Friday 19 April 2019

Superman: Doomsday (2007)



Lex Luthor's pursuit of weapons with which to defeat Superman leads to the discovery of an ancient alien spaceship.  The single inhabitant is a brutish, bone-spiked monstrosity that tears its way across the landscape toward Metropolis.  Immensely powerful, this alien creature is beyond anyone's control, and is such a fierce and powerful threat that the question is open as to whether the Man of Steel can defeat it ... or even survive the attempt.

Superman: Doomsday was the first DC Animated film, and it suffers from three key issues that prevent me from recommending it, even to comics fans.

First, it takes as its starting point the rather tedious "Death of Superman" story arc from the comments, in which a silent, unstoppable killing machine we've never seen before stalks in silent unstoppableness toward an extended fistfight with Supes.  Sensibly, the film only dedicates its first act to this, before moving onto the fallout of Superman's apparent death.  It becomes more engaging after that (and it sensibly eschews the over-complicated nonsense of the post-death comics) but it makes for a rather uninteresting first twenty minutes.

The second issue is the selection of Adam Baldwin as the voice of Superman.  In 2007 it probably seemed a decent choice, and his performance is technically decent, but in the modern day, when Baldwin's repellent bigotry is well-documented, it's a significant dissonance to hear his voice coming from the archetypal Good Guy.

Finally, the movie suffers from an issue that has also plagued DC's cinematic releases: a desire to be "edgy".  Pro-tip, guys: when your Lex Luthor executes a competent henchperson who has successfully done everything he asked them to do, it doesn't make him look badass, it makes him look like an idiot.

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