Justice League of America (1997)
DIRECTOR: Felix Enriquez Alcala CAST: Matthew Settle, Kimberly Oja, John Kassir
Now that AVENGERS: ENDGAME has sufficiently wrapped up the first era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and broken all sorts of box-office records in the process, it's time for Awfully Good Movies to travel back in time to prevent an event far more tragic than Thanos' snap, as we revisit the failed 1997 CBS pilot for the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA! Long before The CW proved that superhero teamups could work as well on the small screen as they do on the big one, CBS made an attempt to give DC Comics' gang of superfriends a live-action TV show, and the result failed so badly that the pilot not only never made it to series, but was never even aired in the United States. But thanks to the magic of bootlegs, we're able to find out where this JUSTICE LEAGUE TV show went wrong–and boy, where the hell do we start? First off, you'll notice that this pilot has a conspicuous lack of the Dark Knight, the Man of Steel and the Wondrous Woman due to copyright issues–sorry, Adam West, that means no cameo appearance for you. Also, it's obvious that the producers of this pilot saw the enormous ratings coming from FRIENDS and SEINFELD, as most of this Justice League pilot is spent on the JLA farting around their apartment and cracking lame jokes with each other about their unemployment situations and romantic love lives, complete with a young David Krumholtz guest-starring as a creepy teenage stalker who's got the "hots" for Fire–trust me, that joke is no worse than the ones they make in the movie. But when this show actually does focus on the Justice League saving their city from evildoers, the best villain that this pilot can come up with is a weather-controlling terrorist who calls himself the Weatherman and is played by legendary cinematic bad guy Miguel Ferrer, and even his considerable talents can't add any excitement to this complete dud of a superhero adventure. And when you add in the guy who played Major Winchester on M*A*S*H wearing some terrible looking makeup as the Martian Manhunter, you end up with a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie that will give you a newfound appreciation for the Zack Snyder/Joss Whedon movie. As long as the Snyder Cut doesn't contain any scenes of the Atom doing the limbo underneath a security laser, then sure, I am totally fine with releasing it.
Before you go see ENDGAME for a sixth time, take a break by revisiting the previous chapters of the Awfully Good Movies Cinematic Universe: