DC League Of Super-Pets

"How Not To Do A Superhero Adaptation..." would be the title of any book warning people about the colossal clutter that is DC League Of Super-Pets. First created in the Silver Age, the concept came from a quartet of super-powered animals all adjacent to the Superman Family called the Legion Of Super-Pets who would sometimes team up for a fun little comic short. This was brought back in the 2010s in a series of children's books done by Art Baltazar titled DC Super-Pets featuring some of these pets along with other standard animal sidekicks like Ace The Bat-Hound and Wonder Woman's alien kangaroo Jumpa. This led to more appearances by various Super-Pets in animated shows like DC Super Hero Girls, Justice League Action, and a series of DC Nation shorts. So, since Dwayne Johnson was on a massive vanity project to pimp his live-action Black Adam movie, he thought it would be a great idea to hitch the kids into it by making a theatrically released DC animated movie, although this has almost none of the original Super-Pets. Krypto and Ace are starring in it, but they only brought in a pair of obscure characters for it, one of which isn't even a pet as he's an intelligent alien squirrel who's part of the Green Lantern Corps. This was also the first fully-CGI animated film based on a DC Comic coming out in 2022 a few months before the Super Sons direct-to-video movie, as well as being the last film on the roster for Warner Animation Group before their name change. Warner Bros. made more than twice their money back for this, partially due to some toys, but DC Super Pets didn't leave a big mark among children or animation fans and was totally forgotten about after Black Adam bombed and failed to live up to the Henry Cavill cameo at the finale. Like most big-budget cartoon projects, the studio hired celebrities to do the characters, both human and animal, aside from merely hiring professional voice actors, so basically the characters get completely rewritten to fit the methods of whichever star is playing them. Johnson plays Krypto with his glues at the hip cohort Kevin Hart as Ace which really says they did this whole thing for another big paycheck and didn't care at all about the original source material.

In this version of the DC Universe, Superman arrived on Earth as a baby with his dog Krypto instead of meeting him years later. Krypto acts as Superman's sidekick and faithful pal but begins to grow anxious when he notices that Superman is planning on marrying Lois Lane, making it like the hundredth time he's done this in the last few decades. Lex Luthor's latest scheme to stop Superman is to bring a meteorite of orange Kryptonite that he believes it will give him superpowers. Superman and the Justice League stop him after Luthor finds out the Kryptonite doesn't affect humans and gets arrested. Meanwhile, one of Luthor's former guinea pigs named Lulu pulls a Pinky And The Brain and plans to take over the world after gaining a portion of Kryptonite which gives her telekinetic powers. The radiation also gives all the other pets in the shelter powers too along with Ace whose now invulnerable, a size-changing pig named PB, the chipmunk Chip who can shoot electricity, and Merton the turtle that gains super-speed. Lulu gives a bunch of other guinea pigs their own superpowers from the Kryptonite and they wipe out the entire Justice League plus leaving Krypto powerless after he consumes some green Kryptonite. The former super-dog teams up with the newly powered pets to stop Lulu who launches the Justice League and Luthor into space which of course they foil. Lulu takes the remaining orange Kryptonite and turns into a giant psychic kaiju which only Krypto can stop after a super-punch that he could kill him. Krypto of course doesn't die, and Lulu is defeated with the other pets getting adopted by the other Justice Leaguers. This would've been a fair ending but there were so many unanswered questions like why does an Earth squirrel with lightning powers also get a Green Lantern ring, or does Lulu still have powers, and how are the pets able to communicate with humans even though it's been shown that they can't understand their barks and squeaks? And of course, they had to end it with a gratuitous stinger by Black Adam also voiced by Dwayne Johnson as well his own super-pet that we learn nothing about.

DC League Of Super-Pets was a flash in the pan flick overstuffed with pop culture references, inappropriate jukebox selections, and pointless celebrity casting. Even having Keanu Reeves as a Batman with way too much caffeine falls flat. The comedy is just going through a rolodex of catchphrases and poop jokes that no one is quoting and even had to mock Paw Patrol probably because that's the only other competition for this franchise. There's been no plans for a continuation, making it the only saving grace from this ungodly jumble that was created solely to inflate Dwayne Johnson's already bloated ego.