"Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Three" Animated Release Talkback (Spoilers)

[Yojimbo]

The Finale of the Tomorrowverse is Nigh

​

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Three
Studio: Warner Bros. Animation
Release Date: July 16, 2024 (Digital), July 23, 2024 (4K, Blu-ray, DVD); TBA Max Streaming Service

Synopsis: Now fully revealed as the ultimate threat to existence, the Anti-Monitor wages an unrelenting attack on the remaining Earths struggling for survival in a pocket universe. One by one, these worlds and all their inhabitants are vaporized! On the planets that remain, even time itself is shattered, and heroes from the past join the Justice League and their ragtag allies against the epitome of evil. But as heroes and villains make their last stand together, will their sacrifice be enough to save us all?

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Three Bonus Content
4K, Blu-ray, and Digital
-"A Multiverse of Inspiration" - Dive into the iconic DC animated adaptations that inspired the filmmaking team's choice for infinite Earths featured in the film. Run Time: 9 minutes, 24 seconds
-"John and John: Stewart and Constantine" - logline. Run Time: 8 minutes, 21 seconds

Discuss the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Three animated release here!

Please note this talkback is for both the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Three animated feature and all aspects of the assorted home media releases. Spoilers are allowed, so those who have yet to see the movie may want to avoid this thread until they have.

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[Millicay]

Profile pic is a giveaway, you know what side of fandom I'm coming from so I'll just get straight to it: that was a much better note for Kevin Conroy to go out on.

However:
- I barely recognized Hamill in that scene. I'm guessing he was trying to make his Joker sound younger? but it was just unrecognizable. Whether it was his decision or the voice director's, one can truly feel the absence of Andrea Romano.

- Aaaand the DCAU gets destroyed. Hurts to see it but I think we saw it coming. Of course it's not really destroyed (my DVDs are right to my left!), but it still doesn't sit right with me at all that this is likely the last time we see that universe in animation.

- Same for the Teen Titans. I might have complained that we don't get to see them but what's the point if it's just to see them die. I mean we got that with Super Friends and even if I never saw that series it still felt unceremonious.

-And what was going on with that timeline btw? Well we know what was going on, "it's just cameos, they used the most iconic look of the characters" but damn, BTAS Batman with JL John Stewart with JLU Shayera.

Y'know what? It says Earth-12. Although I like to put those comics in my headcanon I'll just agree with Watchtower Database on this one and think to myself that the universe of THOSE Batman Beyond comics got destroyed, and the DCAU is completely separate, out there safe and sound.

As for the movie itself, I liked some of it, that cheap animation ruined some moments, (Clark looks bored when Kara's telling him she's gonna sacrifice herself) but seeing WW on a T-Rex is cool, Batman Beyond punching nazis is cool, the connections with Apokolips War were more than I expected, but I never cared much for the Tomorrowverse and can't say that its last movie made me care more. Maybe I'll have more thoughts later but I just finished it and still am thinking too much on the DCAU side of things to look at it more objectively.

 

[-batmat-]

Movie was ok. Better than Part 2 but I still think I liked Part 1 best.

The first bits with the dinosaurs and nazis was completely pointless filler.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the movie to me was the Batman and Constantine investigation about what had happened in the previous universe. Even though I've always disliked the Tucker-verse, I found it interesting to see just what exactly Flash had done to reset the universe, and an explanation to the creation of the multiverse.

After that, the killing the Anti Monitor sequence was alright, though the animation just destroyed the aftermath scene with Superman carrying her body.

Sadly, the final bit of the movie is mostly everyone just being there, discussing the solution to their problem, how to turn on the Miracle Machine, etc, while the admittedly nice but ultimately pointless cameos started to roll. Same as The Flash movie cameos, they're nice but they serve no purpose to the movie other than saying "Hey, look at this thing you like" and nothing else.

Same as my fellow country man @Millicay , the DCAU is my favorite bit of DC animation so I do have some comments about this. First, Conroy's cameo was the best part of the movie. It's so chilling how it fits with Conroy's passing that the thought of all of it being on purpose crossed my mind. It was nice seeing BTAS stuff once again. I was 100% sure that wasn't Mark Hamill at all, yet he is credited as voicing that Joker... I really wonder what the hell happened? Because it just doesn't sound like him at all.

That said, and as a direct reply to @Millicay , you just don't have to think about it too hard man. I hate the notion that everything that has ever existed is canon to each other in one multiverse, to me everything is its own separate thing. You just think about it for 10 seconds and it makes no sense that the DCAU got erased at that point in time since Bruce was suppose to live to an old age.

I think Question's refusal to join the new Earth was well argued and I can't help but wonder a little where Spectre and Constantine ended up after getting erased.

I would have liked to see a bit more of the new Earth, but I guess there's really no point since it's not like they're continuing that. I wonder if the Wonder Woman scene was included on purpose just to let us know that she's not immortal in this new Earth?

Final thoughts.... I'm sick of multiverse stories and I can't wait to go back to standalone stories. Make these movies count, improve the animation and writting, even if it means less. Quality, not quantity! Though I get from a business perspective that may not be possible. Oh well...

 

[Yojimbo]

Starting with the negatives:

Having just finished watching it... Part 1 was the best of the three. This movie left me feeling really depressed. The epilogue of the new Earth and young Diana - to inspire hope and new beginnings - did nothing for me after that gloomfest. We didn't need that first half hour. Once they find Constantine, that's when the movie really started. Didn't like the armada of Anti-Monitors/antibodies angle. Didn't like the final look of the Anti-Monitor.

BTAS and JLU existing at the same time was what they were saying earlier with laws of physics going out the window and timelines existing simultaneously. I tried to enjoy it but idk, I was metaphorically foaming at the mouth at how bad the animation looked. It didn't pass the squint test for me. The characters were... too flat looking? I don't know how to put it. As for the TT universe Earth-2003, I was only sad because it wasn't the TTG universe being vaporized. Razer and Aya's appearance - yeah it was cool in general but by the time it happened I was clocking out mentally. Too little too late? Idk. These bits with Superfriends, BTAS-JLU, TT, and GLTAS didn't click with me. I wanted them to but just didn't happen.

Ok, now the positives:

Interesting the solve was the Miracle Machine from the LoSH movie rather than repeating the finale in the comic verbatim yet we still got a take on it from the first Anti-Monitor being defeated. It was also interesting they revisited the ending in Apokolips War and revealed to us what Flash did - basically the paradox of going back in time to kill baby Hitler - it will lead to something far worse - e.g. the Consequentialist argument - a multiverse. I admit those were two cool additions to this version of COIE.

Yeah, the one thing I loved was Question giving Spectre a piece of his mind. The least powerful character chewing out the most powerful character and being right. Man, that was awesome. It's why Question is and always will be one of my favorite DC characters.

Hmm, what was the most random cameo of all. Electrocutioner on Earth-10 or Adam Strange's daughter. I mean I'm assuming that's Aleea Strange who we saw briefly in the Adam Strange short, now all grown up.

Looking ahead, I also echo the desire for the DTVs to go back to being adaptations and/or original standalone stories again. I mean, so far it kinda seems that way. Watchmen, Aztec Batman, that Milestone movie, etc. Kinda since we know there's a Batman Ninja sequel coming.

 

[James Harvey]

Warner Bros. has released an extended preview clip for Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Three, which you can watch right here:

​

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Michael Borkowski storyboarded the Kevin Conroy sequence.

Truth be told, I'm going to have to let the movie sit with me for a little while before crafting a more thoughtful review. Part One is still my favorite of the trilogy and this still maintains a lot of the flaws that plagued all Tomorrowverse movies. However, it was still a mostly satisfying end to this continuity.

Of course, the Conroy scene is what will stay with me the most. He sounded as excellent as ever and poured quite a lot of emotion into a powerful/perfect line of dialogue. Kevin Conroy will always be the definitive Batman actor to me and it was lovely to see him voicing the B:TAS version one final time.

Still hard to believe that he is gone, taking this version of Batman with him, but what a wonderful tribute this final scene was.

 

[Karkull]

I'm not going to lie. I cried when Earth 12 was engulfed in the Anti-Matter wave. First the final words of Kevin Conroy as Batman, but then to see the JLU Watchtower go down was like a punch to the gut. It was like watching the original Enterprise fall burning out of the sky in Star Trek III. But, hey, at least we got our closure on John and Shayera.

And it's not really the end of them. I still have my DVDs, my digital downloads, two websites, and over twenty-five binders full of articles about the DCAU. I'm glad that the creative team gave them the respect of a decent, powerful send off. It was a better final bow than Space Jam 2.

As for Mark Hamill, I've been saying this for years, but in the past ten to fifteen years his voice has changed, and he can't quite pull off the Joker any more. I love him to death, but listen to his BTAS through Justice League work, then listen to his voice work in the Arkham games, and then listen to him in The Killing Joke and Justice League Action. I'm glad he came back, but there would have been no shame in pulling one of his manic, prolonged laughs from archival audio to insert into his scene.

And so another Crisis ends, and we have a new Earth. One that, in my opinion, we get to check out August 1st when Caped Crusader drops.

 

[Medinnus]

Expanding section as I watch.

• Hawkgirl has never looked better!
• The Losers cameo was fun, even if they seem magically resupplied with gas and ammo.
• Aquaman - "Send me home" - One of the best lines in the three parts.
• When Bats walks into the saloon on Earth-18, did anyone else hear Sergio Lione music? No? Just me then?
• There are a lot of plot holes, mostly around the concepts of time paradox and infinity - but that said, I really enjoyed the incessant cameos and the plot deviations from the source material.
• Superfriends... NOOOOO! LOL
• I really enjoyed Lex Luthor here.
• I guess Vic Sage entering the new Earth Prime was out of the... Question?
• One of my favorite Earth-1 heroes was not seen. RIP John Law, the Tarantula!
• Was the YJ universe ever seen?
• This three part series exceeded my expectations, and so I am happy - even through my expectations were very low.
• Clearly, there are new DC multiverse worlds building back up again - Batman and Superman have new worlds all to themselves.

 

[Frontier]

I guess in some respects this ending was fitting for the Tomorrow-verse.

Was it perfect? No. Was it the best adaption of Crisis that it could've been? Maybe not. Were there issues? Definitely (in fact this makes the lot of nothing that was Part Two even more egregious). Was it clear they were really running out of animation budget for these movies? Pretty much. Was it rushed? Yes. Did they earn some of what they were attempting in this movie? Not exactly. But was there still stuff to like? Yes, I would say so.

Did not expect a little "it was Constantine all along" plot twist. Though honestly this just makes me wish they'd use Zatanna in animation more because John keeps screwing things up.

The Anti-Monitor still felt underwhelming compared to the comic version, with that design and when they started spamming him.

They did deliver on Supergirl's sacrifice and death and the iconic pose you knew they were going to adapt.

I feel like they tried to make up for the lack of Wonder Woman in the last two parts by giving her more importance here and giving her the epilogue moment. And it was a cute epilogue.

I got my BCxGA pairing, which I'd been wanting to see since JSA: WW2, so that was nice.

I'm sure some people will probably come out of it thinking "they should have just let it end at Apokolips War" and funnily enough the actual ending kind of lends itself to that idea and feels like it basically redoes that ending yet again. But, y'know, that's kind of DC in a nutshell.

Whatever you can say about Hamill's performance and the design inconsistency...seeing DCAU Batman go out in his most iconic look battling the Joker with the most fitting ending line from Kevin Conroy to cap off his entire tenure as the character was the best we could have hoped for. I would even say the same for the John and Shayera moment on the Watchtower.

All the same destroying so many other popular DC Animated continuities for a Post-Crisis universe...again, I don't think the Tomorrow-verse earned it. Even in the TV crisis, they made sure to make it clear that the rest of the Earths still existed Post-Crisis, Earth-Prime just didn't know about them.

It would've been nice had there not been any recastings but honestly it feels fitting for the Shared Universe to go out with character still getting new voices at the last minute. Definitely not having Grey Griffin back hurt the long-awaited AyaxRazer reunion a bit.

It was fun to see a lot of DC characters from across the multiverse in action and getting to do stuff, especially when it involved beating up Nazi's.

All in all, it'll probably take me some time to fully recognize my feelings towards the Tomorrow-verse, the trilogy, and this ending but overall I feel like it was a lot of a missed potential with stuff I liked and stuff I didn't like...and makes me wonder how different things would've been had they gotten 10 more movies.

 

[Karkull]

I was rewatching the final scene with Batman and the Joker again, and it reminded me of a similar scene. Remember the Season Two finale of Star Trek: Picard, where Q says goodbye to Jean-Luc before he dies?

Q: Farewell, mon capitan. It's time for me to go.
Picard: But not alone. Isn't that the point of all this?

I picture this scene as thematically similar. The world is ending, but the Joker is rushing to the rooftop to spend his final moments with the one being he cares about. His enemy. His partner. Sure, Bats may hate him, but in the Joker's mind it's still his undivided attention. He makes it in time, they have a quick skirmish, and then the Dark Knight gives one of his usual platitudes before punching him in the jaw. Look at that smile on Joker's face. As long as they're together, all is right in his world.

 

[-batmat-]

As for Mark Hamill, I've been saying this for years, but in the past ten to fifteen years his voice has changed, and he can't quite pull off the Joker any more. I love him to death, but listen to his BTAS through Justice League work, then listen to his voice work in the Arkham games, and then listen to him in The Killing Joke and Justice League Action. I'm glad he came back, but there would have been no shame in pulling one of his manic, prolonged laughs from archival audio to insert into his scene.

The thing is, yes, his voice has changed over the years, same as Conroy's, but it still sounded like him every time. This simply didn't.

 

[wonderfly]

From the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"Kevin Conroy’s Final Batman Performance Is Here"​

"Today, July 16, is the day WB’s Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths Part 3 is released on digital….long promised to contain the final performance of the late Kevin Conroy as Batman. That means clips of the specific scene are now being shared across social media. If you haven’t seen it already, then let’s watch it together.

For a while after Conroy’s passing in 2022, there was conflicting information about what his last released recording would be. Some feared it would be an unflattering scene in the lackluster video game Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, released earlier this year. Some thought it would be in a different video game, MultiVersus, but neither have turned out to be the case. Conroy’s last Batman is in this movie. So the only remaining question is….does he go out on a good note?"

Read the full article here.

 

[CyberCubed]

My god was this movie boring, all 3 movies were boring, but this was probably the worst of the 3. This really did not need to be a trilogy, they could have done it in 1 or 2 movies at most and have a well paced story instead of...whatever this was. All the characters were also just so bland, am I really expected to care about this version of Superman, Luthor, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc? I feel like I barely know any of them. I said this in the second movie, but the pacing is terrible. The characters feel like they take forever just to say their lines, and there's these awkward 2-3 second pauses from when a character stop talking to wait for the next character to talk or to react to something. What is that? I never noticed those awkward pauses in any other DC animation but these movies and the last ones before these.

The B:TAS universe scenes were great. Kevin Conroy's final lines were amazing and a perfect sendoff to the character. Also I don't really see it as these universes being "erased" as after all, Batman Beyond happens after this in the timeline and this scene was set during the B:TAS era. So I assume the universes get restored because then Batman Beyond's timeline makes no sense. Not that it really matters anyway. Also seeing Superfriends made me chuckle.

 

[TnAdct1]

Let me guess: the one character that some people wanted to see, Superboy Whine, doesn't show in this film. Am I right?

 

[Millicay]

The characters feel like they take forever just to say their lines, and there's these awkward 2-3 second pauses from when a character stop talking to wait for the next character to talk or to react to something. What is that? I never noticed those awkward pauses in any other DC animation but these movies and the last ones before these.

Man, I can't for the life of me remember who said it, but in one of the interviews on the Hall of Justice podcast about the animated movies one of the people working on them said this was a deliberate choice to change the rhythm of the dialogue, that back in the Bruce Timm era of movies the dialogue was more "snappy" and they wanted to add more "spaces" so the characters had time to process what was being said.

To me, at least, this is not a Tomorrowverse era problem, ever since the DCAMU I started to feel that the rhythm of the dialogue was off. Maybe they wanted to try something new, but it just sounds like that scene in Spider-Man No Way Home in which you can tell there are spaces for the audience to clap, but without any apparent reason.

 

[Medinnus]

Let me guess: the one character that some people wanted to see, Superboy Whine, doesn't show in this film. Am I right?

Nobody has mentioned that at all; I am not sure of the name of that axe you are grinding, bringing up a slam with no provocation or point.

 

[TnAdct1]

Nobody has mentioned that at all; I am not sure of the name of that axe you are grinding, bringing up a slam with no provocation or point.

This is not an axe to grind, especially given how the character in question, Superboy Prime, is still a decent character at this point in the comics. The nickname is more of a nod to Atop the Fourth Wall and the way Linkara voices him whenever a comic story features him due to how he acts after he becomes a villain.

 

[Frontier]

One thing I feel like this has all taught me is that you really need to stop messing with the timeline. It's like Arrowverse Jay Garrick said, the more you try to change things, the more you break things.

I hope this is the last time I see Barry Allen going back in time for the foreseeable future.

 

[MatthewP]

Also I don't really see it as these universes being "erased" as after all, Batman Beyond happens after this in the timeline and this scene was set during the B:TAS era.

took a gander; it seems more like an amalgamation of B:TAS and both JL eras

also they were pretty adamant on making the DCAU’s earth number 12 despite the many continuity snarls used on the comic’s earth-12 that led the WDb to make that one vid

 

[Medinnus]

One thing I feel like this has all taught me is that you really need to stop messing with the timeline. It's like Arrowverse Jay Garrick said, the more you try to change things, the more you break things.

I hope this is the last time I see Barry Allen going back in time for the foreseeable future.

Time fiction is always especially tricky - for those who would like to further examine those themes, I very much recommend the prose book THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF by David Gerrold.