Flashpoint

I was up very late last night as my wife was prepping for a three-day business trip (she'll be back late Saturday...I'm on single parent duty till then) and, while flipping channels, came across an animated "Justice League" film showing on late night HBO.

Seeing as how my son is a fan (we watch a lot of old Super Friends reruns that I downloaded on the ol' iTunes), I watched a bit to see what the latest version of the old DC heroes looks like.

Wow.

Talk about brutality! The plot was something about the Flash having created an alternate reality by traveling through time and changing the past, whereby he created a world embroiled in an apocalyptic war being fought between the Atlanteans and Amazonians with all the normal supers ramped up to "extra special anti-hero" status and just brutal, brutal violence as the titans beat the living hell out of each other. It was nuts...a "What If" style film that seems to have been put together by folks who were thinking 'how can we get the Justice League members to fight each other? What would that look like?'

It was VERY age inappropriate for my child.

Personally, I thought it was quite interesting and clever, and superheroes (especially ulta-powerful ones like the JL) translate well to the animated medium. So I enjoyed it...seeing things like a murderous, pistol-packing Batman and a child-slaying Wonder Woman are ridiculous (of course), but it's all just goofy (mature audience) fun in a "divergent dimension" plot. Like enjoying the evil Star Trek characters in their Mirror-Mirror episode. I especially liked Superman's accidental incineration of folks with his uncontrollable eye beams. And death, death everywhere.

Oh, wait...here it is: Justice League: the Flashpoint Paradox. A straight-to-video film it would appear (sorry...the name of the film was in Spanish so it took me a while to figure out what the heck I'd been watching). Interesting. If I'd had more DC like that as a kid, I'd probably have picked the JL over the Avengers (you can't inflict that kind of suffering in the Marvel Superheroes RPG). But even as an adult it was a surprising little diversion.

Just one I won't be showing Diego anytime soon.

Whole Lotta' Bloodletting