This animated straight to DVD movie is based of the comic book title of the same name, now I just as of Monday read the 03’ comic book version and seen all the similarities and the differences. I even get the animation style a bit more now, which I’m liking how each movie the animation style does switch up, it makes it feel like comic books a bit more. Bruce Timm gives those who grew up watching Batman The Animated Series and Superman The animated Series (I didn’t really watch Superman because it was on CBS and WB was the shit back then so I might have missed out) voice actors. Tim Daly as Superman, Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor and Kevin Conroy as Batman, the guy has spoiled us for over 15 years no wonder no other voice actor can cut it as The dark Knight. Even the wonderful beyond talented C.C.H. Pounder reprises her roll as Amanda Waller.
So the plot is Lex slides in as a third party candidate s during our then and even now real time financial uncertainties. He become President and put us back on the right track, goes on some crusade against super powered people, mainly Superman, and a chuck of Kryptonite is heading to Earth. He even gets a few super heroes to become government employed agents if you will. Lex calls out Superman for a sit down to try and work something out to take care of the Kryptonite heading to earth. Superman shows up a fight between him and Matello breaks out Matello shoots Superman with chip of Krytonite and Batman is as usual around somewhere to help out. Someone kills Matello and Lex blames Superman, places a billion dollar bounty on his head and all the villains come out the woodwork for that money. After feeling they’ve been helped by Captain Atom and his crew Superman and Bats find out what they thought was help only came to capture them and bring them in. That starts another little battle. There’s a lot of action in this flick, every time you look up there is a battle. It’s all part of the story in the comics too so it’s not like its just random fighting. The movie ends with Batman taking a giant robot made by a young boy, the new toy man, that looks like half Superman and half Bats to space to destroy the chunk of Kryptonite. Alls well that ends well, a few words between our heroes and cut to credits
There are two problems here.
- These films are to short, it was cool when they were movie versions expanding on the cartoon series but now they are adaptations of comic stories, 70 minutes isn’t cutting it anymore. The keeping with this scaled down time frame keeps a lot of stuff out the movie. Give us at least 90 minutes, I’m hoping for a bit longer but I can take 90 minutes.
- Place thought bubbles in your movie. What makes the Superman Batman comic great are the little thoughts about one another that run through their head as their on these adventures together. I’m sure those who love these comics would really enjoy that aspect too.
Those two reasons are why people really didn’t like the Doomsday movie. Superman dialog was nothing but thoughts in the comic it’s what made that battle compelling. Then the fact so much was left out of the film didn’t help. I know these are adoptions but still unless you read the comic you have no idea what Batman meant when he said “castling”. The plots sometimes comes away not fully flushed out to again deal with time, in reality this movie is four comic book issues even with all the cutting A LOT stuff out there still should have been more stuff left in to make the plot gel together.
The movie itself is great, it’s nice to see that Warner Bros. Animation is really making these films better with each new one that comes out. Again with a movie like this a lot more dialog would have really helped. My advice for people looking at any of these adoptions is read the comic first then watch the film you can appreciate the film a bit more. So many people hate these comic movies live action or animation and have no clue about the comics themselves.
The Collective Conscious 