Justice League Dark

Plot synopsis:
All over the world, people suddenly begin panicking as they start to see everyone around them as demonic monsters and end up killing innocents before members of the Justice League stop them. Deliberating about this strange outbreak, most of the League's members come to the conclusion that magic must be involved in this. Despite his own past experiences with magic, Batman expresses his skepticism and walks out; but as he returns to Wayne Manor to rest, he suffers a temporary blackout (from a possession by Deadman) and then finds the word "Constantine" written all over the nearby walls.
In a flashback, occultists John Constantine and Jason Blood engaged the Demons Three in a poker game in Las Vegas for high-end stakes; the former even offering his home, the House of Mystery, as his part of the pool in exchange for a box of artifacts, including one called the Dreamstone. However, both parties cheated at the game, and when Constantine exposed the Demons' trickery, they attacked him. Constantine unleashed Jason's alter ego, the demon Etrigan, who defeated the Demons Three, but not before they swore revenge on him.
Batman visits Zatanna after one of her performances and begins to ask about Constantine, with whom Zatanna had a disappointing romantic history. Deadman possesses Batman once again and tells Zatanna she needs to see John. Zatanna brings Batman to Constantine, but they are attacked by a magical whirlwind summoned by an unknown sorcerer. The trio narrowly manage to get inside John's house in time where they are joined by Black Orchid, the spiritual embodiment of the House. The group gathers to share information, and after a quick discussion and some argument between John and Zatanna, form a team to investigate the cause and reason for these supernatural occurrences.
The heroes visits a friend of Constantine and Zatanna's named Ritchie Simpson, but outside the house they find shroud spirits of Death waiting to collect Ritchie's soul upon his upcoming demise. The team is granted entry by Simpson, who is suffering from a magical cancer and resentful of Constantine for abandoning him to his fate, but loans them the Keshanti Key. Constantine and Zatanna look through one of the unwitting rampager's memories for the cause of his frenzy, and discover that he was possessed by an unknown entity wearing a strange ring. Batman, Deadman, Constantine, and Zatanna narrowly manage to escape from a living feces beast conjured to consume the man, and Zatanna proceeds to destroy the monster.
Returning to Ritchie's home to identify the ring from the man's memory, the team finds him about to die, with Blood nearby. Batman revives Ritchie with an adrenaline shot to the chest, but he quickly falls into a coma. After being brought to the House of Mystery for interrogation, Blood tells the team that he did not attempt to hurt Ritchie, but was looking for a way into the House of Mystery to find the Dreamstone. He reveals that in his old time, the era of King Arthur, the stone was created by a sinister magician naming himself Destiny, who sought to conquer the land. Blood fought Destiny and managed to cleave the stone in two, banishing the sorcerer, but was himself mortally wounded. Merlin, anticipating that Destiny was only temporarily defeated, fused Blood with his demonic servant Etrigan to battle the evil magician once the Dreamstone would resurface. Ritchie awakens and names Felix Faust as his assailant before falling back asleep.
The group locate Faust's observatory with help from Swamp Thing. When they infiltrate Faust's lair, the wizard battles the team, but is ultimately defeated by Zatanna; however, Faust is found to have no involvement in hurting Ritchie. Ritchie awakens and is revealed to have the other piece of the Dreamstone, which he has been using it to keep his cancer in remission; he apparently destroys Black Orchid, but then is seemingly killed when the Dreamstone brings Destiny back to life. Destiny declares himself a god, destroys the House and departs to sink the United States into chaos; Zatanna saves the group, but passes out from the exertion. The Justice League tries to fight Destiny, but he makes them perceive each other as demonic threats. Etrigan attacks Destiny, but is separated back into Jason Blood and Etrigan. Constantine summons Swamp Thing and tricks him to fight Destiny while Batman and the recovered Zatanna disable the Justice League. However, Destiny defeats Swamp Thing by ripping Alec Holland's remains from his body.
Constantine tricks Destiny into bringing him and Deadman within his protective shield, allowing Deadman to wound Destiny, before Constantine, Batman, and Blood destroy the Dreamstone and Destiny's body, leaving Ritchie, whose soul is dragged to Hell by the shroud spirits. Right afterwards, Blood succumbs to his mortal wound from centuries before. Zatanna, Constantine, and Etrigan bury Blood's body near the place of his old village, before Etrigan leaves for parts unknown. Zatanna agrees to join the Justice League, and offers Constantine a position as well. Constantine initially declines claiming Batman wouldn't approve of him, but Zatanna claims it was his idea. The two return to the now-rebuilt House of Mystery, taking a first tentative step to restoring their fractured relationship, and Deadman likewise joins the restored Black Orchid as her soulmate.

Tags: paranormal

Review:
You have probably wandered into this review expecting some kind words about a "good effort" from Warner Animation but, of course, compared to the concurrent zillion-dollar Dr. Strange epic from Marvel, "no cigar." Well, you would be wrong.For two reasons.First, in spite of the big budget, and the big Benedict, Dr. Strange suffers from all kinds of narrative problems, and gaps in continuity.
The original story arcs were far from Marvel's best, compared to its better-known heroes, featuring the same two villains over and over, Nightmare and Dormammu, each taking turns boring the reader to death.) Which brings us to this ambitious JLA entry, an attempt to show that the mighty DC library can possibly take on the mighty Marvel library, sort of a David Goliath thing....?
Early in the story, a hot babe who is actually the essence of Constantine's magic house does a 30 second analysis of Batman and concludes he is mainly pain and darkness."How do you manage?," she asks sincerely.
Wow.To sum up, the high score is because DC/Warner attempted the impossible, taking on a Marvel live action film with their own animated product at a fraction of the cost, and more or less pulled it off.
This team of supernatural beings include John Constantine, Zatanna and Jason Blood also known as the demon Etrigran."Directed by Jay Oliva, Justice League Dark brings a new story with different characters.
Got to love Matt Ryan as Constantine, he's perfect, and he has a really good chemistry with Camilla Luddington who portrays Zatanna.I feel like Batman was not needed and put in the movie for the sake of it, but I understand why DC wanted him in there, so that people have more interess in this film.The film is rated R, but it could have been even darker...
In the wake of the inconsistency of the live-action, universe building marathon, it's refreshing to see a simpler, more straightforward, yet still effectively intriguing story-telling pace set by DC's animated feature titles.
After watch 'Batman: The killing joke' I thought now DC don't have good stories to make nice animated movies but I prove wrong after watching latest DC animated movie 'JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK'.
Even though in this movie there are only 2 or 3 shots of whole justice league team except Batman.
Surprisingly, a fun watch for a superhero movie featuring characters from the DC universe.I didn't expect much from the movie but I had quite a pleasant surprise and enjoyed watching it.The movie did justice to the plot and I feel gave enough attention to each of the characters in the movie to stand out for themselves and explain their actions.A lot of humor and subtle emotions displayed throughout the movie in an articulate manner.
A basic summary - We're introduced to the backstories of each character as the generic story/villain plays out in the background until we get a more focused conclusion at the end, with a few connections to protagonists like the etrogan/sorcerer(villain, ritchie,), tho that felt a little thrown in as fan service, it worked.
So its a great animation to watch it you're interested in learning more about dc characters you were unaware of or didn't know well before.
And for avid comic fans i'm sure seeing less appreciated characters on screen, and not done poorly, would be a satisfying thing to watch.
One of the most audacious decisions of DC Comics during the launching of The New 52 was the comic Justice League Dark, which promoted the integration of "magical" characters (such as John Constantine, Swamp Thing and Zatanna) to the universe of "normal" superheroes (like Superman, Flash and Batman).
The comic Justice League Dark broke that barrier, and even though it never was a big sales success, it earned various fans throughout 4 years and 40 editions.
However, I have never been one of those fans, and as a consequence, my expectations for the animated film Justice League Dark were quite low.
In fact, I liked the magical plot of Justice League Dark much more than the one of the movie Doctor Strange, specially regarding the coherence in the villain's plan and the clarity in the answer from the "good" ones.
In conclusion, I found Justice League Dark an excellent film on its own merit, and a very promising augury for future collaborations which had previously been relegated to the "fan fiction" world..
Just a run-of-the-mill plot, odd voice-acting at times (maybe the comics explain it but why does Deadman sound like a cab driver?) and a lack of Swamp Thing - I know that's a petty thing to say, but Swamp Thing is an outstanding character in the comics, and is so little used here he barely should make the cover of the DVD (Batman gets most prominence because...
Batman, but, honestly, Green Lantern is in this more than ST).It's not that I can pinpoint to a specific moment like 'here is where this whole thing falls off a cliff and omg it's so good until before then.
Jay Oliva's direction is simply standard throughout, never really rising too far above what is absolutely required for such a boilerplate comic book story, and I think it's because there seems to be so much potential with these characters and the world that it's set in that to all of sudden see that it's just...
Not to mention there's things that make it feel painfully standard like the 'oh no here's the twist/reveal that this character was not what we thought he was!' that feels weak and hackneyed.Even the writing for a character like John Constantine, who is a wonderful bad-ass in his own series, is often here giving simple exposition.
Occasionally a character will have a good line or quip, and the writing tries really hard (and maybe once or twice succeeds) in giving Zatanna some dimension and pain in moments with her magic usage.
There was some of it of course but, I've seen in the other animated movies where everything just comes to a halt and some character is just hurling exposition.
That increased the intensity of the fights by a notch.VOICE-ACTING - There were a lot of known actors and actresses doing the voices like, Rosario Dawson as Wonder Woman, Alfred Molina as Destiny and of course Matt Ryan as Constantine.
All the others were great as well, no complaints in the voice-acting department.FINAL VERDICT - At one point I was thinking that what is Batman doing in the middle of all this magic and hocus-pocus.
the main character s are constantine batman, zatanna, swamp thing (a cameo of sort),deadman,demon etrigan, black orchid (cameo of sort).
The voice actors are perfect specially Matt Ryan and his hard British accent,batman's and deadman's dry humor is on point.
Another thing i want to point out is the music which i know or hope that everyone will like because it's seriously good- haunting and eerie perfectly fit for this kind of film.
The film's really good for both casual fans and hardcore fans alike, although it could have been better but for their first outing with the occult it's very very good, they do need to make another story with these characters with spectre and other anti heroes.
It was the cover/poster for "Justice League Dark" that made me decide to watch this 2017 animated movie with my son.
But the cover and the synopsis for this movie sounded like it could be an interesting watch.First of all I must say that I wasn't particularly much of a fan of the art style they used here.
The story didn't really have moments where it lost its breath and slowed down.As for the voice acting, which is very crucial for an animated movie, then I must say that the actors and actresses that they had gotten together for "Justice League Dark" were doing quite good jobs.The storyline was adequate, although it wasn't outstanding or particularly memorable.
Sure, it was entertaining enough, but it had some gaps and plot holes.Granted, I am not a superhero fan, but it was difficult to look at Wonder Woman in that particular outfit, and I must admit that I am not even familiar with the Zatanna, Destiny, John Constantine and that yellow demon character - I don't even know his name.
The actual league was barely in the movie, except for Batman, who was also only there for pretty much nothing.
This movie was scripted by a John Constantine's super fan, who perhaps thinks that batman is overrated.
A good animated DC movie about the more magical aspect of the DC Universe.
I love Justice League and I am a huge Batman fan, so I was pretty pumped to see that Batman was a huge part of this with Constantine.
I want to like this movie because I like many of DC's animated movies and the concept behind Justice League Dark is uber-cool: the magical DC heroes (and Batman) band together to fight a supernatural force.
Justice League Dark should be taking on Cthulu/Lovecraftian/Hell horrors, man-- not just another smirking villain who, instead of firing 'energy' bolts fires 'magic' bolts instead.
Maybe I'd buy it if I was one of those fedora-wearing neckbeards, but I moved out of my parent's basement long ago.Constantine is a great character, and so is Deadman: but I can't stand the voices for either or.
Deadman's job is to play comic relief (he annoys us with a phony Brooklyn accent) and Constantine sounds like some Yank doing a poor impression of a Game of Thrones character.
Hey: now that Hellboy 3 is confirmed as not going to be made, I'd love, love, love to see HB appear in a live action version of JLD, ohyesplease.Anyway: this 2017 version of Justice League Dark is not great: but as it stands, it's better than 2016's Suicide Squad: just for the fact that it doesn't constantly show Marge Robbie's pale clown backside."Don't let her sit down on anything before I cover it with plastic, dude!".
Deadman does also have a good role to play even if his voice doesn't really work for the character.
I don't feel Batman was needed, but I didn't mind him when it was in the context of the film.I actually loved the way all the Justice League members were used.So I would consider this a pretty good film.
Maybe not worth the extra money on DVD or Blu Ray, but still a pretty nice film if your a fan of DC animation..
Good movie, fine cartoon, great storyline and fun to watch.
Justice League Dark didn't disappoint any of my expectations, being another good entry for the DC animated universe.It was entertaining to watch and it had a nice animation and designs.
It was also nice to see some often overlooked characters from DC comics (Such as Deadman) getting some spotlight, and honestly more of these lesser know characters deserve their own opportunity to shine.And honestly I don't know why this got an "R", taking into consideration how The Flashpoint Paradox got only a PG-13 rating despite being far more violent than this movie..
It's better than the Justice League movie..
This SHOULD have been called Constantine but DC knows that only Constantine fans would have gave a sh!t if they did that; so they called it Justice League Dark and had Batman literally stand around watching while Constantine did his little magical dog and pony show for over an hour.
The biggest problem with this film is that the story/plot seems like filler, almost as if they needed to throw in something to kill the time in between origin stories.
The animated DC universe used to be somewhere we could run to when the live action DC films let us down.
I didn't expect much from this title but this was actually a good movie, No spoilers but batman's "Hmmmmmmm"....LOL classic made me burst out laughing each time I heard it.
This is an ok movie, but to be clear, it has nothing to do with the justice league or batman, there names are there only to draw views.
But if you like these sort of cartoons the story is interesting, so even if it has nothing to do with justice league it might be worth to watch..
There are some good to excellent animated superhero/comic book films out there.
People will either love it, be disappointed in it or find a lot to like while finding things that didn't work, there's a bit of all three going on here.'Justice League Dark' is somewhat too short, 75 minutes doesn't seem anywhere long enough for a film with so many characters, rich themes and a very densely structured story.
As a consequence, some of it is a little rushed and there are instances of parts in need of more exploration or characters having nowhere near the amount of screen time they deserved (Swamp Thing is one of the biggest wastes).Most of the voice acting is fine, others not so much.
'Justice League Dark' follows the chronology from "the new 52" animated movies that was left in 'Justice League vs Teen Titans.
The movie centers in a different and darker team of superheroes that have to join together in order to save humanity from demonic forces.I think that this movie is a little bit overrated because, I mean, the animation was very good, and it was interesting for me to know these characters better, particularly John Constantine, and the movie started off very well, but then it became quite a bit superficial, to the grade of not understanding what was going on.I also think that this movie was not worthy of an R rating at ALL!
It is violent as any other DCU animated movie nowadays, but Son of Batman and The Dark Knight Returns Part II were far more bloody and violent than this one, and still they're PG-13.
I do not see a better way to describe Justice League Dark.
With a story that takes a universe already established within the animations, the film works very well its characters, in a simple way, not wasting time trying to tell its origins to the public, and with that, goes straight to the point.The chemistry between the characters is very cool, and Batman adds a lot to the group's dynamics, with simply sensational speeches, giving us great moments inside the movie!Finally, I think Justice League Dark shows DC itself the potential that this brand can have not only in animated films, but also in live-action.
Please DC, make the Dark Justice League live-action!
We want to see!In summary, Justice League Dark fulfills its role, tells a cool story, with well-built characters and excellent dynamics, providing little more than an hour of pure of great entertainment!Ps: Listening to Matt Ryan once again bringing Constantine to life is also incredible..
We need more of Constantine and Justice League Dark..
I liked Justice League Dark.
John Constantine is a DC Character who needs more time in the spotlight, because his magical powers are really cool.
Not a personal favorite, but I liked Constantine, Batman and the magic and I'd prefer Justice League Dark over Justice League: War..
It gives a good reason to assemble a Justice League Dark.
This movie is in no way bad, it is just very basic in terms of plot and character development and instead acts as a showcase for various side characters in the DC universe.
Batman is great, but do we really need him in every DC movie?!Overall this is a generally watchable film, it's pretty entertaining and the characters are cool.
It's rather unique compared to some of the other DC movies, being more of a dark fantasy.There are a few qualms: They still use the blocky character design they used in the other films and I'm not a fan of it.
So we finally have a Justice Dark movie, eh?
Its nice to see Batman in the movie, and he has ties to Zatanna actually - but its a stretch to see his usefulness in this universe.
One is a human walking with gods, and the other is a conman playing the angels and demons.Coming to the movie, the animation is solid and I loved how they used the spells with multi coloured sigils for different mages.
I just wish Bruce tied in better, especially given how awesomely he handled an alternative version of Destiny in the Timmverse.So overall a nice introduction to the Dark Universe of DC and I'm hoping this can be expanded to a good two and a half hour life action feature film in the DC movie verse.
The backstory of him could be another animated movie that would love to watch.
(b) there is actually such a thing as a "killer turd," and (c) Batman grunts quite a bit.I tried to watch this three times before giving up.
Well I like the point some major flaws and great little things about the movie - 1.
She throws the baby batman catches him/her and as an ending to the opening the woman commits suicide .Overall considering all those scenes it was actually a good movie with a great voice cast and good music.
DC needs someone to animate, design characters, balance powers and also to name things.
I mean it's not like this is a superhero film that it will require good animations due to presence of action scenes, that's the only thing I can say to justify how bad it is.
It has better character design, better animation,is way more original and funny and also ,actually features batman.
Very good for a Justice League movie!.
It makes it feel like half of the justice league just want to be left alone and not bother joining Batman,John Constantine, Zatanna and Jason Blood.
Jason O'Mara voices batman, which again shows continuity as he has done in about 6 other DC Animated films.
Im a DC animated film fanboy, and with the exception of Son of Batman (and maybe Bad Blood), I think they've all been pretty good.