The Justice League annihilates Scooby-Doo and 6 spooky foes as it seeks vengeance on streaming

James Gunn may be gearing up to bring DC‘s timeless cast of champions to true cinematic glory, but Superman, Batman, and the rest of the world’s most legendary cape-wearers have actually been bossing screens for some time now. The only problem is that the world doesn’t respect animation enough to take those outings seriously.

Okay, so maybe that’s not the only problem. DC’s Tomorrowverse has certainly had its heavy-hitters (Batman: The Long Halloween and Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, to name a few), but Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three hasn’t exactly proven to be one of them. Despite a strong start with Part One, the conclusion to this animated canon sputtered out in the last two thirds, unceremoniously clearing the way for Creature Commandos and Gunn’s 2025 Superman flick to step up noiselessly.

Nevertheless, the animated canon-capper is scrounging up a victory lap on Max at the moment. Per FlixPatrol, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three has climbed up to third place on the Max rankings in the United States at the time of writing, clambering over a heavily Halloween-coded group of flicks including It, Freddy vs. Jason, Corpse Bride, Salem’s Lot, X, and MaXXXine.

But chief among those who have witnessed the Justice League’s rise on Max is the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo film, whose presence has proved quite poetic, as it’s Gunn himself who was responsible for penning Mystery Inc.’s first cinematic shenanigan back in the day. And now, he’s leading the next generation of DC’s screen stories, which will hopefully thrive like never before.

As for Scooby-Doo, it’s certainly one of the more fascinating films on Gunn’s résumé, though not on account of it being any good. His decision to include the infamous Scrappy-Doo as the villain (who transforms into a monster named Scrappy Rex — sure, man, whatever you say), was fun and tongue-in-cheek, but tangoed with too much insanity and obnoxiousness to really make it land effectively.

This, while making the equally-insane choice to up the thirst-trap factor of the bulk of Mystery Inc. (a choice that might not have been Gunn’s, per se, but I digress), as well as double-down on Shaggy’s stoner coding in a way that the film just barely gets away with.

Speaking of Shaggy, we would of course be remiss to mention the live-action Scooby-Doo film without touching on its legendary decision to cast Matthew Lillard in the role of the one and only Norville “Shaggy” Rogers; an actor-character marriage that’s right up there with Heath Ledger’s Joker and Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter.

While we’re on the topic of Gunn, DC, and Lillard, now is as good a time as ever to point out that Gunn has the opportunity to cast the Scream star as an aged-up Blue Devil in the DC Universe, which would be a genius move for a number of reasons.

For one, Blue Devil is most at home in a horror comedy setting, which is undeniably Lillard’s bread and butter as well. Secondly, Blue Devil’s backstory as a former Hollywood employee (specifically as a stuntman and VFX specialist) allows the character the space to play with meta elements in a way that isn’t grossly tacky.

And beyond the fact that Scream — the arguable queen of meta across franchise cinema — was Lillard’s original claim to fame, we’ve reached a point in time where the fact of Lillard’s presence in a horror-tinged project is usually more significant than the character he actually plays. That metatextual harmony simply won’t be found anywhere else.

Here’s hoping Lillard continues aging like the slasher franchise he called home back in 1996 so that this possibility stays fresh. Hop to it, Gunn!