I've only recently just learned of the release of Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. All I know is the basic story setup and I've read a few online reviews which are generally positive. I haven't read the original comics given that I basically gave up on comics several years ago (at the time money was tight, comics were an indulgence and I found the bang-for-the buck value was had rapidly deteriorated). So has anyone seen this film, and if so would you mind sharing your impressions, without giving too much away in terms of spoilers? The film has me intrigued and I'd be interested to hear some opinions.
I watched it on demand a couple months ago. It's pretty good. I would recommend it for anyone that likes comics. Pay attention to Barry's childhood home in the first few minutes. It's the same as Marty McFly's shildhood home.
I haven't seen it recently, but the animation was absolutely gorgeous, the story was extremely faithful to the comic, and it was a pretty good story (and by boiling down the story of a million tie-ins it worked better than the comic did). I wasn't a huge fan of the comic, or what it resulted in, but it's a good movie.
I could have done without the constant barrage of minor villians throughout, but the stuff related more directly with the story and Flash's alterin' reality was interestin' to watch.
^To be honest, the most disturbing thing in the movie is the implied years of deprivation and possibly torture of Superman. About the only gore that's too much is what happens to Evil Yellow Flash.
As I understand it the original concept for what became Watchmen actually used the DC characters. That idea was vetoed and then later we got the Watchmen we're all familiar with. Some of the reviews I've read allude to The Flashpoint Paradox as being rather like Watchmen but going back and using the DC characters. And being an an alternate timeline they can get away with that idea. I admit that's part of what intrigues me about this feature.
Actually it used the Charlton Comics characters that DC had recently acquired, including Blue Beetle, the Question, Captain Atom, and others. The plan was to do a big event to commemorate their addition to the DC Universe. But Moore's ideas left most of them pretty much unusable afterward, so they were replaced with pastiche characters -- Nite Owl for Blue Beetle, Rorschach for the Question, Dr. Manhattan for Captain Atom, etc. And DC went on to incorporate the Charlton heroes into the mainstream DC Universe by other means. I'm not sure I'd say that. Okay, sure, it does the same thing comics have been doing for decades now, imitating Watchmen on a superficial level by being all dark and dystopian, but it certainly doesn't have the same kind of philosophical depth or originality. It's really just another example of a trope that we've seen many times before, the alternate-timeline story where the writers can make everything as horrible as possible and have everybody die because it's all going to be undone at the end anyway. I found the movie rather gratuitously dark and violent, and it didn't do much for me, as I recall. Flashpoint was absolutely not about doing a story on the level of Watchmen. It was just an excuse to reboot the continuity and launch "the New 52," although there was no clear justification for why the events that altered and then semi-restored the timeline would bring about the particular changes they made to the universe.