Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
If there was ever a DC story line that has been remade a million times, the most common story to dip into has been the ever famous “Crisis on Infinite Earths” graphic novel run from the mid 80s. It’s been done, redone in several different DC animated universes, done again in the CW The Flash show. Recently been redone again in the comic world, and now Warner/DC is going back and trying to pull a Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit on us by splitting it into an epic 3 part animated movie as a completion to the surprisingly short run of the Tomorrowverse animated run.

The shortness of the Tomorrowverse is a major factor on my frustration with the 1st part of this trilogy, as the previous animated films have taken a slow burn approach to setting the stage for the players in this new “verse”. The Long Halloween, Superman: Man of Tomorrow and Justice League: House of Mystery have all played a hand in setting up this finale, but it feels like there was not enough TIME in fleshing out the younger and less experiences versions of the classic characters that were born out of this reimagining of the DC universe. Part One suffered a lot from a fractured narrative with way too many cameo characters, and yet seeming like it was merely filler to pad out the run time to get to 3 films.

Part Two manages to circumvent a lot of the ground work that was laid in the first film and just dive into the action. We take place almost immediately after the finale of Part One, with The Flash dead and the remaining heroes plucked from hundreds of different universes all working together to use the tuning fork towers to phase the Earth’s so that the energy wave that heralds the end of everything would simply pass on by. However, there are new players in the game (or shall I say, finally revealed from their cameo in the first film). The evil Psycho Pirate (Geoffrey Arend, who will forever be the “please noooo” guy from Super Troopers in my mind) who we saw for a brief moment in the first film, is finally revealed to be one of the key elements of the Monitor’s (Jonathan Adams) plan to unite all of the worlds. His ability to reality jump given to him by Dr. Fate (Keith Ferguson) gives him a unique ability that the Monitor needs, even if he has to use a villain to do it.

As you can guess, Psycho Pirate (who gets a full 15 minutes of back story early on in the film) pulls a double cross, revealing to all that the energy wave that they have been fending off is no natural phenomenon. It is an invasion force heralded over by a mysterious powerful being only known as the Anti-Monitor, and it will take EVERY ounce of strength from our legendary heroes to fend off the wave of creatures he can call forth before the energy wave consumes them all.

Even with everyone fighting their hearts out to save the entire multi-verse, the film seemingly refuses to give us any stakes to actually fight for. We get the mechanics of them dodging the energy wave, and even with the reveal of Psycho Pirate teaming up with a super powerful being that can rival The Monitor, it just doesn’t feel like there’s that much tension there. This most likely stems from the fact that there’s a million different characters bouncing around from place to place, playing fan service extraordinaire, and never giving us anything to really hold on to. About the only character that is fleshed out enough to really hold on to is Psycho Pirate, and even then, it’s not the greatest of connections (although, I’m absolutely tickled pink that a character like Psycho Pirate actually gets a starring role in a DC film. I never in a million years would have guessed we’d be able to see him). Once more it feels like everything is leading up to the film that we know is coming in a few months, and only acting as filler till we get there. Personally I felt this film and the previous one could have been combined into one story, setting up the finale without the need for dragging it out this far (although it was cool to see this tie back into Justice League: House of Mirrors with the reveal of the old man that everyone already knew was coming).




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for violence, some disturbing images and thematic elements.




4K Video: Video:

Being that we’re only 3 months apart from Part One (literally, 3 months to the day from release) the 4K UHD release is going to look functionally identical to that release. That means it’s a good looking encode that focuses on darkened primary colors and a lot of blackness (the monster near the end is basically swirling black smoke all over the place). I didn’t notice any major banding anywhere, but the animation style is a bit primitive and I noticed some really nasty character movement judder on screen (confirmed that it’s the animation style, NOT an encoding issue after analyzing the bitrate and encode properties closer). The HDR application appears to be well done, as it adds a loving richness to some of the really neon colors (Green Lantern’s aura, Psycho Pirate’s costume etc). Overall, a nice looking disc, if not one that doesn’t stretch the limitations of the 4K UHD format.








Audio:

Much the same as the video score, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA audio mix is sonically about as identical to the first one as you can get. This means a strongly centered dialog track with a decent dynamic range. Surrounds get solid activity with the swooshing and explosions going on during the final half battle, and the bass gets some heavy duty punches in here and there as well. Like most of the DCAU and Tomorrowverse home video releases, the 5.1 mix does the job well enough, but it’s not going to shock and awe you either. Simply put, this is a very impressive mid range track for low budget animated movie, and it performs admirably.













Extras:

• Voices in Crisis - Featurette
• The Bat-Family of the Multiverse - Featurette
• Part Three Sneak Peek

Final Score: ​

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two garners much the same opinion that I held for the first one. It’s an interesting conclusion to the short run of the Tomorrowverse, but it suffers a bit much from bloat (in both the script and characters involved), although it doesn’t feel nearly so much of a filler part than the first one was. I’m now interested to see how they wrap up the iconic story line, as things have been set up for the Anti-Monitor’s return, as well as the wrap up with John Constantine and Spectre that we saw months ago with Justice League: House of Mystery. The 4K UHD looks and sounds good, but the extras are still a bit thin for my tastes. OK watch for DC fans.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Matt Bomer, Jensen Ackles, Darren Criss, Meg Donnelly, Stana Katic, Geoffrey Arend, Darin De Paul
Directed by: Jeff Wamester
Written by: James Krieg
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, Spanish DD 5.1
Sugtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish, Norwegian
Studio: Warner
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 94 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: May 23rd, 2024

Recommendation: OK Watch