Ethan Spaulding

Ethan Spaulding came up as a storyboard artist and made his name on Avatar: The Last Airbender, directing twelve episodes of a series that ran from 2005 to 2008 and boarding others. That is an unusually good school: a show whose action was choreographed rather than merely staged, built on a fight language borrowed from real martial arts. When it ended he moved to Warner Bros. Animation and produced the ThunderCats reboot.

Since then he has been one of the dependable hands in the direct-to-video animation business, which is a genuine craft and almost never described as one. These films are made fast and cheap, and the director's job is to spend the money where it will show. Spaulding is good at that. Son of Batman and Justice League: Throne of Atlantis are competent, unremarkable entries in a long line of them, but Batman: Assault on Arkham is the one people remember, a heist picture in which Batman is a supporting threat rather than the hero, and it moves.

The Mortal Kombat Legends films are where the leash comes off. Scorpion's Revenge, Battle of the Realms and Cage Match are unapologetically violent, badly behaved and audibly enjoying themselves, and they make the best case for him as a director with a temperament rather than a schedule. The Scooby-Doo assignments, from Camp Scare through Return to Zombie Island and the LEGO spin-offs, are the day job, and he does them without contempt.