The Batman: Pics, Videos, and Other Awesomeness

I have finally watched Constantine: City of Demons which was the last animated movie made based on the New 52 series of comic books that I had yet to watch.

I can officially say I liked all of them but I don't like them all equally.

I was expecting it to be campy but it was not. The trailer was misleading. The trailer made it look like Constantine was going to leap into Hell to battle demons and pull an innocent soul out.

The actual movie was about Constantine fighting demons that clawed their way to Earth, specifically Los Angeles. City of Demons is a play on Los Angeles nickname the City of Angels.

It was an R rated cartoon. For the most part I have not have liked R-rated DC cartoons. The first few attempts at this were a little hamfisted but in this case the writers/directors/etc managed to use the gritty violence, swearing, and "adult situations" to enhance the story rather than distract from it.

It was in my wheel house anyway. I like dark and gritty urban fantasy with an animistic cosmology.

This is my rating from best to worst. Just my opinion.

I guess I'm a DC fanboy and I'll watch almost anything they put out (unless it has Amber Heard in it or panders to the CCP).

I would recommend S Tier for even casual DC fans, except maybe Apocalypse War. Apocalypse is the equivalent of Avengers Endgame and it more or less successfully wraps up all the loose ends. If you are a super fan, you should watch the movies in chronological order.


S Tier
The Flashpoint Paradox,
Justice League: War
Justice League vs. Teen Titans
Justice League Dark
Justice League Dark: Apocalypse War
A Tier
Teen Titans the Judas Contract
Constantine City of Demons
Batman vs. Robin
The Death and Return of Superman
B Tier:
Wonderwoman Bloodlines
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
C Tier:
Son of Batman
Batman Bad Blood
Suicide Squad Hell to Pay

EDIT: I'm on the fence whether the bottom three should be low B-Tier or high C-Tier. There are no stinkers in this lot, but these three have no re-watch value in my opinion.

In theory, Throne of Atlantis could be A-Tier but a lot of this treads the same ground of an episode ("The Enemy Below) of Justice League that came out in 2002.

Constantine: City of Demons made me think, "This is how you do an expanded universe!"

Warner Brothers is doing a major restructure of the company, I'm betting they are going to hit the reset button on the DC film universe soon. It looks like the Arrowverse TV universe is going to be retired or soft rebooted soon. They may or may not try to tie DC films in with DC shows.

Disney is stubborn. They aren't going to reset the Marvel film universe until they get three or four flops in a row.

City of Demons was unclear chronologically if this movie happened before or after John Constantine joins the Justice League, but it really doesn't matter. Except for maybe Zatanna. It would have made very little difference if other Justice Leaguers were present. With all their might they cannot fight spirits they cannot see.

A hypothetical Marvel expanded universe with Scalenex in charge would have three sub-genres, Street, Global, and Space, the examples below are non-exhaustive.

Street: Spiderman, Daredevil, Blade, Luke Cage

Global: X-Men, Hulk, Captain America, Ironman, Nick Fury, Black Widow, Black Panther

Space: Guardians of the Galaxy, (conditionally) Captain Marvel, Fantastic Four, Thor

Once in a while, characters and plots from the three genres would bleed together, but not often and it should feel like a cameo.

The DC comics are kind of set up this way.

 

I agree with most of what Bowser said. I liked Aquaman 1 a fair bit. I never bothered to watched either Suicide Squad live action movie. I just cannot get invested in the bad guys.

I trudged through all of season 1 of Titans, but I quit two or three episodes into season 2. I just couldn't take it anymore. Seriously, what is with the blue noir tint? The exotic green noir tint worked for the Matrix movies, but there is zero reason for a blue tint unless you are under the sea. Either make the coloration bright and cheery or go with an old school shadowy noir filter, but blue is a mahrlect eye sore.

In college I took a couple electives in film. Not enough to give me any real expertise, but enough to make very opinionated about unusual cinematic choices.

Young Justice is pretty much the sole reason I subscribe to HBO max. The current season in progress, season 4, is taking a somewhat annoying woke turn, but the wokeness is not interfering with the story. And in all the woke cases, they are altering the sexuality of minor side characters. I guess, Atlantis is very liberated sexually. If a fish dude wants to be in a thruple, I guess I don't have a problem.

One of the characters chose a new pronoun BUT she/they is literally a formerly sexless alien robot consciousness now residing in a dead woman's human body, so it kind of makes that she/they is going through a period of confusion.

Still, I wish they wouldn't have any SJW bullcrap at all.

I will give them credit that they made Earth actually better than New Genesis, Apocalips, and Mars all of which have institutionalized racism of sorts that Earth has largely outgrown.