Justice League

Screen Shots

Synopsis

Previously in Paradise Lost Part One: Wonder Woman (Diana, Princess of Themyscira) had returned home to discover that her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and the rest of the Amazons had turned into stone by a sorcerer called Felix Faust. He blackmails her into retrieving the fragments of an unspecified ancient relic. With the help of the Justice League she manages to defeat the spells/guardians protecting the fragments. Faust and his unseen master await Wonder Woman’s return.

As Wonder Woman and Superman survey the damage to the Metro Mall caused by their fight they receive a call from the Batman. He has managed to trace Felix Faust’s origin and assembles the other Leaguers in Faust’s apartment. Batman relates how Faust had been a respected archaeologist until his heretical fascination with the “mystic arts” resulted in him being fired from his University job. He swore revenge against his detractors and mounted their petrified heads on his wall. His last journal entries mention Tartarus, the pit of lost souls. The name of the infernal pit causes Wonder Woman to recoil.

In turn she relates,

Long ago in ancient times my mother, Hippolyta, fell in love with a god, Lord Hades. When war broke out between the Olympian Gods and their ancient foes, the Titans, Hades struck a treasonous bargain with the enemy. He would deliver Mount Olympus into the Titans hands, in return he would be given dominion over all humanity. Hades tricked my mother into opening the gates of Olympus to the invading Titans. There was a battle of which the Muses still sing. The Gods fought back and eventually prevailed.

As punishment for his treachery Zeus cast Hades into the pit of Tartarus where he would rule over the dead for all eternity and for her unwitting role in Hades plot my mother was charged with guarding the gateway to the Underworld. To make sure the gate could never be unlocked, its only key was broken up and scattered across the globe. Mother told me that she kept one of the pieces in the Temple as a daily reminder of her eternal shame.

It is now clear that Faust has tricked Wonder Woman into collecting the scattered pieces of the Key to Tartarus with the intention of opening the gateway beneath Themyscira. The decision weighs heavily on Wonder Woman – return the Key and free the Amazons or potentially doom the rest of the world.

Wonder Woman returns to Themyscira and, after Faust’s has freed her mother, hands him the Key. Faust’s attempt to double cross them is the signal for the rest of the Justice League to reveal themselves. The Flash snatches the medallion that Faust had used to petrify the Amazons, but Faust’s bolts of magic keep the rest of the Leaguers scattered. They manage to surround him, but he escapes by ensnaring them in supernaturally animated tendrils. He then vanishes in a puff of smoke with the unconscious Hippolyta and the Key.

Faust’s tendrils crumble as soon as he’s gone, releasing the ensnared Leaguers. Wonder Woman then leads them to a doorway hidden behind the Temple alter. She takes them down a long, dark staircase and they emerge into a vast cavern. It contains a ruined landscape of columns and tombs, an ancient Necropolis for a long dead army. On the far side of the cavern is the Gateway to Tartarus, two vast doors held closed by massive stone bars. Hippolyta is chained to a plinth beside the Gateway. Wonder Woman and her friends arrive just in time to see Faust open the Gateway.

Lord Hades exits the flames of Tartarus and steps into the mortal world. He is surprised and pleased to see his Hippolyta again, she of course is less pleased, but their reunion is cut short when Faust intervenes to demand his payment. The god had promised Faust “ultimate knowledge”, but Hades tells him that, “ultimately pain and suffering are all man will ever know.” He then turns Faust into a withered old man. The distraction allows Wonder Woman to free her mother.  “Hippolyta”, Hades taunts, “you never told me you had a daughter. I wonder if she’s as loving as her mother?”

The League try to dive Lord Hades back, but even J’onn J’onzz and Superman’s flying charges are only just enough to stagger him. Hades retaliates with blasts of his napalm-like breathe. He eventually tires of dealing with them personally and proclaims “behold the fate of all heroes.” The army of the Necropolis rises. Skeletons and corpses burst from the ground, some on undead mounts, and pour towards the heroes. Individually the desiccated, centuries old corpses are no threat, but their numbers are legion. The male heroes are floored by Hades’ fiery breathe. Faust then uses the last of his strength to cast a spell that weakens Hades enough to make him show his true demonic countenance.

Hippolyta, a warrior herself, takes up a sword and joins her daughter’s friends. She distracts Hades and shouts to her daughter to destroy the Key. Diana rips the key from his socket and shatters it creating a vortex that sucks anything and everything in the room towards the Gateway. Faust is the first to succumb to the fury of the vortex, his body crumbles to dust as its pulled through. Hades and Hippolyta are lifted off their feet and pulled towards the Gateway. Wonder Woman manages to catch her mother’s hand and barely secures herself by driving her fingers into the solid stone of the Gateway’s threshold. Hades tries to save himself by climbing over the two Amazons, but a well place kick from Wonder Woman sends him plummeting back into Tartarus. Diana drags herself and her mother back into the mortal world moments before the vortex pulls the Gateway’s doors closed behind them.

The sunlight of the new dawn reflects off of Faust’s medallion reversing the petrification of the Amazons. Batman posits that with Faust’s enchantment only lasted as long as he was alive, however, Hippolyta considers it a miracle from their gods. A grateful Queen Hippolyta rewards the male heroes with golden laurels, although only the Flash is crass enough to actually wear one. However, Wonder Woman broke Amazonian law by bringing men to Themyscira and is exiled by her mother. Neither woman wants the punishment, but both recognise their responsibility to uphold the law. A crestfallen Diana willingly leaves, but as the Javelin flies away Hippolyta prays to Hera to watch over her daughter, her “little sun and stars.”

Commentary

Lord Hades

In Greek mythology Hades is the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. After they had won control of the world from their father (Cronos) the brothers drew lots to decide who would control which portfolio. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon the oceans, and Hades the Earth – or more correctly the space under the Earth. He was the Greek god of the underworld, equivalent to the Roman Pluto.

To the ancient Greeks the underworld of Hades (confusingly the name of the god and his land) was just the realm of the dead and contained the lands of heroic souls (the Elysian Fields) and the land of evil souls (Tartarus). Hades wasn’t particularly evil, but it was his job to contain the spirits of the dead and he’d resist any attempt to free them from his realm. It’s those classical myths, often filtered through Milton’s Paradise Lost, that still persist when we talk about Hell as “Hades” or think of its including things like the River Styx and three-headed guard dogs.

The comic book Hades is a bit different from the cartoon one and is closer to his mythological roots. Wonder Woman’s main foe in the comics is actually the god of war Ares (Mars to the Romans), but he doesn’t show up in the cartoon until the later seasons. The armour that Lord Hades wears resembles that used by the comic book Ares. This episode uses Lord Hades and the unseen Zeus as a cartoon-safe surrogate for the Christian Lucifer and God. Lord Hades rebels against Zeus and is cast down into Hell in a mirror to Lucifer’s rebellion and fall.

One interesting thing to notice is Lord Hades hair. In the earlier comic books and in this cartoon, Queen Hippolyta has blond hair, but her daughter has black hair – which would mean that she got her dark hair from her father. He’s never identified in the comic books as Wonder Woman wasn’t born in the conventional sense. After Queen Hippolyta prayed to the gods for a daughter, they commanded her to make a statue of a baby out of clay and then brought it to life. This means that writers like giving Wonder Woman a problem with petrification, just like the Amazons in this story.

Lord Hades is voiced by John Rhys Davies who is best known by genre fans as Gimli the Dwarf and Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings films and Professor Arturo from the Sliders TV series.

The Pottery/Flashback Sequence

The sequence where Wonder Woman relates the history of Hippolyta and Hades (the art on the pot coming to life) was hand draw by Bruce Timm. Before release Timm’s fellow producer Rich Fogel commented that

“This is not merely a storyboard. The actual finished art that you’ll see on the screen was hand drawn and colored by the illustrious Bruce Timm. Watch for it!”

Production

This episode is written by a fellow called Joseph Kuhr, if this was in the comic books “Joe Kuhr” would be an obvious alias for the Joker, but no Kuhr (correctly pronounced k-o-o-r) really does exist. Although even Bruce Timm thought Paul Dini was playing a joke on him the first time is saw the name on the Paradise Lost script.

The writer had help writing Faust’s spells

For “Paradise Lost” I found a graduate student in classical languages at UCLA to help me with the ancient Greek spells. From him I learned that ancient Greek magicians had their own versions of “Hocus Pocus” and “Alakazaam!,” so Faust’s spells ended up being a mix of authentic ancient Greek and magical-sounding gibberish.

The voice director Andrea Romano has a cameo in this episode as the Amazon guard who says “Present Arms.” This is probably Philippus who Wonder Woman name checks in the first part.

There is a sequence where the Flash is outrunning Faust’s magic bolts. He then turns and runs directly at Faust before hitting a barrier. The part where he’s running directly at Faust is lifted from Superman TAS: Speed Demons and can be discerned because the Flash’s costume is a brighter shade of red. Bruce Timm explained the use of the footage from Speed Demons,

you’ll notice that right before the “re-use” footage, flash is running AWAY from faust…we needed to have him coming TOWARD faust, but just didn’t have the shot….and asking for all-new animation that late in the game is pretty much out of the question, gets very expensive….”paradise lost” was only the third JL ep, so we had very little footage to choose from, but remembered that shot from “speed demons”, plunked it in….my film editor and i were worried the shot stood out like a sore thumb (the film grain is a dead giveaway), but we ran the footage for several people including the ep’s director, dan riba, and nobody noticed it, even on repeat viewings….the eagle-eyed FANS, however..!

in hindsight, we probably shoulda just gone with the iffy continuity, left out the “speed demons” footage…ah well, live and learn….

Misc.

• The action in parts of these two episodes owes something to the works of Ray Harryhausen and his mythological epics. The giant that Wonder Woman fights in the museum is reminiscent of the Talos from Jason and the Argonauts. Fighting animated skeletons is another famous beat from Jason and the Argonauts. Chaining Hippolyta to the plinth parallels Andromeda near sacrifice to the Kraken in Clash of the Titans.
• The Key to Tartarus was broken up and scattered around the world three thousand years ago.

Opinion

Highlights

An Amazonian manicure – tougher than stone.

Oddities

Wonder Woman doesn’t seem to realise what the relics are, but she’s the one that later relates their part in the origin myth of the Amazons.

Batman assembles the seemingly complete key in Faust’s office, but the League only found three of the fragments. The fourth fragment is the piece Hippolyta kept in the Temple and is presumably the one that Faust mentions already possessing. Did he give it to Wonder Woman before she left?

My Thoughts

Where this episode really shines in the third act, the descent into Necropolis and the battle against Lord Hades. Each time you think they’ve out done themselves they ratchet up the action another couple of notches. And its all done with a beautiful fluidity.

One thing that I think they’ve tried to do since the start of the series is to prove that Wonder Woman can handle herself in Superman’s weight class. Unfortunately, that means she has to follow the predictable route of beating Superman up – it’s something of a trope in that cartoon that you establish how powerful the bad guy is by getting him to slap Superman around. The downside is that it just makes Superman look like a wuss. Regardless of that Wonder Woman really gets to shine in the action sequences in this story, first against the stone giant and finally by clawing her way, literally, our of the gateway to Tartarus.

4.0