The Guardians of Justice: Will Save You!
April 3, 2022 4:11 PM - Season 1 (Full Season) - Subscribe
It's 1987, and Superman Marvelous Man (Will Yun Lee) is dead, apparently at his own hand. Batman Knight Hawk (Diamond Dallas Page) and The Flash Speed (Sharni Vinson) have to figure out why. But there may be something far worse looming...
Guardians of Justice is streaming in the US on Netflix. Seven episodes, half an hour each. Hybrid of live-action and various types of animation.
Guardians of Justice gleefully snipes at all things superhero even as it riffles through twentieth century history and pop culture ephemera to concoct its absurdist world. -- Decider
Regardless of whether the audience buys what the plot is selling, the artistic courage and visual creativity is worth the watch, provided viewers have a tolerance for intentional cheesiness and massive amounts of gore. -- Paste
Guardians of Justice is streaming in the US on Netflix. Seven episodes, half an hour each. Hybrid of live-action and various types of animation.
Guardians of Justice gleefully snipes at all things superhero even as it riffles through twentieth century history and pop culture ephemera to concoct its absurdist world. -- Decider
Regardless of whether the audience buys what the plot is selling, the artistic courage and visual creativity is worth the watch, provided viewers have a tolerance for intentional cheesiness and massive amounts of gore. -- Paste
It wasn't really anything new new -- the "Justice League but fucked up" road has been well-trod. But this thing was so weird and frenetic and imaginatively created that it just carried me along anyway. Vinson did a really good job as the grounded center trying to deal with the world coming to an end, and even Page gave it way more layers than I expected.
Was it Watchmen? No, but it didn't dishonor the very idea of "Justice League but fucked up". All in all, four stars out of five. Which surprises even me as I type it out. But this ended up better than it deserved.
posted by Etrigan at 5:03 PM on April 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Was it Watchmen? No, but it didn't dishonor the very idea of "Justice League but fucked up". All in all, four stars out of five. Which surprises even me as I type it out. But this ended up better than it deserved.
posted by Etrigan at 5:03 PM on April 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've watched the first couple of episodes, and will be finishing it ASAP--it is way more than fucked-up JL. There's been a certain amount of blurring of "serious takes on superheroes" and "pisstakes on superheroes for shits and grins" in recent years, and this not only riffs off of Watchmen and The Boys, but James Gunn's work on The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker (as well as his pre-GotG work), more recent DCEU stuff (the Lex Luthor expy being a lot like Jesse Eisenberg's version), and tons of eighties references--the 8-bit graphics, the Jason Todd/Dick Grayson figure being a full-out Rambo pastiche, the general feel of the superheroes. If you get the way that John Wesley Shipp's version of Flash was different from the more recent TV and movie versions, that's the way that pretty much all of them are. I'm digging it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:26 PM on April 4, 2022
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:26 PM on April 4, 2022
Just watched the first two episodes. Will probably finish it up in chunks. Surprised they waited until Episode Two to have Page do a Diamond Cutter. Then they had Red Talon - pro wrestlerJohn Hennigan AKA John Morrison in the WWE and John ManyOtherNames elsewhere - do a Canadian Destroyer on a guy (called a Talon Destroyer). So they are definitely leaning into it.
posted by LostInUbe at 7:26 AM on April 5, 2022
posted by LostInUbe at 7:26 AM on April 5, 2022
Just finished it and... well, huh. Doesn't really add up to the sum of its parts, but how could it? It's as if someone looked at the endings of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and said, but what if the giant alien squid were real? Wouldn't that justify fascist Batman? I don't exactly regret watching this--there were plenty of fun moments along the way--but I'm also not sure why it took Adi Shankar six years to put this together.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:25 PM on April 9, 2022
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:25 PM on April 9, 2022
It's as if someone looked at the endings of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and said, but what if the giant alien squid were real?
Or at least claimed that it was, in a coda with all the weight of a post-credits scene from before they became mandatory.
posted by Etrigan at 9:47 PM on April 9, 2022
Or at least claimed that it was, in a coda with all the weight of a post-credits scene from before they became mandatory.
posted by Etrigan at 9:47 PM on April 9, 2022
I've watched the first couple of episodes. It's definitely the weirdest thing in the "superhero show that is a critique of superhero shows" sub-genre I've seen. I'm not sure how I feel about the mixed formats. A worthwhile experiment, at least.
posted by adamrice at 9:32 AM on April 15, 2022
posted by adamrice at 9:32 AM on April 15, 2022
Three episodes in, and this show is balls-to-the-walls bonkers. Each episode is a fever-dream, drug-fueled, hallucinogenic mind bender. I love that the aesthetic is equal parts 80s/90s video games and Troma Films-inspired schlock.
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:17 PM on May 3, 2022
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:17 PM on May 3, 2022
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
I live in the strangest universe.
posted by vrakatar at 4:47 PM on April 3, 2022