Justice League Dark: Apokolips War was an original story that served as a sequel to Justice League Dark. The film served as the finale to the DCAU, which was then rebooted into the Tomorrow-verse. The film deals with some pretty heavy subject matter, concerning the end of the timeline as we knew it.
Given how dark the film was, screenwriter Ernie Altbacker talked to Sci-Fi Now about what it meant for the studio, and how much free reign the creators were given for the movie, given that it was an original script and an original story that did not have any connection to the comics.
Justice League Dark: Apokolips War needed more humor, being the darkest DCAU film
When asked about the amount of freedom that he had with characters, Ernie Altbacker had a lot to say about the choices that he made for the characters and the story of the plot. Speaking with Sci-Fi Now, the screenwriter revealed:
“Justice League Dark, the first movie, was a little more free-ranging than this movie Justice League Dark: Apokolips War. The first one is more of an origin story, while the second one is an original story.
There is the Darkseid War comic but other than Darkseid being in it, ours is vastly different because the continuity has all different pieces. So when I got on to this script, they wanted me to amp up the Justice League Dark-ness of it and also since it was going to be so dark, they wanted a lot more humour in it.”
The focus, it seems was to make the film more humourous, which would have made the dark and depressing story of the film more palatable for the audience.
This definitely seems to have worked, given that the film was well-received by critics and fans alike, who praised it for its characters and its portrayal of key events in the DC Animated Movie Universe.
There were two characters in particular that Ernie Altbacker took to raise the humor
To amp up the humor in the film, Altbacker decided to go with two characters. These characters have a lot of comedic potential when done right, and the Altbacker definitely managed to do that:
So for that I picked out Etrigan and Captain Boomerang as these are the characters that are going to give us some comic relief in addition to Constantine. I think Constantine’s always funny, he’s just like bitter and sarcastic and that’s always great.
Captain Boomerang and Etrigan are characters that do not have much in common, but bringing them in to up the humor in the story was perhaps one of the best decisions the film could make. This was also true for John Constantine, who has always had a humourous side to him, thanks to the characterization by Matt Ryan, who has played the character across multiple mediums.
