Freedom Fighters: The Ray - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Freedom Fighters: The Ray

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
The Arrowverse (as the live action CW DC TV shows are called) has largely become the predominant superhero medium on public television (Netflix is where Marvel is residing for the most part), and it’s popularity is well known. Back in last season of The CW shows we had the big massive crossover expisode, where Supergirl, Team Arrow, The Legends AND Team Flash were transported to Earth X. A world where the Nazis had stayed in power and the DC superhero’s were split into Nazi strongmen, or fighting for the Resistance. It was there that we were introduced to The Ray (played by Russell Tovey, who plays the voice of The Ray in this movie as well), the locked up Superhero whom our Earth rescued from Nazi control. Freedom Fighters: The Ray acts as a prequel (of sorts) to this character, explaining how an Earth One human being ended up being a superhero on Earth X.

Much like 2016’s The Vixen, Freedom Fighters: The Ray isn’t an actual “movie” per se, but rather webisode “seed” series that consists of 12 episodes (2 seasons) of about 5-6 minutes apiece. As such, it’s a bit of a strange watch, as it doesn’t flow as fluidly as a three piece story arc, but rather 4-5 little sub stories smooshed together to create one bigger arc. Also, the film/series tends to mess up some of the continuity of the “Crisis on Earth X” crossover from the live action series.

The film opens up with Earth X as the focus, with The Ray (Tovey), Black Condor (Jason Mitchell), Phantom Lady (Dilshad Vadsaria) and Red Tornado (Iddo Goldberg) fighting off the axis of evil, headed up by Overgirl (Melissa Benoist), Black Arrow, and an evil Flash, who are INTENT on getting ahold of Red Tornado’s neural cortex. Beaten back and on the verge of defeat, Earth X’s Vibe (also played by his live action actor, Carlos Valdes) blasts The Ray over to Earth One holding Red Tornado’s cortex. There he runs into his Earth One counterpart, who is a mild mannered city employee, and imbues upon the naive boy his own cosmic powers.

Hiding his homosexuality from his parents, just fired from his job by a conniving councilman, and complete dejected, Earth One’s Ray (also his real name, they make a joke out of just adding “The” in front of his name to create a superhero code name in “Crisis on Earth X”) jumps at the chance to be a hero. However, his time of fun and carefree picking off petty criminals is short lived, as Overgirl finds a way to his earth as well, stealing the cortex and leaving to take over the multiverse with it. Desperate to atone for his mistakes, The Ray does the only thing he can do. He begs Earth One’s Cisco Ramon to vibe him over to Earth X and fight alongside the resistance like his doppelganger did.

I did mention that Freedom Fighters: The Ray is a bit disjointed didn’t I? The CW seed nature of the 12 episode tv series allows for some multi episode arcs to play out like extended acts of a film, but these acts aren’t nearly as homogeneous as you would want for a feature film presentation like Warner Brothers is attempting. The first opening act and final fight on Earth X is jarringly broken up by an interlude where Earth One’s Arrow and Team Flash taken on a killer robot as part of his training, and then suddenly we’re back in the main fight again. Then there’s the really big one. Ray being gay isn’t a big deal in my eyes, and it’s interesting to see a gay superhero in there, but the reality of the situation is, the powers that be made it as heavy handed as Supergirl is with girl power, and about as preachy as a sunday morning service. The entire first 45 minutes are basically one giant coming out story for Ray and had me confused on whether we were seeing a superhero movie, or the adventures of poor Ray with his uber conservative parents. It wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if they hadn’t tried to insert the world “LGBT” just about every 10 minutes, and had Ray trying to work for underpriviliged minorities, and save lesbians from being beaten up by misogynists in the park. Again, I’m not having a problem with their being some representation by the LGBT community, but rather lamenting the fact that it was handled with about as much subtlety as Harley Quinn’s hammer trying to smash Batman.

Then there’s the continuity errors. It tries to basically set itself up as a prequel to “Crisis on Earth X”, but in that crossover arc, The Ray was not known to Earth One’s superheroes, and was just revealed to be a visitor at the end. In this little seed series our Team Flash and Team Arrow actually train him before he is sent over by Cisco. It’s a bit odd and throws the continuity of the Arrowverse off a bit, but that’s actually the least of the series problems. It’s an ok show, and a livable movie, but sadly it’s the weakest of the DC animated movies in quite some time.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

In typical Warner Brother/DC TV fashion, the 1080p Blu-ray encode for Freedom Fighters: The Ray is is quite pleasing to the eye. Even stunning in many areas. Colors range from bright and cheery, to dull and darkened depending on the location, but saturation is at a high point, and visual clarity for the simple animation well done in every aspect. Shadows are solid, and the darker spots don’t show crush to the naked eye. My only complaint is the ever present DC animated banding that comes up in EVERY ONE of these animated films. Again, it seems to be source related, as it only crops up on the DC Animated films, and not the rest of Warner’s collection. Still quite a solid transfer all around.





Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is very indicative of the DC animated lineup, giving us a pretty impressive audio mix that fits the action oriented nature of the films. Dialog is crisp and clean, located straight up front, but evenly balanced with the more explosive moments in the season/film. Ray’s energy explosions impact with authority, and the thudding and whamming of super powered fisticuffs is heavily influenced by a nice powerful low end. Bass is strong, but it never hits SUPER low, or super hard, but stays right in the middle of satisfactory for the genre. The surrounds are also awash with the chaos of Blitzkrieg zipping around at full speed, or Overgirl swooshing in from above. It’s a solid track, and for those who are familiar with the DC Animated films, par for the course.





Extras:

• Interview with Russell Tovey

Final Score: ​

Freedom Fighters: The Ray is the second in the three CW Seed series (the first being Vixen and the third being the upcoming Constantine: City of Demons), but it is the weakest of the three by a goodly margin. The season/show works on technical level, but the overabundance of heavy handed social pushings take away from the actual superhero portions of the film, and leave only the first 15 minutes and final 15 minutes to be anything about actual superheroing. Audio and video are on par for Warner Brother’s DC animated shows, but the extras are even more slim this go around. While I have a hard time telling people to skip it, I can’t fully recommend it as one of the more fun DC animated shows either. As such I’d have to leave it rental status.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Russell Tovey, Melissa Benoist, Jason Mitchell
Directed by: Ethan Spaulding
Written by: Lauren Certo, Mark Guggenheim, Sarah Hernandez, Elizabeth Kim, Emilio Ortega Aldrich, Sarah Tarkoff
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Spanish (Castilian and Latin) DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish,
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: NR
Runtime: 77 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 28th, 2018

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Rental

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Will do as you suggested -- rent.