Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part 1 came out on January 9, 2024, making it the 13th installment of the Tomorrowverse saga. The usual clash of heroes and villains across dimensions thrilled audiences with its mind-boggling storyline, where the fate of countless worlds hung in the balance. Yet, it was something else that intrigued people.
One particular Earth among the many featured in the movie caught people’s attention, and producer Jim Krieg regrets not spending more time exploring it.
Jim Krieg Regrets Neglecting This Dark Universe from Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths
Earth-3 stands out in the multiverse as a place where everything is flipped on its head in the epic DC animated film, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One. Instead of heroes fighting for justice, it’s the villains who run the show. And it has everything one can possibly imagine.
Every iconic DC superhero, like Superman and Wonder Woman, are depicted as the bad guys, here. It’s the playground of the notorious Crime Syndicate. And thus, when asked about how it was dealt, with executive producer Jim Krieg revealed he regrets not spending more time here. In an interview with ComingSoon, he said,
“I wish we could spend more time there. In the original comic, Alexander Luther’s a bigger character, and we just kind of didn’t have time — even with three movies. To give him screen time would’ve taken away from the characters we know and love. He just ended up as a head-on-the-wall, but he’s in there.”
Director Jeff Wamester also weighed in on the subject, and explained how they approached creating Earth-3,
“These are not philosophically well-thought-out characters, in terms of what they think about the world. They’re just like, “I want this.” And that’s how they operate. So, when we tackle these characters, when I was looking at them, I was like, “That is how they think about everything. If I want something, I just take it,” you know? And the whole world was built on that, and obviously that has heavy consequences. So it made it really fun to follow through throughout all of those scenes, like how they think and how they approache any problem.”
It truly stole the spotlight in the movie, standing out as a favorite among fans. While this wasn’t the only aspect the team had to gloss over, there are numerous universes and elements that fans may never get to see. However, people were thrilled to see their favorite superheroes portrayed in a different, darker way than usual.
The Creative Process Behind Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths
When adapting stories from original comics for their direct-to-video projects, it can get quite tricky. Thus, the team aimed to capture the essence of how audiences remembered them from childhood, which wasn’t easy to begin with. But as adults, they found some surprises or forgotten elements and built upon that.
Despite this, certain iconic moments remained ingrained in everyone’s memory and integrating them all into one requires a lot of patience. Discussing the creative process behind the film’s production, Jim Krieg,
“It was really tricky because there’s so much in this series. in some ways, what we do with all of our DTVs, if they’re based on original comic stories, is we try to adapt the story you think you remember from when you read it as a kid. And a lot of times, you reread these as an adult and you go, “Oh, there’s some hanging chads here. It isn’t exactly what I remember.” So even though we all remember a little different, there are big moments that we all remember. In terms of Crisis, it’s often the comic book covers themselves that were huge moments that we wanted to build to.”
He further added,
“Frankly, to some extent, we remember the art more than we remember the words and the story. Those big impact panels, the covers or the two-page spreads, are what are indelible. So we kind of had to retro engineer to get to those in the same way we retro engineered the entire Tomorrowverse to get to Crisis. We had to build in all those characters and all those relationships to get to a point where we could heartlessly kill them.”
Two sequels of this film, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two and Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three, are set for digital release in 2024. In Part Two, Terry McGinnis from Batman Beyond, voiced by Will Friedle, steals the show.
Meanwhile, in Part Three, Kevin Conroy returns as Batman, and Mark Hamill surprises fans by reprising his role as the Joker from Batman: The Animated Series, despite previously announcing his retirement.
