JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time (2014) (V) Directed by Giancarlo Volpe

Time traveling is HOT! I have just been to the 18th century last week and now Superman, Batman and all their happy friends decided to join the time travel hype as well, no doubt especially after hearing what the new X-Men's movie plot was going to be all about.

Time travel movies can be both very fun but also complex to watch, due to all of their restraints and variating 'rules'. This movie is neither fun nor complex really. The lack of complexity in this movie can actually be called quite disturbing and disappointing. The story is about as simple and straightforward as it can be and doesn't feature one original, surprising or interesting element in it. It's the type of time travel movie a 10-year could have come up with, in which Lex Luthor, after a 1000 year sleep- and with the help of the very incapable Legion of Doom, travels back into time to prevent the Justice League from ever existing. But this already raises the first question of why? I mean, why not stay in the future, in which the Justice League no longer exist any way, since they are all long dead.

Everything about this movie feels rushed and not properly thought through first. The story is weak, simplistic and in lots of ways extremely nonsensical and the movie itself is only barely over 50 minutes short, which shows you how little the film-makers were able to come up with. It's lacking any form of creativity and the movie isn't even all that fun or existing to watch neither.

Who's movie was this supposed to be any way? Sure, it has Justice League in the title but is this even really a Justice League movie? I could be wrong but I believe that Lex Luthor has the most amount of screen time, along with two superhero hipsters and youngsters from the future, that no one has ever heard of. I admit, that I don't know every character from the DC universe but this movie was literally filled with a whole bunch of characters that I had never even heard of or seen before in any other cartoon or movie. It just seems weird to me that a movie like this gives a bunch of unknowns more screen time than any of the big and very well known superheroes, that everybody loves, such as Superman, Batman and The Flash. They are hardly ever given anything to do in this movie and I'm sure that especially the fans of Superman and Batman are going to be extremely disappointed with this movie.

The whole movie is a very bland one, as well are all of its animations. It's nothing terrible looking but again, it's all very simplistic, rushed and doesn't manage to impress with anything. This also is really due to the lack of some good and spectacular action. There are no big fights in this movie, just a bunch of characters running around most of the time.

I know, I'm probably letting this movie sound like it's the worst thing ever, which really isn't the case though. It's just that there is absolutely nothing special about this animated short. Not exciting, not original, not fun...not a movie you should watch.

5/10

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