A wonderful coda to the Babylon 5 saga. It gives us a chance to look across the history of the world J. Michael Straczynski created, allowed us to reunite with some old friends, and in the end even gave us a glimpse of hope for the future of Babylon 5. Very much worth waiting for.
This is a baffling film. The synopsis of this film promised a story about Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman fighting to free Warworld from the clutches of Mongul. Instead, it's an anthology movie where each of the Trinity appears inexplicably in another time period and/or genre and meets a character from a lesser-known DC series. There's no connection to the greater story promised in the synopsis until the last 20 minutes of this 90-minute film. Worst of all, it's done in such a way that the first two segments are rendered utterly inconsequential. You can start watching with the third segment, the Superman segment, and you will not have missed anything of importance. You can do this sort of thing in an issue of a comic book or an episode of a TV show -- something where people EXPECT an episodic story. But to do it in a feature film is baffling and disappointing.
If this had been billed as an anthology movie or an Elseworlds film, it would have been fine. There's fun to be had in watching DC's top three heroes dip into other realms for a change. But as much as I hate to use the term, this feels like kind of a bait and switch. I always say that it's not fair to judge a movie based on what you WANT it to be instead of what it IS, but considering how this film was presented to the fans, I think this might be the exception to that rule.
Funny. Creepy. Lots of great nods to the theme park attraction(s). Good performances all around. And they even found a clever way of getting around the whole "why don't they just LEAVE?" problem that a lot of haunted house movies suffer from.
I liked this.
Thoughts upon watching this movie for the first time in probably 20 years:
Whenever the question goes out, "What's a movie that deserved a sequel but didn't get one," this is at the top of my list. Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly are spot-on perfect in this film, and Joe Johnston gives the whole thing a flavor of joy and magic mixed in with a healthy dose of nostalgia. It also did the whole "even the bad guys don't like the Nazis" thing years before John Byrne did it with the Joker and the Red Skull. It's a pretty perfect movie, and it's so sad that the attempts to do something with it over the years have mostly fallen flat.
2023-01-01T00:00:00Z2023-12-31T23:59:59Z