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There’s something to be said of the confusing complexity that the second Crisis on Infinite Earths embraces. While Part One did struggle to find its footing with its needlessly intricate universes converging, there was a stable story to follow from beginning to end with Barry Allen and Iris. But with them out of the picture, Part Two feels more like a lost narrative, stumbling around in the dark trying to duct tape together the animated Tomorrowverse with the wiring of the original Crisis comic.
It doesn’t help that the two foreground plots are framed in a baffling manner. Exisiting outside of time, the elusive Psycho Pirate takes advantage of the erraticated Earths of many dimensions. As he hops from universe to universe, he soon comes to make an ally with the Anti-Monitor, a being compelled to destroy every timeline. It becomes tough to track the motivations and placement of Psycho Pirate, considering how he makes others forgets and never stays put long enough to pin him down. At the same time, the observing Monitor has decided to break his code of interference to give the mind-wiped Supergirl a home and a purpose. He tries to hide the hideous truth until he’s forced to let Supergirl in on the dark workings of multiverse, where watching billions die is an unfortunate part of the job.
Those are only the primary plots in terms of developments that are not just a series of fights. While the Psycho Pirate and Supergirl arcs progress, the various Justice League members busy themselves with trying to save many Earths from the wave of nothingness. This leads to many showdowns as these Earths still have their feuds that continue. Batman, for example, finds himself fighting back against the various members of his bat family in a skirmish that plays more like an excuse for the caped crusader to hash out some internal conflicts. There’s a decayed future where the only remaining human must accept that while Earth itself will be saved, his civilization is still doomed to a hellscape. These battles have all the empty allure of a direct-to-video, 40-minute Dragon Ball movie.
It’s hard to feel the weight of anything in the continuing story of Earths being wiped off the map. The dense comic arc had the benefit of tying together several years and dozens of characters. This film saga, even with the benefit of a smaller roster and a shorter legacy of less than a decade of movies, doesn’t have nearly the same impact. The lacking adaptation can be felt in how Watchmen attempts to make the jump from page to screen. Upon its publication, Watchmen was seen as a postmodern superhero story that grappled with politics of the 1980s in a gritty way. But when Zack Snyder wielded his own adaptation, it felt like a lukewarm recitation, more concerned with matching the frames than comprehending the writing. Crisis is the same way, presenting the comic book as more of a checklist with a few missing items and a refusal to understand the allure of its era. With this in mind, I’m not exactly looking forward to Warner Bros’s upcoming animated adaptation of Watchmen.
Crisis on Infinite Earths grows more convoluted and confounding with its second chapter. It’s too light on its own lore to take advantage of the comic staging and too dependent on key events to understandable for anybody not already engrossed in the multiverse messiness of DC Comics. Above all, it’s still just a slog of a story, rarely making its complex staging worth following. Part Two leaves little faith in the promise of Part Three delivering a satisfying finale, even with the top villain of the Anti-Monitor finally arriving on the scene.
