No Surrender Cinema: Injustice (2021)

Get ready for a super-powered edition of No Surrender Cinema, featuring many of your favorite DC Comics characters! Join me for a journey into a world where The Joker succeeds in destroying the life of a legendary superhero, and the fallout from the incident has a resounding impact on the entire DC Universe. Some will rise, others will fall, and nothing will ever be the same again because of this Injustice!
The story wastes no time in toying with our emotions, since the opening features Superman realizing that Lois Lane has a human being growing inside of her. Nervous about his impending fatherhood, Superman confides in Batman, who just so happens to be in Metropolis trying to track down The Joker. Batman assures him everything will be fine, but it’s only a few minutes later in Injustice that we discover just how wrong the Dark Knight’s assessment is.

It turns out that The Joker has grown bored with trying to beat Batman, so he’s set his sights on some new prey: Superman. In order to get at him, The Joker puts a bullet in Jimmy Olsen’s brain and kidnaps Lois Lane, both surefire ways to get on the Man of Steel’s bad side. Supes, already in panic mode because of the pregnancy, lets Batman in on the situation, and before you know it the entire Justice League has dropped everything in order to locate Lois. The manhunt leads to another death, as The Flash winds up sliced and diced by a trap that The Joker set in Scarecrow’s lair. Oh, and Scarecrow was dead when Flash found him. The body count is rapidly rising less than 10 minutes into the film, and we haven’t even gotten to the big one yet. Superman finds The Joker and Harley Quinn hiding out in a submarine, only to be confronted by Doomsday. Superman begins battling his old foe, but Batman deduces that he’s been poisoned by a combination of Scarecrow’s fear toxin and Kryptonite. Whereas Superman thinks he’s pummeling Doomsday into space, he’s actually been beating his beloved Lois. Realizing the mistake he’s made, Superman stops his assault, only to realize that The Joker has her heart connected to a timer. When her heartbeat stops, a bomb goes off, destroying Metropolis and everyone in it, save for the remaining members of the Justice League, Joker, and Harley Quinn.

Overcome with guilt and lusting for revenge, Superman snaps, disregarding Green Lantern’s efforts to keep him calm and stealing his Power Ring so that GL can’t try to stop him. Batman has Joker locked up in Arkham Asylum and interrogates him, asking why he would go to such lengths, and Joker retorts that Batman has made life so difficult for him that he needed a change of pace and decided to play a game on “easy mode”. Unfortunately for The Joker, Superman’s rage is something that also comes easy, and before you can say HAHA!, Superman punches through Joker’s sternum and tears out his heart, leaving Batman shocked and jarred by the ordeal.

Superman’s anger over Lois’ death doesn’t stop there. The world’s most powerful protector decides to channel that rage into martial law. Revealing himself to the world as Clark Kent, he warns that he will not tolerate any acts of war, from anyone, and he will not hesitate to use force to stop it. This creates a rift in the Justice League, where members like Aquaman, Shazam, and Green Lantern abandon the League and refuse to concede to Superman’s new point of view. Wonder Woman stands by his side, but Batman and others like Nightwing and Green Arrow forge a resistance to oppose the ideals Superman is intent on implementing. The friction between heroes only intensifies during a battle at Arkham Asylum, where Superman’s group is forcefully relocating some of the imprisoned rogues to a new facility. It’s during this battle that Robin (Damien Wayne, Batman’s brash son) mistakenly kills Nightwing (Dick Grayson), the original Robin and his friendly rival. Cast aside by his father and despondent after causing Dick’s death, Robin remains with Superman’s squad. Despite the increasing hostilities, Superman finds Catwoman and asks her to be there for Batman, knowing that he needs someone now, more than ever.

One would think that since both Batman and Superman have lost people so close to them that cooler heads would prevail, but by this point in Injustice we’re as far removed from hugs and handshakes as it gets. Robin introduces Superman to Ra’s Al Ghul, who pledges his allegiance to the cause, but Superman has reservations about partnering with the evildoer. Batman solidifies a group of allies that now includes Catwoman and a reformed Harley Quinn, and they decide to steal a red sun cannon that can help them stop Superman, except there’s just one catch; the cannon is located in Superman’s very own hideout, the Fortress of Solitude. The heroes descend upon the Fortress, encountering Superman’s father, Jonathan Kent (whom Superman and Wonder Woman previously saved from the US military) prior to another encounter with their former friends. The fight in the Fortress adds more casualties to the list, including the accidental death of Jonathan Kent, who begs his son to forgive Batman and co. and end their war once and for all.

The climax of Injustice features Superman refusing to bend, even when those who stood by his side plead with him to see the error of his ways. The Last Son of Krypton decides that if people don’t see things his way, that he will gladly act as their judge, jury, and executioner. It takes a ragtag group of heroes (including a fun twist that merges two existing heroes together), every last bit of their energy, and the surprise appearance of a hero from another Earth to stop the madness. Will Superman eliminate all those in his path and achieve God status on this Earth, or will the heroes that remain be forced to destroy their old friend in order to save the world?

Injustice is a fun addition to DC’s animated output, and the cartoon world of these comic characters is more often than not more entertaining than much of the live action fare we’ve gotten from Warner and DC over the past 10 years. My main gripe with this film is that it felt very rushed, and while I understand they weren’t about to fit every aspect of the prior Injustice stories and the video games into the plotline, this may have been better as a Part One to a series of Injustice films. DC and Warner have done that for other famous stories, most recently The Long Halloween, so it’s not unheard of, and is a format that I think Injustice could have benefitted from. There was a lot that felt rushed, and storyline twists that felt too easy, or convenient. At times, it’s like watching an episode of WCW Monday Nitro from 1999, where allegiances are shifting, good becomes bad, bad becomes good, and everyone is fighting but no one knows why. It’s no secret that I love wrestling, so some might be confused by that complaint, but I tend to hold writers with decades of superhero history at their fingertips to a higher standard than a pro wrestling booker. 

The other thing to add is that this one is not for kids; Injustice holds the rare R rating that only a select few DC Animated films have gotten, specifically due to the graphic violence depicted. I already mentioned Supes delivering a haymaker to The Joker’s torso, but did I mention that we get to see Solomon Grundy have his hand cut off by Superman’s heat vision before Superman literally flies right through him? Stuff like that might be too intense for the little superhero lovers in your household, but as a fan of all out action, it is cool to see a little bit of superhero bloodshed as opposed to the POW! WHAM! WACK! style of fighting that you’d get in a kid-friendly rendition of a comic book story. So, if you’re ever in the mood for an atypical superhero story featuring your favorite classic characters, queue up HBO Max (where Injustice is streaming along with the rest of DC’s animated offerings) and see what the DC Universe would be like if Superman became a madman.