I am of an age to remember the classic Justice League cartoon, so was interested in this new version of the team. It was a bit of a readjustment with new characters and new people playing some of the superheroes, but I’m pretty flexible and picked up on who did what on the League side pretty quickly. I finished watching RWBY not too long ago, so was solid in my Remnant lore. Thus fortified, while on a plane I found myself watching a surprisingly fun cross-genre mashup. Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsman Part 1.
I loved the change in art for the JL to match the RWBY style and as, always, found the fight choreography well-executed. Yang’s reactions to Golden Age DC comic tropes was amusing. The main story interested me less than two side stories. I really liked Bruce Wayne and Weiss bonding. It was a good match of energies. And watching a young Bruce Wayne struggling with whether he even belonged in Gotham was pretty solid, as well. Even more powerful, I loved the bond that formed between Blake, Diana and Yang, as fellow warriors. Jaune and Jessica bonding also was pretty fantastic.
The relationship between Blake and Yang was only hinted at, which was predictable in a DC story, but still a bit meh. My one genuine complaint was Clark being a tad condescending to Ruby when he learned she was the team leader. He walks it back later, but I am never okay with any portrayal of Superman that allows him to be bitchy – he’ll always be the embodiment of tolerance and support I remember from my youth.
Overall, this was entertaining enough that when I came home, I watched Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsman Part 2. Again, I enjoyed the shift in art style, and had some fun with Yang’s reactions to Golden Age tropes. Blake was given a moment to indicate that she’s closer to Yang than just teammates, but no more than that. Once again, the main story was not as interesting as watching each of our characters coping with the change in circumstances. There were several important stories of loss, trauma and lonesomeness that were surfaced, that might have made for good character development scenarios, that I would have loved to see developed, but there was no time, so Flash’s trauma is set aside for “oh, it’s fine now.”
Once again, the fight scenes were great, something I’ve always come to expect from RWBY, and the main story played out as it had to. If one had little knowledge of the Justice League, but knew RWBY, I think the story would hold together, but without Ruby’s exposition at the beginning of Part Two, if one had no knowledge of Remnant, I think it might be harder to follow – unless one is good at learning from context. For instance, a line to Weiss about the loss of Atlas hits harder when you understand that Atlas was her home city, not a dog or a ship or house, or something.
For two completely different media franchises with no overlap at all, both halves of this was a solid outing.
On the way home, I watched Furiousa: A Mad Max Saga. I’ve watched all of the Mad Max movies, some of them multiple times for whatever reason. I mean, Thunderdome was really popular, okay? I had also watched Fury Road on a plane, as it happens. It still has all the extended chase scenes through the Australian desert by fantasy vehicles as imagined by a bunch of 12 year olds and explosions and gross deaths we expect.
As Mad Max stories go, this one actually made sense, which puts it at the top of the heap. It even explained a handwave from Fury Road. Is it “good”? I dunno, but it was a couple of hours of loud stuff and creatively awful armor. ^_^ Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth were interesting as absurdly pretty people playing ugly people. Alyla Browne is outstanding as young Furiousa.
I can’t help but notice that DC has done a good job getting their movies onto planes. I guess Disney is just hunkering down over their IP and demanding everyone come to them.
Well, that’s my movie consumption for 2024. ^_^
