Divided We Fall (Justice league)

[RobbyB1982]

FANTASTIC review Chuck. The rant was great, and the song at the end.... very nice. I knew from the first note exactly what you were using... but I never expected the lines to match so well, to so many characters over all the reviews. VERY NICE.


I also wish there was a spot somewhere, maybe a seperate youtube channel you wouldn't care about being flagged, that had your music videos in. You've done so many fantastic montages that I can't even remember most of them anymore. Time after Time in Modoka is always a favorite, and of course the tribute to Leonard Nimoy is heartbreaking but perfect.

Now all that said, even at their peaks in the DCAU the strongest members of the league were NOWHERE NEAR their power heights in the comics: Flash can't phase into parallel universes, I doubt this Supes could sing a song that destroys Darkseid. But there is evidence to suggest they were downplaying their powers more than they meant to.

The showrunners very specifically said when they started making S:TAS that they were intentionally powering him way the hell down so that things could actually be a threat to him... like a robot T-Rex or Toyman or a giant gorilla. (They also darkened the blue on his suit a fair bit.)

By Justice League when they had dozens of heroes and dozens of villains they probably felt better about upping his power levels as things escalated.

Of course, even in the comics he varies wildly. His ordinary daily adventures just don't make sense when held side by side with the most ridiculous extremes like him benchpressing the planet or flying to the sun and back dozens of times in seconds... the worst writers that don't understand the sheer ridiculousness of what they're writing, and just going with what sounds cool, make him impossibly overpowered.

(This is incidentally also why the Goku vs. Superman debate is eternal. Just judging by what's regularly in their comics, animation, and movies, and the planetary busting scale, Goku beats Superman easily, especially once he hits Super Saiyan. Dragonball fights accidentally crack mountains and blow up planets with a single fireball. There is no contest at all. But if you use the craziest feats Superman has in the entirety of his history, Goku is nowhere close... but if Supes was actually that strong then he should be One Punch Maning everything. Normal media, Goku wins. Craziest comics, Supes wins.)

[RobbyB1982]

On the flip side, the Green Lantern's weakness to yellow and J'onn's weakness to fire were both excluded from the cartoon, aside from a single inside joke reference each.

Green Lantern hasn't had a weakness to yellow in decades. They wrote that out when Hal went mad and Kyle took over as the one Green Lantern... and then later retcons explained away that it was basically always Paralax that caused the yellow weakness. And then further split the rings into spectrums so that it's a certain emotion thing. The yellow was connected to fear while the green was to bravery, so it was a psychological thing being influenced by the big monster, etc.

ANd J'onn's weakness to fire has been retconned too... At some point they established that was not an actual martian weakness, that was just a particular phobia J'onn had. I'm not sure when or why that happened. Maybe it was a one off to have a badass scene, or maybe they had a whole martian invasion and couldn't have the badguys having that easy a weakness... I dunno.

Unless of course they have these weaknesses again. I stopped reading when new 52 came around and killed the lifetime of continuity I'd been following, and just havent gotten back in even with the more recent return to form.

[Michel_Stango]

Just the perfect music to end on, well done Chuck.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yep. Very funny review.

[Mickey_Rat15]

I am not sure when Chuck breathed during his impassioned rant.

[professor_iago]

I've waited a long time for this review.

My favorite Justice League character of all time is Wally West. Not Barry Allen, Wally West. And, yes, it's because of JLU that this is the case. Slacker. Child. Clown. Yet he had a place among the world's greatest heroes.
He is, for all intents and purposes, the most grounded of the group, the most human. Clark, Shayera, and J'onn are aliens. Wonder Woman was an Amazonian and a product of Hellenistic divine intervention. John Stewart is a soldier. And Bruce Wayne is an eccentric billionaire who likes to punch criminals at night while dressed a bat. You know, normal stuff. Whether through humor or a lax attitude, Wally reminds the rest of the league of the need to be connected to humanity, for he acts like a regular 9-to-5'er. After all, even Superman admits that there was the fear of the Justice League's power and responsibility separating them from the very people they were suppose to protect.
Is it any surprise that that catalyst or moral even horizon for the remaining Justice League council members to be Justice Lords was the death of Flash? The events of "A Better World" still haunt those six as they struggle with the scenarios, mindsets, and/or random chance that would make them betray their principles and become everything people fear about them. Lex Luthor and Brainiac exploited that as they created android duplicates of the very Justice Lords. Only Flash seemed unfazed by the taunts of his doppelganger, for he didn't have a Justice Lord counterpart. However, one can argue that his mental burden was just as strong: he knows that his friends became the Justice Lords because of him. At some point, he wasn't strong enough, he wasn't smart enough...he wasn't fast enough to avoid his death.
Wally gets to shine in this episode as he releases the full potential of his powers. He may not have been the brightest member, but he knows that force equals mass times acceleration. He needed a running start. The circumference of the Earth will have to do. It's nothing short of a miracle that he can cover that in a few seconds without hitting anything...or anybody. He doesn't even stop to see Luthor's reaction to having a piece of Brainiac stripped off his arm.
If only I knew who composed the score during that scene.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I've waited a long time for this review. My favorite Justice League character is Wally West.
He is, for all intents and purposes, the most grounded of the group, the most human. He reminds the rest of the league of the need to be connected to humanity.

Not seeing that in this show really but all good.

One of the funniest moments in the show for me was when him and Luther switch minds and he takes off the mask and is indifferent because he has no idea who West is anyway.

[Wargriffin]

I've waited a long time for this review. My favorite Justice League character is Wally West.
He is, for all intents and purposes, the most grounded of the group, the most human. He reminds the rest of the league of the need to be connected to humanity.

Not seeing that in this show really but all good.

One of the funniest moments in the show for me was when him and Luther switch minds and he takes off the mask and is indifferent because he has no idea who West is anyway.

Ehem

youtu.be/T_YKyUmC_yk

[Darth Wedgius]

Flash and Substance was a good episode for showing Wally West's humanity. I don't see JL/JLU on the list for putting into the SFDebris queue, so I hope it's there already.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Flash is definitely all heart. That's probably why they chose him to be the subject of demise in the elseworlds episode arc.