is wounded by a Parademon laser blast so sharp it leaves him bleeding from the side of his leg, temporarily hobbled.

The one significant change before the climax is Barry and Victor digging up Clark Kent’s grave. It’s a sincerely quiet moment that (Wonder Woman leering aside) is refreshingly earnest and hushed for a superhero movie.

“I could do this in a second,” Barry says. Victor responds, “Yeah.” The implication is they should take their time and give Superman the honor he deserves. After his body is exhumed and wrapped up, Barry says, “He was my hero.”

Cyborg

Of the main five heroes in Justice League, Cyborg turned out to be the most important by far. Whatever occurred behind the scenes between Whedon, the producers, and Fisher, the actor had reason to be frustrated simply because his character arc was removed. In its place, he was forced to say, “Booyah.”

The Snyder Cut restores Victor Stone/Cyborg’s importance from the opening credits onward. It begins by basking in what isn’t sad between Victor and his father Dr. Silas Stone (Joe Morton). Initially, we spend more time with Silas, as the father throws himself into his work at STAR Labs to better understand the Mother Boxes.

Eventually, Cyborg gets his own flashback to a time when he was more man than machine. Under an aching musical theme written by Junkie XL, it���s revealed Victor was a gifted genius (his dean even says so!) at Gotham University. Victor is so intelligent, while also being a football star, that he can get away with hacking into the school’s database and changing a friend’s grades.

We also meet his mother who defends her son’s kind heart from the dean in a sequence that’s intercut with his slow-motion football glory, plus a side of melancholy because daddy wasn’t there. Only mom shows up for the game. Afterward they argue in the car about whether Dad really cares about Victor. A car is then seen rushing (unsurprisingly) into frame, T-Boning their car.

The process of Victor becoming Cyborg is only hinted at in scenes through various other flashbacks. But we do see Silas being told his wife is dead and that he’ll soon have to let his son go, too. Hence the bad blood between the two nearly throughout the Snyder Cut’s whole four hours. When we see Silas come home to Victor at their apartment, the son will not even speak to his father. Instead he reluctantly agrees to listen to a recording his father left for him. On the tape, Silas tells his son that the fate of the entire world is now “in your hands, Vic.”

Thanks to the alien technology of the Mother Box used to resurrect Cyborg, Victor has superpowers, which we see him fumblingly try out by flying on his father’s Gotham rooftop. But that’s “just the tip of the tip” of the iceberg, according to Silas’ voiceover. Victor’s high-end computer body now gives him the ability to control the world’s nuclear arsenals and the world’s economy.

This is visualized in a CGI mind palace created in Cybrog’s digital brain. There Fisher gets to play Victor as whole, and without a red eye. Some of it is effective, like floating missiles above his head. Other bits are just ludicrous, like financial markets being personified by a CGI bear slapping a CGI bull. It’s… weird.

But there are nice elements too, like Victor choosing to use his superpowers to see folks suffering, and giving a struggling single mother $150,000 out of an ATM machine. Through it all, he remains hooded and lonely, catching glimpses of people staring at his glowing countenance. It’s why he destroys his father’s recording when Dad tries to stop talking about Cyborg’s powers and instead address Vic as a loving father.

What draws Victor out of his proverbial cave is of course his father being kidnapped by Parademons. He seeks Diana Prince’s counsel but ignores her when she says his powers are a gift—I did miss the line, “If these are gifts why am I always the one paying for them?” Still, as in the Whedon Cut, he shows up on GCPD’s rooftop to join the team.

The one big addition during all the fighting is that when Cyborg flies now, his famous comic book face armor that protects everything but his red eye is finally used on screen. Plus he gets to save his father. Silas is shocked his son came for him, but Victor only says, “You’re my father.” Nothing more needs to be said.

After the Striker Island fight, however, Victor again takes center stage when Aquaman accuses him of possibly being compromised by his alien tech body. Cyborg reveals in a visual flashback, which Victor walks through in his mind palace, that the Mother Box was acquired by the Allies during World War II, taken from the Nazis’ collection of occult goodies in 1944. For nearly a century, it sat undisturbed in the Department of Defense until his father Silas realized it was similar to the technology used by the Kryptonian ship in downtown Metropolis.

That’s how Silas discovered its power, and in a horrifying flashback, he uses it when he looks at his son’s body on a slab, Vic’s lower torso gone. When Silas uses the magic box on Victor, the son screams bloody murder.

It is Victor Stone who puts the pieces together for the nascent Justice League and gets the heroes to begin acting like a real team. He puts together for the others that the Mother Box can be used to bring Superman back from the dead, and projects an image of Big Boy Blue for everyone to see.

Vic leads the team into STAR Labs to do the deed. And when Silas sees his son, still not talking to him, walk by with Batman and other weirdos, Dad doesn’t call it in. In fact, Vic and Silas are why the heroes win in this version, because after the Superman resurrection is bolloxed up, and Steppenwolf arrives to retrieve the third Mother Box, rather than run away, Silas sacrifices himself by heating the box with a laser so hot, that Batman can conveniently track wherever it goes in the world.

One could argue Cyborg was the most crucial of the heroes in organizing a true team team. Well, him and the legacy of another…

Superman

One imagines Superman’s treatment by Snyder and screenwriter Chris Terrio in what we now call the Snyder Cut, and Batman v Superman before it, played a major role in Warners’ eventual lack of confidence in the filmmakers. The beginning of the Whedon Cut even starts by course correcting where Whedon might’ve thought Snyder went wrong. Hence the awkward smartphone video of Superman talking to some children with a big smile on his face (and mustache unconvincingly erased from it).

Honestly, though? The depiction of Superman in the Snyder Cut is at times quite heroic and sweet. Certainly sweeter than the abysmal “no one stays good forever in this world” line of dialogue from BvS. However, there are major caveats.

Someone who unequivocally benefits from the new version is Amy Adams’ Lois Lane. While she again has relatively little to do, the rare moments where she is on screen in the Snyder Cut count a hell of a lot more. For starters, there is a genuinely heartfelt sequence about grief—one that it’s fair to wonder if Snyder has added special emphasis to. We follow Lois as she begins her morning routine by getting out of bed, buying a cup of coffee, and going to spend an hour or so at Superman’s memorial in downtown Metropolis.

The soundtrack plays Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Distant Sky,” and the scene bleeds a dignified sorrow as Lois unfurls her umbrella in the rain and walks up to Superman’s memorial to lay flowers. The cop she gives her morning coffee to asks Miss Lane if she ever skips a day, and she says there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. This is the transition to the Superman flag in London.

Afterward Lois goes nearly two hours before appearing again in the film, while Diane Lane’s Ma Kent (who is seen early in the picture leaving home) vanishes for well over that amount of time. It makes their reunion scene in Lois’ apartment feel awkward and obligatory after such a long pause, but the restored scene is still better than the “Clark told me you were the thirstiest girl he ever met” in the Whedon Cut. At least until the Ma Kent of this scene is pointlessly revealed to be Martian Manhunter. (Sigh.) It’s almost as bad a bit of forced world-building as future Barry Allen warning Batman about Lois Lane in BvS.

Meanwhile the League all comes to the idea of resurrecting Superman at the same time, and there are no second guesses other than Alfred’s skepticism. Thus begins a resurrection sequence where it’s genuinely affecting to hear Zimmer’s Superman theme again as Kal-El’s body is placed into the Kryptonian ships goo-room. Similarly, Snyder achieves another grace moment when Lois sees Superman flying in the sky right after his resurrection. Before this moment, Lois made the decision in bed that morning for this to be the last time she’d visit and grieve Superman’s death at the memorial. We’re also teased to the fact she keeps a pregnancy test on the nightstand. So she made her final trip to his memorial.

And on the same day, Superman came back.

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Unfortunately, his return is much the same as it was in the Whedon Cut, with the gloomy gray cinematography and the outright sinister version of Superman who’s apparently forgotten his identity. In fact, he’s more menacing than the familiar footage of him smacking down Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Now he takes time to study his monument before still coldly attacking the other superheroes and using his heat ray vision to try and murder U.S. soldiers stationed by his memorial.

If not for the interference of Batman, Superman would’ve killed servicemen. For what it’s worth though, he tries to kill Batman too. Gone is the “do you bleed?” callback to the previou cut. Instead Superman uses his heat ray vision to try and cook Batman inside his own cowl—which is only stopped by Bruce’s special “energy absorption” gauntlets.

As with the Whedon Cut, Bruce’s death is prevented when Lois shows up, but now of her own volition, and she and Clark fly away to Smallville. And once there, Superman’s soul returns and we get nice Americana scenes of Clark Kent watching a butterfly land on his hand, and Lois joining him in the wheat field.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says of the engagement ring he planned to give her before his death, and which she keeps on her hand. Soon Ma Kent joins them and it’s a lovely moment of reconciliation with the women in his life. It’s also far more emotionally effective than the version of Lois apologizing to Clark for “not being strong” after he died in the Whedon Cut.

And yet… it’s compromised by the constant foreshadowing of another heel turn in Superman’s future. The Kryptonian ship keeps warning, pleading even, with Cyborg that there is “no turning back from this action” as he prepares to resurrect Superman. Only then does he have a vision of an evil Kal-El drifting over a smoldering Metropolis. This muddle created by these conflicting sensibilities—folksy domesticity versus foreboding doom—do not mesh. At all.

At the very least, Clark returns to the Kryptonian ship to find there was a black Superman suit hidden all along in the corner. Additionally, he hears both of his dads’ voices, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Pa Kent (Kevin Costner). Some of it is old audio about “they’ll join you in the sun” from Man of Steel. Some of it is new recordings, which don’t really make sense as both men are dead. But we hear Pa repeat, “Fly son” and Jor-El intone, “Love them as we loved you.”

Black-suited Superman then flies into the orbit, taking the same Christ pose he had in Man of Steel, visually suggesting the Lord is risen, hallelujah. Superman then flies to the Batcave and meets Alfred, who tells him where to go… for the end of things.

The Ending

It is the ending, when everyone comes together, where the Whedon Cut and Snyder Cut perhaps most definitively diverge. It’s still technically the same ending: the five main members of the League show up in a nondescript Russian town to fight Parademons. Superman returns at a desperate moment and they all prevent the Mother Boxes from becoming one ungodly MacGuffin that would destroy Earth, knocking Steppenwolf on his CG ass.

Yet how these elements are incorporated, and where they leave the DC Extended Universe, are like on different planes of existence. From the top, the gore level (as with the Striker Island fight) is just more extreme in the Snyder Cut. Batman shoots Parademons with his Batmobile and then later uses the aliens’ own plasma guns against them; Wonder Woman beheads and cripples more computer generated baddies than all the armies of Gondor combined. Even Aquaman’s trident tastes blood.

There is also a much stronger sense of teamwork in the Snyder Cut. Batman’s suicide play of driving headlong into carnage makes more sense in this version as he crashes his plane into one of Steppenwolf’s magical machines, which brings down a force field and lets the team enter beneath the villain’s dome. And instead of Wonder Woman coming alone to Batman’s rescue, the whole team fights alongside his Batmobile for a freeze frame worthy of a splash page. It really is bizarre that Whedon, who was so good at these kinds of images in his Avengers movies, took this one out.

Once inside Steppenwolf’s evil lair, things are also far more exciting. There are no civilians (or randomly shoehorned in Russian family) to save. But there are enormous stakes as Cyborg has to stop the Boxes by merging with them. In the process, he enters his proverbial mind palace to face the three boxes in the flesh, as they’ve turned into literal witch crones. At first they appear as his dead parents, promising mom is ready to be reunited with her “broken boy,” but it’s a ruse that torments Victor to an even greater degree.

Meanwhile Steppenwolf has opened a Boom Tube portal to Apokolips where Darkseid, DeSaad, and Granny Goodness are waiting to take over Earth and claim the Anti-Life Equation. It was always “save the world” stakes in both versions, but you actually feel them in the Snyder Cut, particularly since… the heroes fail.

In a development that maybe would’ve left a Flash solo movie with nowhere to go, Darkseid and Steppenwolf briefly win, the three Mother Boxes merging despite Cyborg’s best efforts. The world instantly begins being ripped apart by a CG blur which presumably will turn Earth into a hellscape. The Flash, who is further afield from the action and bleeding from a gruesome wound in the side of his stomach, knows he has only one choice: to run backwards in time fast enough to reverse the flow of time.

It’s a trick that is expected to play heavily in DC Films’ upcoming Flashpoint inspired film, and Barry executes it here to undo the heroes’ defeat. Running into a seeming tornado of blue computer generated lightning, Barry undoes the damage and gives Cyborg a little more time, with Superman’s help, to stop the boxes from combining.

The action prevents the world’s end and allows Aquaman to skewer Steppenwolf like a fish on a hook. In the Whedon Cut, Steppenwolf is slashed by Wonder Woman and unsatisfyingly undone by becoming so fearful that he triggers his Parademons’ scent, and they eat him alive. Essentially, it’s a dippy retread of The Lion King where Scar is devoured by his own hyenas.

While certainly more bloodthirsty, there’s no denying there’s a satisfaction in Aquaman stabbing Steppenwolf, Superman punching him, and finally Wonder Woman beheading him. That is justice for her fallen Amazonian sisters.

Afterward, the whole direction of the DCEU still pivots toward darkness in Snyder’s vision. The Boom Tube to Apokolips stays open long enough for Steppenwolf’s head to return home. Darkseid crushes it beneath his foot. He also accepts that, for whatever reason, they cannot reach Earth through the Boom Tubes due to this defeat. “We will do things the old way,” Darkseid hisses. He summons the armada to head to Earth, setting up a very different future for the DCEU.

Epilogue

Continuing on the divergent paths between the Whedon and Snyder Cuts, the epilogue of the latter (complete with a title card) essentially presents the road not taken in the DCEU. Many of the elements we saw in the Whedon Cut remain, such as Bruce and Diana opening up Wayne Manor to become the headquarters for the Justice League by building a table “with room for more;” we also see Barry tell his incarcerated Dad he got a job at the Central City crime lab; and of course there’s Superman’s beloved shirt rip.

However, there’s so much more added on by Snyder. Some of it is very intriguing, such as Diana taking the arrow from her mother and looking out at the horizon of the Aegean Sea by the Temple of the Amazons. The implication is she’s begun yearning to return home. Could this have once been the plot thread of Wonder Woman 2? Could it still become the plot thread of Wonder Woman 3?

The most effective element is, again, Cyborg as he reconstructs his father’s broken audio recording and hears Silas’ love as a “father twice over.” It’s bittersweet Victor never got to verbally reconcile with his papa, but just saying, “You’re my father” might’ve been enough.

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Yet the epilogue ultimately becomes a teaser for what Snyder’s original vision for a Justice League trilogy might’ve looked like. In the Whedon Cut, the sequence of Lex Luthor on a yacht with Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) comes as a post-credit sequence. In the Snyder Cut, it’s part of the body of the story. The build-up to Lex’s escape is longer, and once on the yacht he has no quippy joke about “forming a league of our own.” But he does tell Deathstroke that Batman’s secret identity is Bruce Wayne.

That captures Deathstroke’s attention and seems to set up potentially catastrophic events for Bruce’s future in Affleck’s now defunct The Batman movie. It also would appear to further set up the Legion of Doom Justice League sequel with Deathstroke and Luthor.

But that’s pittance compared to the far bigger stinger for the future. In one more “Knightmare,” and another vision of a future where Darkseid has turned Earth into a Mad Max apocalypse, we once more see Affleck’s Batman as a road warrior in a desert, this time with Amber Heard’s Mera, the Flash, Deathstroke, and Cyborg as his road trip buddies. Clearly Cyborg’s vision earlier in the film came to pass, with Mera swearing she’ll kill Darkseid in order to avenge Arthur.

The biggest bombshell here though is that this is where Jared Leto reprises his performance as the Joker. I wish I could say it was better than this grubby, grinning, awkward reshoot moment where he talks about giving the Batman a reach around. Bruce’s dialogue isn’t much better as he mumbles, “When I held Harley Quinn, and she was bleeding and dying, she begged me with her last breath that when I killed you—and make no mistake I will fucking kill you—that I do it slow.”

We’re a long way from Adam West, eh? The sequence ends with Evil Superman appearing with heat ray vision, coming to kill all of them. This clearly stands as a trailer for Justice League sequels that almost certainly will never be. It’s also a vision for the Justice League trilogy Snyder originally planned with Terrio that’s making its rounds across the internet. Part III was meant to be about Batman and the Flash in the ruins of a destroyed Earth traveling back in time so Batman could make sure that Lois Lane never died—sacrificing his life so Superman never turned to evil. Again.

I can’t say this scene adds a lot to this movie, any more than the final, final tease of Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter showing up one more random time to give Bruce Wayne a pat on the shoulder. He says your parents would be proud of you and that he wants to join his team. Affleck’s Bruce is strangely not perplexed by any of this and gives off a general “Cool story, bro” vibe.

Martian Manhunter travels into a future we will never see, setting up a sequel that has been abandoned. It’s a shame, but it is so brazenly, defiantly Snyder’s vision—and so far removed from the Whedon Cut’s goofy ending on Superman and Flash having a happy go lucky race to the Pacific—that one can at least give this to to the director: He did it his way. There’s something to be said about that.

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The post Zack Snyder’s Justice League vs. the Whedon Cut: What are the Differences? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3eTEkDF

[illya-roma]

Superman thinks he's a kryptonian escaping from another dimension cause he flew through a portal tired and wounded then fainted.

Batman thinks he's a meta that was running away from someone cause of how tired he is.

Flash thinks he's a runaway hiding from abusive parents.

Wonder woman straight up feels death and Pandora's aura on the kid and thinks that he's a new warrior or a child of the gods that's she's tasked to train and raise.

Martian manhunt thinks like superman but it's because of the green (ghostly) skin.

Billy thinks Danny's exactly like him with the whole powers and just a kid thing.

Meanwhile every magic user feels death, destruction, and immense power coming into the dimension and going "oh shit, here we go again."

The possibilities are endless! And they all are trying to adopt the feral boy.

decided to rewatch the Million Dollar Ghost episode and… guys. Vlad says the skeleton key (used later on to free Pariah Dark) can be used to “travel to any realm”.

…why don’t we use the key for crossover shenanigans???

Danny, too tired to phase back into the house, mixes up his house key and the skeleton key and accidentally steps through the doorway into a Completely Different World and just has to Deal With That with 0 preparation, almost no powers due to how tired he is, and like 2 hours of sleep in the past 4 days.

This leads to a very very tired Danny collapsing into the first bed he finds.

…Who’s bed it is depends on the crossover you want, but just think of the POSSIBILITIES of “finds Danny in their bed” being the first meeting.

[star-chlld]

Second Chances

A crossover with Danny Phantom and Young Justice

Dick Grayson, aka Robin, walked solemnly through Amity Park. It had been a week since the explosion, but signs of destruction were everywhere. Especially at the Nasty Burger. Robin wondered why anybody would want to eat at a place called Nasty Burger. Amity park was giving him an uneasy feeling. It was quiet, and Robin hadn't seen anybody since he got here. As he passed the Nasty Burger, something caught his eye. Six silhouettes of people against a metal tank. Robin could only imagine their fate. 

Trying to push the disturbing images out of his mind, Robin reviewed the address that Batman gave him . It turned out that he didn't need an address, because a brightly colored sign hung on the roof. It was a tall, red brick building labeled Fenton Works. Robin knocked on the door, and almost immediately a girl with bright red hair, black pants and a teal shirt answered. “Who are you and what do you want?” She demanded. Robin was taken aback at the rude remark. “I’m here to speak with Danny Fenton.” The girl eyed him suspiciously. “Why? Are you a ghost?” Robin found that question even weirder than the introduction. “No I'm not a ghost. The Batman wants to talk to him.”

“Who’s the Batman? Nevermind, I'll just get Danny.” The girl ran upstairs and a moment later a boy with black, shaggy, too long hair and a t-shirt and shorts. “Yes?” He said. “I have a friend who needs to talk to you.” Robin responded. He had a feeling that nobody around here knew who Batman was, so he didn't bother mentioning the name. “Where is he?” Danny asked.

“California, I could get you there and back in a hour.”

“I'll be right back.” Danny said, before disappearing out of sight. Robin could deduce two things; that both siblings (the girl was nowhere near old enough to be his mom) where mourning, and that the sister was very protective of Danny. He heard a muffled argument inside the house. “It's not safe, and your getting worse.”

“I'll be fine, he said an hour.”

“You need to see Frostbite.”

“I'll make you a deal. I get to go, I'll go see Frostbite.” There was a silence, then the girl said, “fine” The door opened and Danny came out, this time clad in a red and white coat. Robin led him to the bio-ship. Miss Martian had lent him it. Danny stopped and stared at the bio-ship. “What is that?!” He cried. “The bio-ship” Robin answered, and since he didn't explain more Danny didn't ask more. But Danny couldn't stay depressed forever, and he was amazed at the bio-ship and amazed when Mount Justice opened up, revealing a hanger. Danny gaped as he was led through the mountain, until they reached a meeting room. “Wait here,” Robin instructed, “Ill go get Batman.” Batman? Danny thought. Who the heck is Batman? Danny was just beginning to regret this, when Batman walked in. Then he really regretted it. “Danny Fenton, also known as Danny Phantom. Born and grew up in Amity Park, Illinois. All family and friends killed in an explosion a week ago. Excluding you and your sister, Jasmine.”  Who was this guy? “How do you know that?” Danny demanded. “Research and observation” was all Batman said. “All that aside, I have a proposal for you. There is a group of superpowered teens, your age. I want you to join the team. You and your sister would live in Mount Justice. After the tragedy you've faced you need friends and guidance.” Danny didn't like the word “guidance”. After the accident the school tried to give him a counselor, which turned out to be Spectra. Danny firmly believed that counseling and therapy was crap. But the rest of the offer sounded good, great even, do he decided to consider it. “I need to talk to Jazz. How can I contact you?”

“Just be at the Nasty Burger by noon,” Batman left, and Robin escorted him back to the bio-ship. They flew home in silence; Danny was too busy thinking about the super powered teenagers. A team of kids like him? It sounded almost too good to be true. When he arrived at his house, He told Jazz everything that had happened. “This is a big decision.” She said. “It would mean leaving Amity Park and moving to Happy Harbor.”

“What else is here, Jazz? It's just bad memories and bad ghosts.” Jazz was silent for a minute.”You're right. It's time for a change of scenery.” They packed until late into the night. They decided to only take their clothes and several precious items. Danny took the infinity map, wrapped up in a red cloth. He added a picture of him, Tucker, and Sam. Next he packed a picture of him and his family, and one of Mr. Lancer. I still felt unbelievable almost he cared about was gone. Excluding Jazz, who had survived by a miracle. Since she had been in the Fenton Peeler at the time, it absorbed most of the shock and heat, saving his sister. Danny wiped away tears, and threw in his favorite book on space, the Fenton Thermos, an ecto-gun, and all of his money. Danny carried him box downstairs and found that Jazz had already finished, and gone to bed. Danny was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Danny and Jazz didn't have to wait long before Robin appeared, and led the siblings to the bio-ship. “You guys packed light.” He commented. Robin and Jazz struck up a conversation, leaving Danny with his thoughts. He wondered what the rest of the team was like, and as it turned out he didn't have to wait long. The moment they stepped off the bio-ship, Danny and Jazz were mobbed by heroes.

“Where are you going to be sleeping?

“What can you do?”

“Do you want cookies?”

“Nobody wants burnt cookies M'gann.”

“I'll take one, babe”

The siblings were pounded with question after question, and eventually there were introductions. There was Miss Martian, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Artemis, Superboy, and of course Robin. Superboy and Miss Martian lived here like he and Jazz would, but the rest lived elsewhere.

“C’mon,” Superboy beckoned, “Me and Miss M will show you your rooms.” Jazz and Danny followed. “So what are your guys’ powers?” Jazz asked. “I’m a Kryptonian.” Superboy began, “So I can jump really far, I have super strength, infrared vision, and super hearing. I also have invulnerability.”

“Wait, Superboy, if you’re from another planet, does that mean you’ve been to space?” Danny asked excitedly. Superboy slouched a little, but answered, “Not really. I’ve been to the watchtower, but I’m a clone of superman. And you can call me Conner.” Danny smiled, he could tell he was going to like it here. “I’m from Mars. I can shapeshift, and I’m a telepath. I can fly, camouflage myself, and I have telekinesis. Sometimes I can density shift. Also, you can call me M’gann”  

“So have you been to space?” Danny asked hopefully. “Yes. I flew here in my bio-ship, with my uncle. The Martian Manhunter?”

“Your uncle is the Martian Manhunter? That’s so cool!” Jazz cried. They stopped at a pair of doors. “These are your rooms. Me and Connor are the next two. Dinner's at six, so you can unpack, explore, or do whatever until then.” M’gann instructed. Danny opened the door, and dropped his box on his bed. Yep, Danny was definitely going to like it here.

[isagrimorie]

[initial reactions] Justice League

TLDR version: I liked it. I liked it a lot. It had its problems-- pointed look at the camera-- but considering all it had to contend with? I really liked the finished product.

I can actually see myself watching a three hour director's cut of this.

Going through point by point of the movie, Good points and some nitpicks and some ugly, but bringing it all together with the Happy.

This is going to be a surprise but for the few people who know me, I actually wasn't impressed with Avengers. I thought the visuals were so-so, and it brought home what I thought when I first watched Serenity. Joss Whedon is not a good movie director. He can do a passable job on TV but he is no Jonathan Nolan nor is he a JJ Abrams. He doesn't have the visual eye for it, and he tends to go back to his old stand-bys.

(I mentioned it in my initial reactions of Thor: Ragnarok, Joss Whedon wishes he was Taika Waititi but he's not even close.)

Zach Snyder on the other hand? Despite my issues with his other movies, no one can deny that Snyder paints a fantastic visual picture. It is his strongest suit. In this movie he delivered in spades.

This is a really, really great getting the band together movie and the thing that made this work a lot: the characters. They sparked off each other, and you can tell they were having a lot of fun making this movie.

We got to see the Amazons be awesome!

We got to see a lot more of Hippolyta doing action stuff and it was awesome and wonderful! For anyone who wished they saw Queen Hippolyta fight more, we see that! A lot and it's so awesome!

And then she sends out a flare and it was such a heartwarming moment because she knows only one person in the outside world will understand and her whispering as in prayer: 'Hear me, Diana.'

It broke my heart a little because Diana hasn't seen her mother and amazons in a while and then she had to hear from Steppenwolf that a lot of Amazons died. Also, this gives credence to my theory that in BvS, when she decided to help, she was actually on her way to find a way back to Themyscira.

Okay, so the elephant in the room is the treatment of Diana, Amazons, and Lois Lane terrible. Wellllll.... it's not as bad as reported but after watching Wonder Woman, I cringed in a lot of scenes.

The controversial new revealing costumes where there. I don't know why they needed to, and when I saw them standing next to Amazons who are in regular armor costumes, they stand out.

Then the unnecessary camera angles, especially when Diana is standing in front of the camera. It's like a study of male gaze directing vs someone who consciously works against it. I cringed everytime there was butt shot and an upskirt shot. It wasn't a lot but there were enough that coming from watching Wonder Woman, it was bad.

I didn't really need to see that gag about Barry falling on top of Diana and accidentally grabbing her boobs. I did not need to see that. It had Whedon's fingerprints all over it and just NO. NO NO NO NO.

Then there's Arthur Curry loudly telling Diana she was beautiful etc., and then revealing he's actually sitting on the Lasso. They didn't need that and the only important thing we got there that once upon a time the Amazons and Atlanteans were at war. You can practically see Whedon's work there.

Going back to the happy: Danny Elfman to score the movie was the best move ever, and that's one positive cookie points for Whedon. Because the iconic Batman score is there and strains of the iconic Superman march too! Honestly, there is a reason why those were iconic. Star Wars kept to its musical score with other composers just expanded on John Williams work.

Although, I wish there was a Justice League score too. I was waiting for it, actually.

WB really should've let Snyder direct a solo Batman movie because I can practically feel how much he loves Batman everytime he was on screen. This is not a knock by the way, because I would like to watch Snyder's translating Batman graphic novel on the big screen like he did with Watchmen.

I love Diana's relationship with Victor and I love that she keeps wanting to reach and support him. I love how she was mentoring him.

I love how this is about Victor accepting his gifts (as Diana called it) and being the right person to stop the Mother Boxes. He upgraded machinery when needed and found information they needed in time. I still wish for a Cyborg movie, though.

Arthur Curry was advertised but I don't have a lot to say yet I feel that Aquaman will answer a lot of questions but Mera was awesome and he was able to hold off Steppenwolf which is a feat in itself.

Barry Allen was funny and so very young with his own issues, he was like a kid in a candy store when he arrived in the bat cave and his crush on Diana was cute and I don't begrudge him that (the moment with Arthur though, that I wanted to cut out).

Bruce is working over time to get a team started out, and clearly doing this to work off his guilt, Diana calls him on it. And dammit, I'm weak but I ship Bruce and Diana. I can't help it! It's Justice League and JL animated has primed me for shipping Diana and Bruce together, okay?

They never got together in animated but I love that they're playing this as a frisson of tension between them, and that it's mostly Bruce who is kind of pining/crushing over her, in his Bruce way.

But I am also not about Bruce being an asshole to Diana, throwing Steve to her face to 'push her' or whatever. I'm glad that Barry was all: if she murders you, we'll hide the body for her.

I did love the conversation between Bruce and Diana after, and it cleared up the century of not doing anything thing BvS tacked on. I love that Diana revealed that she might not have been visible but she's been fighting for all that time just not leading. 'Because leaders get people killed.'

There's a story there which I hope we can get in her next solo movie, also: Diana casually strolling into Bruce's heavily secured building and in BvS one-upping him in a Spy vs Spy game--- Agent Diana Prince in her next movie Y/Y??????

The CGI. I really try very hard not to notice the CGI but I can't help notice the CGI. All Sci-fi/Superhero movies have this problem, particularly when it comes to the CGI villain. I see no reason why they couldn't used make-up and light CGI, because even the actor had a hard time bringing his villain to life. There's a reason why I liked Hela as a villain, because that was Cate Blanchett acting and not a CGI version of Hela. Even Zod and the other Kryptonians with him were easier because they were not CGI villain.

Someone should put a moratorium on CGI villains.

Unfortunately, there's even a more egregious use of CGI and that's the mustache gate. I do not get why they didn't go with bearded Clark instead of.. waves hand that.

I like Clark in this! I've always thought that Man of Steel 2 should've gone first than BvS, watching BvS then this just kind of solidified it. There were moments in MoS that I loved and thought would continue but Snyder just doubled down on the other part I disliked with BvS but JL felt like it was continuing on with the the tone of the parts I loved in MoS.

I was honestly surprised how they went about the resurrection. There's no fortress of solitude so there was no regeneration matrix but there is the Kryptonian ship and the Mother Box.

Clark's resurrection seem to give a second wind and a happiness that was missing in BvS but had more in common with in the final moments of MoS. I wish though, that Lois had more to do.

And how is it Lois and Diana have never shared a scene together??? This is the second time she mentioned her devotion to the truth, I mean, Diana is all about the truth. Truth is her province. It's where she lives! LOIS AND DIANA NEEDS TO BE FRIENDS DAMMIT.

I liked that Diana was the voice of reason, and even Arthur came around to her way of thinking, in a way that feels like he has experience about people coming back wrong.

Full disclosure: I was afraid they were going to make Diana that wet blanket friend who breaks every body's fun but she had a point which Arthur came around to. They've seen their fair share of things like these going pear shaped.

Fortunately, after the mandatory fighting against the newly awakened Clark things turned out for the better.

Seriously though, Diana taking Clark's headbutt and giving one of her own. AMAZING. He only won that round because he had the advantage of getting more force behind his headbutt via flying. Headbutts are an Amazonian Hello.

Not a fan of Diana being Worf'd just to show how super extra powerful he is, I'm just consoling myself that she either has most of her powers locked away (like in the comic, removing the vambraces would unlock her full potential as a demigod).

I do like that even though Clark had the brute strength, Diana had experience on her side, she fought Steppenwolf like a warrior. Seasoned and skillful.

Also: 'On my lead.' Diana led the team on the ground! I AM HAPPY ABOUT THAT.

I love the final fight there were so many iconic moments and its stitched together really well, one of the biggest issues I had with BvS was how Snyder painted a beautiful picture but it's a moment divorced from the flow of the story. Here it came together pretty well. The iconic moments were iconic without taking away from the story.

I like that they took note of what people had issues with and worked with that feedback, bringing in more color and lightness to the movie while still maintaining the gravity of the situation.

Do you know what else I love? That the final blow was Diana's with an assist from Clark. Because she lives up to her name -- Godkiller.

other moments I liked:

The Superman and Flash race, I love it. It is universal law, a Super and a Flash must always race.

Diana lasso-ing the bank robbers and then greeting a crowd of little girls.

Diana handling the artefact with revenance.

Victor openly working with his dad in the Star Labs

Barry pushing the sword to Diana.

Diana with the red robe over her armor. I love it.

Speaking off, Hippolyta's Helmet!

Luthor finally acting like Luthor and not like an evil Mark Zuckerberg. Also, he freaked out about Clark, what about Diana, who is an actual demigod?

Speaking of demigods, the guy throwing lighting bolts young Zeus or Ares? And when is Diana going to handle lightning? She's the last survivor of the Pantheon, she must inherit it too, right?

WAS THAT ATHENA OR ARTEMIS??? IN ANY CASE I AM HAPPY TO SEE A GODDESS.

[jonathanleobl]

On Justice League 2017

Justice League (JL) is a superhero action-comedy! It is very fast paced and entertaining enough to keep people interested. This is what many people want from a superhero movie, and for some, single viewing is not enough. For it’s supporters, it is worth the ticket price for more than once. 

However, there is a part of me who wish to have seen the gritty tone as done in Man of Steel (MOS) and Batman V Superman (BV) – or the supposed to be Snyder version without compliance to make it light-hearted. Even when characters and their personality could add colors, it could be done without much dilution of the original tone that began with MOS.

JL is light-hearted enough, to a point that it feels cartoonish, which was the reaction of the film to attend the criticism about the serious/gritty atmosphere of BVS. Some scenes, though entertaining and funny felt unneeded or overdone. Such as the awkward scene with Wonder Woman and Flash during the fight scenes under the tunnel, and the k-pop on the monitor in Flash's bunker. Yes, the Avengers movie feel is there. Batman even seems a bit off character – the way he spoke to Superman seems to be unintelligible... he lost the grittiness except at his first appearance in the film.

(image courtesy of IMDB.com)

I was also expecting that JL would shed light about Doomsday's origin (expecting a Kryptonian narrative of the monster) to be addressed as implied by Snyder. I think that it would be great, since there was a deep hate that was essentially instilled in the character of Doomsday based on his origin story as told by the DC comics issue "Superman/Doomsday: Hunter Prey."The issue contained a good character background and it could have been interesting if they put that on screen.

(image courtesy of Goodreads.com)

Also, the superman being raised to life could have been more dramatic. His experience at death was also showed in a DC comics issue "Back from the Dead?!" but who knows, this could be shown in MOS part 2.

(image courtesy of comicvine.gamespost.com)

Another expectation I had was Green Lantern to be recruited, but it did not materialize. This was expected due to the "unite the seven" and "all in" tags for promotion. Good enough, some Green Lanterns have been shown in passing through their involvement in the backstory of the JL plot.

(image courtesy of IMDB.com)

About closing credits, the scene of Flash and Superman on a race was reminiscent of superman the animated series where flash was a guest character.

(image courtesy of DCAU.wikia.com)

The music by Danny Elfman, though he is an accomplished composer with remarkable collaborations,  is just passable enough to attend to the pacing of the story - to fill the background atmosphere of the film as a supporting element. It  seemed not intended to steal attention for itself  from any scenes which maybe appropriate for the tone that the movie wanted. However, on his previous works, his music strengthened the aura of the (narrative?!)/visual scenes through inciting  a stronger context of emotion. On the other hand,  Junkie XL could have done a more tensed tone which may have work wonders. I hope they would release a Snyder ultimate cut, even though it unlikely since Whedon is on the wheel. But whoever would take charge, I hope they would still do.

How I wish JL was three hours long but WB seemed to have the habit of shortening the runtime of their epics for greater viewing cycles per day. But this could somehow affect the narrative of their theatrical releases, and may damage their branding!

JL makes itself interesting,  entertaining  and keeps the audience hooked, however MOS and BVS were more socially grounded, having BVS more absorbing when concentration is given. The previous two movies of the Trilogy by Snyder can provide good analysis and discussion for character study and the relevant effects/criticisms of having superheroes in the world. I think BvS and MOS will last longer in memory because they were critical attempts  at portraying heroes. Now the heroes became more generic, like the mold of marvel. Indeed Justice League is action comedy while MOS and BvS are action-drama.

JL could have been the explosive conclusion of Snyder’s Trilogy that initiated a league of heroes to be featured for many movies to come. However, the shifting of the tone from MOS and BVS made JL a little off beat. I hope to have seen the JL as intended by Snyder where there feels a strong sense of consequence, without compliance to the negative reaction to his gritty tone .

[gearsforyears]

I always loved the relationship between Danny and Dani, and I love the fics where she was much younger than the show portrayed her to be. The Dad!Danny fics make me so happy ;w; In turn, when watching Young Justice, I was so angry towards Superman and most of the League for acting so aloof around Conner Kent? He was in an impossible situation he couldn’t control, so I had a bit of a more angry Danny chewing out the team about it.

It was well known that Danny Phantom was one of the strongest members of the Justice League, as his powers rivalled that of Superman’s. He was a ghost, the first ghost superhero on Earth, and the Human Zone was glad to have him fighting for them. Phantom was reclusive towards the public, not liking press for fear of misinformation, as has happened to him before. Phantom was, however, very open to his team, and although he didn’t outright tell his life (afterlife?) story, but he answered questions honestly and openly.

One thing that the team didn’t know, was that Phantom had any family members on Earth.

Of course, they knew he had a strange relation with some adults on the living realm (all coming from his home town, Amity Park). Phantom’s strange, almost sibling-like, relationship with Gotham’s lead psychiatrist had always made the young adult happier. His friendships with Samantha Manson, a leading botanist, and Tucker Foley, a technology millionaire, had constantly had the few housing their ghost hero. Other than those three, the Justice League had just assumed that Danny had died a long time ago with no family to speak of.

That was, until they were interrupted during a conference.

Phantom was acting a bit disinterested as Batman was talking about resolving some sort of conflict with the press (Danny didn’t see what the big deal was. It was one construction site. It could’ve been so much worse). His form was hovering slightly above the chair as he sat next to Superman, who was offering different ways to soothe the PR problem. Phantom curled a lip and sneered a bit, “Why are people getting so butthurt about this? We’ve done worse damage before.”

“Yes, but this was to the construction site of a hospital, Danny,” Superman sighed, trying to make the ghost see the reason for this. He wondered how long ago Danny must’ve died to not see the point in an infirmary, “Phantom, the city needs a hospital because-”

A light hiss passed through the ghost’s lips, “Supes, I know what a hospital is, I’m just wondering why the city is angry. I mean, it was still in construction. It’s not like they couldn’t just start over; and besides, the city has three hospitals already.” Phantom sighed. He kicked a foot on his chair, taking advantage of the lack of gravity he seemed to possess, and flipped himself upside down, “Can’t we just help the city build it?”

Flash’s eyebrows raised slightly at the ghost’s position, but nodded, “I mean, if we helped with the construction, we could do the work in half the time.”

“That’s a nice proposition,” Batman nodded gruffly, his voice low, “When should I tell the-” A whirling sound cut him off, and all the Leaguers looked around warily, many slipping into battle stances. Phantom, in particular, had the oddest reaction. His head tilted to the side, his ears perked up a bit, as if he was trying to pinpoint the location.

And then the mist came from his mouth. Everyone knew that that sign meant a ghost attack was about to occur, and even Danny flipped himself back to his normal attack position, his hands glowing green. The sound grew louder and louder, before a radioactive green spark , the same color as Phantom’s glowing eyes, appeared above the large table. A portal was opening-!

And then a black and white blur charged towards Phantom, barreling him over onto the floor. The team all held their weapons respectively, some just holding their fists, at the sight of the flustered ghost, who’s hair was flying in every direction possible. The most surprising addition to the ghost, however, was the…. Smaller ghost hugging him?

“Daddy! You wouldn’t believe how much me and Wulf have been learning from Frostbite!” A small girl smiled widely, showing small canines and two dimples on her cheeks, similar to Danny’s, “I learned how to make portals just like you!”

A hushed silence fell over the Leaguers as they heard the child shout ‘daddy’. She looked to be barely seven, white hair in a loose ponytail and glowing green eyes. Their shock at the child seemed palpable, as if Phantom could touch the suspense and tension filling the air. But Danny knew that Danielle would feel worried if he did not give her a proper response, “That’s great, sweetheart! Does that mean Wulf is nearby?”

“Nope!” She grinned again, and on closer observation, a few of her teeth were missing, “I wanted to see you and Aunt Jazz and Sam and Tuck by myself.” A cheek puffed out, almost like she was offended that he thought otherwise.

“That’s very dangerous, Ellie. What if a stray ghost saw you? You know how most feel about me and you, pumpkin.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead, his mood lifted from seeing his ‘daughter’, “But I am always happy to see my little girl.”

She giggled before looking away from her ‘father’, seeing all of the heroes. Her face instantly lit up a bright green in embarrassment, seemingly ashamed for interrupting… whatever they were doing beforehand. Superman opened his mouth to ask something, but Flash beat everyone, and spoke first, “So… ghosts can have kids. Who knew?”

The League was then greeted by two blushing ghosts. Phantom buried his face in Danielle’s hair, not wanting to look at his team, “It’s… not that simple, Barry.”

Phantom took a few seconds simply to collect his thoughts by murmuring to his daughter small terms of endearment, and it seemed to calm him down before he looked up and spoke, “I’d uh, like you all to meet someone very close to me.”

A clearing of his throat later, and he smiled shakily up at the superheroes, “This is Danielle, or Ellie, as we all call her. She’s my child.” Ellie smiled up at everyone as her father spoke, “I can explain the whole thing later, but for now, I’m, uh, going to show her to Jazz.” He seemed to be using the excuse as a cop-out, and was met with small glares from everyone.

Superman wasn’t impressed with his answer, “Danny, I thought you didn’t have any family relations anymore.”

“Technically, you never asked.” Danny blushed again, “Of course I have living family. Ellie’s just very much more closely related to me than others…” He cleared his throat once more, “Ellie dear, these are some of my teammates. You know some, remember? They were on the news a while back.”

Her eyes lit up and she smiled shyly, “Yeah! I remember the rope-lady with my name!”

“Her name is Diana, not Danielle, but yeah, Wonder Woman’s here.” He gestured to the woman, who tentatively waved at the small, beaming girl who seemed to love the attention from her way too much.

Flash held his hands up, “Woah, so are we not going to address that Casper here lied about his family? And that apparently he has a daughter he never thought to tell us about?”

“It is a bit suspicious, Danny,” Superman mused, a hand rubbing his chin.

Wonder Woman raised an eyebrow, “Where is the mother?” “Is she a ghost like you?”

“How can something dead make life?”

“Why haven’t you told us?!”

“Stop it!” Danielle shouted, holding herself closely to the chest of her father to block out all the noises from others, “I’m not daddy’s real daughter anyway… “

Danny rolled his eyes as everyone became completely confused at the small, quiet statement from the child, but went to comfort his daughter, “Now, baby girl, you know that you’re my little ice flower, no matter how we are related, yes?”

“Yeah, I know, dad.” She murmured as Phantom reached over and brushed her white locks from off her shoulders. Danielle looked over at the heroes before whispering over to her father, “Daddy, I think you should tell them about what Uncle Vlad did.”

Batman’s interest piqued, “Vlad, as in your archnemesis-turned-ally Vlad?”

Danny seemed to flinch, remembering that the heroes were in the room watching them, “Y-yeah, that Vlad.” He was silent for a moment, not wanting to continue with the conversation. Danny knew it would come up eventually, but figured he’d have more time to prepare himself for this day, “Maybe you should leave as I tell them, Ellie. Aunt Jazz is seven streets north and two buildings left, alright?”

Most of the team seemed appalled at the thought of him leaving her alone to try and find the psychiatrist, but realized she had flight just as Phantom did. She nodded before giving him a big kiss on the cheek and floating away as she waved goodbye to everyone.

Phantom smiled wistfully at the small girl before turning his gaze to the league members. He opened his mouth, and then closed it. He repeated this process a few times to no avail before finally sitting down in his chair with his snowy hair being the only part of him visible. Wonder Woman tilted her, questioning him, “Phantom, why have you wanted to keep your daughter a secret from us? We are a team.”

A glowing green eye met her before it lazily circled the room, landing on Superman, “Clark. Do you remember CADMUS? And Project Kr?”

Superman’s eyes widened, and he seemed to be uncomfortable with him mentioning it, “Yes, I remember. Are you saying that… Danielle is…”

“Yeah,” Phantom murmured, tugging on a piece of his hair, “You guys all look so uncomfortable when you speak of clones, and I understand. But you all, with the exceptions of Black Canary, Red Tornado, and occasionally Batman, had treated Connor as if he was… beneath you. Like because he was a clone, he wasn’t worth as much as a human or kryptonian because he wasn’t the original.”

He looked up, watching the shocked expressions on his team’s faces, but looked away to watch his much more interested boots instead, “You could imagine my surprise as a fourteen-year-old that my enemy had tried to clone me,  but couldn’t get the chromosomes right, or the aging right. Vlad had created a baby girl out of my DNA.”

Silence stayed in the air as they waited patiently for Phantom to continue. He took another shaky breath before trying to speak again, “It… It was so hard trying to raise a child while trying to save the city everyday, you know?” He gave a light chuckle, but it didn’t do anything to lighten the mood. He gave a deep sigh and continued with the same unnatural calmness he seemed to always possess, “She acts… nothing like me. I wasn’t as loud as her as a child, I was definitely more scared of everything around me. She’s so brave, and different, and unique. Danielle is her own person, and she’s amazing.”

He looked up, fierce determination in his eyes, as if daring anyone to question him, “After seeing the indifference from everyone toward Connor, I knew I would never wish to tell you about Danielle. You would do only the same to her, and no one gets to hurt my baby girl.”

Wonder Woman leaned over a bit, resting a hand on the younger one’s arm, “You know if we knew the situation, we wouldn’t have-”

“But you would!” He shouted, actually practically roared. His eyes glowed even brighter, and his canines a bit more pronounced. It was a frightening yet small display of power that kept everyone uneasy, “You’ve seen how Connor acts. Defensive, unsure of himself, scared. And yet, you treat him as if that should happen to him, as if it was his fault to even exist. Of course I wouldn’t tell any of you! After seeing it, I was so disgusted that I contemplated leaving this team for good!”

Superman swallowed, suddenly not wanting to have the conversation about his clone. It was strangely invasive, and personal to have this sudden attack on the league from their ally, their friend. Suddenly, Phantom’s attachment to Superboy made much more sense. “If I had told you about Ellie, you would’ve thought I was crazy for raising her. And in turn, if she were to ever visit her father, you would’ve treated her the exact same way as you treat Connor. Think of the effects that would have on a small six-year-old? She would’ve been so hurt that her so-called heroes would never like her because of how she was born, something that she had no control over!”

The other hero who was actually cloned successfully frowned and opened his mouth, ready to speak, but Phantom held up a hand, “Nah, I’m out. Going to hang out with my kid until I can calm down enough to talk to you guys again.” He floated upwards, his eyes not really focusing on anyone, before pausing, “Black Canary, Red Tornado, Bats? If you want to join, I’ll be at Jazz’s.” And he was gone.

The team had a lot to talk about.

[davidmann95]

All right, since you left it out there... the seven undescribed worlds in Multiversity?

Thought about it for a good long while based on the shitload of factors in play with the map, and what would be interesting enough to bother having around, and here’s the rough ideas I came up with:

Earth 24: The opposite of Earth 30 - a world where a dictatorial Soviet Superman takes over and everything actually turns out pretty much alright in the long run - this would be home to a Superman who attempted to bring freedom to the masses, but instead brought about every one of the ‘main’ Superman’s fears about what would happen to the world if he interfered with mankind’s destiny too thoroughly, eventually leading to a ruined, depleted Earth he wanders across alone and in shame, forever wondering how to correct what he has wrought.

Earth 25: The home of Superman Red and Superman Blue, the most popular Superman Imaginary Story of them all (and the biggest Elseworlds-type Earth missing from the Multiverse) as opposed to…well, what was supposed to be the biggest for Batman in DKR before 31 became Earth-Waterworld/Earth-Pirate, but I suppose this still works as a Batman-centric apocalypse vs. a Superman-centric utopia. Maybe the two aren’t on such good terms these days - perhaps a life without powers on New Krypton has made Red wonder if what amounted to mass-brainwashing was really such a hot idea.

Earth 27: The most bitterly, cynically ‘realistic’ DC imaginable. Batman died his first night out when his grapple gun failed, Barry Allen burned to a crisp with his first super-speed step, Themyscira was bombed to ashes, and Green Lantern was exiled to the furthest reaches of the universe when his pitiful human synapses were unable to properly control the power ring. This could well be the home of Animal Man’s version of Overman, though I’ve mostly just visualized this as the home of Movie (at least in terms of general impression)/Earth One Superman taken to his allegedly logical extreme, a mopey selfish asshole who never actually bothers getting around to saving anyone.

Earth 28: An Earth of anime archetypes, defended by a martial arts, chi-wielding warrior Wonder Woman, the spirit of vengeance titled the Bat-Man, a young Clark Kent inheriting a Kryptonian space-watch allowing him to command the mighty Super-Mecha, a magical Green Lantern in the style of Sailor Moon, and an Astro Boy-type robot gifted life and a connection to the Speed Force in a lightning storm becoming the super-swift Flash.

Earth 46: A swords-and-sorcery Earth ruled over by superhuman dynasties entering its first industrial revolution.

Earth 49: Home of the JLAngels, including the Spectre, Lightray, Deadman, Doctor Fate, Dove, Willoughby Kipling, and Superangel, aka Zauriel.

Earth 14: I thought about this one long and hard as the implicit most important Earth in the Multiverse, the closest in it to the realm of Dream, the font of every parallel world, the opposite of the world of broken-down imitations of Bizarro World…but when it hit me, it was obvious. Earth 14 is Danny the World, growing outwards forever, with some of his territories sometimes breaking off and forming their own new realms elsewhere in the Orrery. You could still easily do this, saying the Earth 14 we just saw in Superman was either part of his territory, or in the process of splitting off from him (I think the Justice League of Assassins world would make a fine new Earth 15).

Maybe throw out some of the odder realms from Doom Patrol to fill up the other blank spaces on the Map where the Sphere of Gods interfaces directly with the Orrery (such as where Skyland meets the Multiverse, becoming Kwyzz), and I think you’d be pretty much good.

[gaddaboutgriffon]

Ok trying to pick back where I left off.

Danny, Superboy 2, and the twins trouble toddlers are moving into Mount Justice and going through a name book trying to find a name for the new Superboy.

Danny realizes just how many social skills were not included in the download ask he is explaining to the newly named Connor why he needed a regular name at all.

Martian manhunter is on his way back from mars but it is going to be a couple weeks before he gets back to earth. And in the meantime time Superman is coming every other day to try and talk to Danny and get him to come home. Unfortunately neither are budging on their position, and it is making things worse. Connor can hear everything.

Danny is also using staying at mount justice as a way to practice getting control of his new intangibility power with out Superman finding out about it. It was impossible to keep it a secret from Connor, as he has seen Danny accidentally get stuck in a wall or floor or chair. Connor helps him out as best he can but sometimes thing break. Much to the amusement of Ellie and Jordan.

It isn’t long before Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad come to visit and witness one of those accidents too. And the bombardment of questions about his new superpower begins. At this point Danny then tells them that he knows he was adopted by Superman and the letter but he doesn’t actually know What he is. And after Superman didn’t accept Connor and the twins like Danny expected he is unsure how big blue will react to this very non kryptonian power.

Wally wanting to dispel the somber mood asks, “Wait, if you’re not kryptonian then why does kryptonite affect you?”

“It actually doesn’t.”Danny answered with a mischievous smile. “I just ham it up pretending like it does and the when the bad guy of the week looks away I’ll throw it as far away from Dad as possible. Plus I was getting free candy from other league members in the feel better cards.”

“That’s actually a brilliant strategy.” Dick smiled wishing he could have done something like that.

A week later and Martian Manhunter arrives on earth with his stow away niece. Superman is quick to greet him and explain the situation asking for j’on to do the mind scan for any hidden programming so he can get this conflict with Danny resolved.

After the mind scan confirmed there isn’t anything to worry about Superman tries to apologize for over reacting. However after spending too weeks hearing Danny and Clark argue and feeling like it is fault Connor says he is going to stay at mount justice anyway. Thinking that Danny is better off with his Superman if he is out of the way. Danny and Clark both realize the messed up but don’t know what to do about it.

Meanwhile Batman and Martian manhunter, is off in another room talking over video call with Green arrow and Wonder Woman about their new protégés joining this new team.

Time skip another week and M’Gan/Megan is now living at the mountain. Danny is going back and forth. But until they come up with a cover story where the twins came from they are staying at mount justice too. Superman thinks the godfather story would only work once.

To tired to do more now.

Super Phantom

Writing prompt #3

Danny reveals his ghost half to his parents and they took it well accepting him. As a result the doctors Fenton then backed out of the weapons deal they had with the GIW and are actively protecting Phantom from them.

The GIW don’t give up even after the anti ecto acts are being repealed and sabotaged the gas tank for Nasty Burger’s grill. This causes the explosion that would Kill Danny’s family and friends there for Jazz’s graduation celebration. Clockwork foresaw of a Dan event happening and froze time to take and de-age Danny, Jazz, Sam, Tucker and Vallarta. (Clockwork is a jerk and frankly blames Jack and Maddie for making the he portals that caused both Vlad and Danny’s halfa status and a lot more work for him. He is letting those two die.)

Clockwork then sends the Deaged to babies/toddler to different places in the Yong Justice cartoon DC universe. All the kids are liminal and have powers.

Jazz now a 3 year old is sent to Hippallita on Themescira. (Excuse my spelling) liminal powers make her strength on par with Amazons.

Sam, age 1 as well and sent to Giovanni Zattarra. Three year old Zatana gets a younger sister that also has the gift of magic. Especially nature/plant magic.

Tucker I had a hard time deciding but eventually chose Lucius Fox. (If you can think of someone better go ahead and make suggestions.)

Vallarie was Supposed to be sent to Ted Kord, but Lex Luthor was trying to tap into the watchtower’s zeta tubs but accidentally got clockwork’s portal instead. It cased he basket to be dropped instead of gently set down. Startled, two year old Vallarie instinctively activates her ghost tech armor. Now that is a curious unexpected asset Lex will find a way to utilize.

And finally deaged to one year old Danny is sent in a in a basket with a solar system print blanket with a envelope sitting on top. The portal opens and the basket is carefully set on the table with the note. Then clockwork places a folder thick with other papers of to the side. He retreats into the portal closing it behind him just as the apartment door is opening.

Clark Kent has just finished his third week of work at the Daily Planet, the evening patrol and even grocery shopping. Thoughts of the paper he needs to write and turn in the morning are on his mind as he enters his apartment in time to notice a Green glow wink out of existence from his kitchen door. He drops the now forgotten grocery bags when he hears the tiny heartbeat and rushes over to the basket on the table.

A sleeping baby. A baby! Wha- how had anyone. When his brain stops stalling he notices the letter. It reads:

Superman,

The boy’s name is Danny. You are the most likely to survive him learning to use his powers as they emerge. His parents died trying to protect him. It is not safe for him here.

I have already forged the legal documents naming you as his godfather and a cover story in the attached folder. Also three gold coins will be sent to you each month as child support. If anyone else looks at this letter the text will change to simply read that you are the godfather of this recently orphaned boy.

Clockwork.

Clark stood in shock rereading the letter in shock a dozen times. Before Lois snapped him out of it.

“Hey Smallville, it may not be Gotham but even in Metropolis you shouldn’t just leave your door open.” She called as she entered from the hall. Then she noticed the spilled bags of groceries on the floor. And came in. “Are you ok? You may be a klutz but you always pick u- Oh My God, That’s a Baby!”

Well that is enough for tonight. I will add on more later. Wonder how quickly this would grow if I don’t tag anyone? Eh just a few. @bloggerspam @confusedshades @hypewinter @zylev-blog @kizzer55555

[odanurr87]

My thoughts on... Justice League

This is gonna be quick and painful: Justice League didn’t do it for me, not one bit. Go ahead and denounce me as a Marvel fanboy, I’ll wait. Done? Good, let’s talk about the movie. Fortunately, I’ve only just rewatched it what with the digital release so everything’s fresh on my mind. Where to begin?

As always, reader beware, spoilers ahead.

I’ll skip going into a lot of detail about the plot since we’re all aware of how the story goes. Steppenwolf decides to conquer Earth now that Superman is out of the way (incidentally, he was out of the way for a long period of Earth’s history) so Bruce decides to put a team together to stop him. This right here is one of the most glaring problems with the film as, in trying to play catch up to the Marvel Universe, the DCEU decided to skip the origin stories for our three newest heroes (Aquaman, Cyborg, Flash), throw them all together, and let the chips fall where they may, with mixed results at best. Seeing the Justice League come together did not evoke the same feelings as seeing the Avengers come together. In fact, it did not evoke any feelings at all, but maybe I’m just burned out on superhero movies?

Of course, Justice League has some baggage to deal with that Avengers didn’t when it released and that’s the fallout from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, yet another movie that coalesced multiple storylines (deserving of their own standalone films) into one incoherent mess that left fans split right down the middle. I wasn’t a fan of BvS but, then again, I wasn’t much of a fan of Man of Steel either, which is why I found the scenes in Justice League with Clark and Lois to lack any emotional resonance whatsoever. I never felt they had any chemistry in Man of Steel and I remain unconvinced three movies down the line. So it should not surprise anyone than when Bruce told Alfred he had a contingency plan in case Superman’s return was anything but hopeful I thought maybe he meant kryptonite or Martha, it never occurred to me he meant Lois. But let me ramble a bit about Bruce/Batman now.

I won’t deny the suit looks good on him.

My hopes for his character were never high to begin with and I was forced to lower them after watching BvS and realizing this Batman was a bit more muscles and money than brain. This film somehow managed to lower them even further. Placing a tracking device on Aquaman’s coat? Seriously? What part of Aquaman do you not understand? Also, how about Bruce’s contingency plan? Are you seriously gonna tell me your contingency was entirely dependent on Lois somehow persuading Clark not to murder everyone around him? What if he had lasered Lois’ head off? What then? Oops, I guess having a bit of kryptonite lying around would not have hurt, huh? It’s a gamble with Lois’ life on the line. Batman would’ve used kryptonite to make sure Clark was subdued, and only then bring out Lois. And, Jesus H. Christ, the motherboxes containing money? Not realizing Cyborg was standing only a few feet away from him and Diana? This is on top of some of the poor dialogue lines he’s given (”I don’t... not...”) but, to be fair, everyone in this movie gets their fair share of poor/bad dialogue, like that one time Steppenwolf grabs a missile midair and muses, “Primitive beings.” Seriously? That is not only clichéd as fuck, but also mighty stupid coming from a guy who wields an axe. I didn’t hear you complain about the Amazons being primitive beings when they shot at you with arrows, did I?

But let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Superman. Put bluntly, Superman’s way too powerful in this movie, and that takes away any suspense or fear that the heroes might lose. In fact, you could do away with the entire Justice League (minus Cyborg for plot reasons) and Superman could’ve single-handedly saved the day. The only reason he doesn’t, besides the fact that he needed someone to resurrect him, is so as to give the rest of the team a chance to do something. The movie clearly showed us that Steppenwolf was more than a match for at least two of the League’s members, Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and they were working in tandem! It also showed us, in no uncertain terms, Superman beating the crap out of the Justice League (one could argue they were holding back). I’ll admit it was an entertaining (if a little jarring) scene, particularly when Barry realizes that Superman can move as fast as he. I was a bit surprised nobody figured out Superman’s identity considering how many times they say, “Clark,” (except Diana, she addresses him as Kal-el, ‘cause someone needs to be the brains of this outfit) in front of witnesses.

There’s something else this movie is missing, to my mind, and it’s this:

Understand? No? It’s a little difficult to explain but I’ll try. This scene is indicative of a few things. One of them is the point I made earlier about how rewarding it was to see the Avengers coming together, something that shows down to the soundtrack used, “Avengers Assemble,” composed by Alan Silvestri. Compare it against the equivalent scene in Justice League when Batman’s troop carrier lands on Chernobyl Porzenov, the ramp lowers, and the League is presented to Danny Elfman’s “Justice League United.” See the difference? The scene in Avengers is built up while in Justice League it’s there but for the briefest instant and then it’s gone, almost as if it were ashamed.

There’s also the issue of stakes. Simply put, saving the world in film doesn’t carry the same weight if you’re doing it in Siberia as opposed to some bustling metropolis like New York. It’s unfair but it’s true. It’s nice that the creators of BvS tried to atone for Superman having destroyed half of Metropolis in the previous film by having him fight Doomsday somewhere a bit more secluded. Even so we could see that the world was watching and that at least the US government was being proactive about it, with disastrous results. What I mean is that if we are to feel the world is at risk of being destroyed, then we need to see the world interact with the event in question. Avengers does this, Justice League does not. Our heroes are practically cut off from the rest of the world, and that one family we’re shown throughout the film does nothing to convince me otherwise. You can imagine that empty building Superman is carrying around on his shoulders did even less. They could’ve been fighting on Mars for all I knew or cared.

If you’re going to use the iconic John Williams’ theme you have to commit to it.

What brings me to my last point: Superman’s return. You would think that after mourning his loss across the world entire the movie would have made a bigger deal about his resurrection, not to mention he now has a bunch of super-powered friends (being obscenely rich counts as a superpower). Yet there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to show how the world reacts to Superman’s return and the Justice League’s existence (no, Lois’ generic ending monologue doesn’t count). I mean, come on, even Justice League: War did better than this. In fact, the animated movie did a lot better than this one in several aspects, such as its depiction of Batman and the inclusion of Green Lantern. I’ve seen a couple of deleted scenes that certainly flesh out Superman’s return, such as his visit to the Kryptonian ship and the brief appearance of the black Superman suit, or his chat with Alfred. I understand why they might’ve been cut but, overall, I’d rather they were part of the film.

The long and short of it is that Justice League is too short for what it’s trying to accomplish. Batman v Superman was 3 hours’ long and it was only handling 2 superheroes for the most part (Wonder Woman’s screentime was far less than her counterparts). Justice League on the other hand, clocks in at 2 hours and it has to handle 6. That’s not nearly enough time for us to get to know them and see them play off each other, more so considering three of these superheroes are just being introduced. And, like I said before, Justice League feels too small for a movie where the heroes are trying to save the world from an alien invasion. It reminds me of the showdown in Thor’s first movie and how it took place in some godforsaken place that practically screamed “destructible with few casualties!”

Where do we go from here? Secret Society of Supervillains (or Anti-Justice League) according to the end credits scene, what isn’t exactly encouraging considering the only confirmed member we’ve seen so far is Lex Luthor (we haven’t seen Deathstroke in a film yet) and he didn’t exactly work out in Batman v Superman. To make matters worse, there are rumors going around that Ben Affleck might be done with Batman, something I find unforgivable, not so much because of the loss of Ben Affleck but because it’d mean Bruce Wayne would no longer be Batman and I’ll be damned if I don’t get a good (I’m not even asking for great) Bruce Wayne Batman movie before Affleck leaves! Whatever the case, the future of the DCEU isn’t looking too good right now. Hopefully, the next couple of years will prove me wrong.