So, one day later, I got to watch Superman: Doomsday. I have to say that I agree on all of Jon's points. It certainly was much better than Superman Returns which shall henceforth be known as Superman: Teh S uck.
Superman: Doomsday surprised me, though. I knew it was not a Saturday morning cartoon from its PG-13 rating, but I didn't expect the amount of carnage and senseless violence that Doomsday wrought on his way to Metropolis. There was a lot of killing. Stacy pointed out that every scene illustrated part of his power, his invulnerability to fire or bullets, his strength, what have you. I thought it was a very insightful comment from someone that is prone to react with disgust at animated violence and not that interested in things of a comic book nature. I was very impressed.
I was thinking about Jon's reaction to Anne Heche as Lois Lane as I watched. I think I know why it was so bothersome. In her first scene, Lois is overwhelmingly - er - Hechey. Her lines were delivered with such Hechiness that it was impossible not to find it jarring. It seemed after that initial burst, that Lois toned down the Hechiness and got about the business of being Lois, though. Perhaps that's why over the course of the movie she becomes much more tolerable and even likable.
The voice acting was good. It was startling to see how they had made Lex into a little bit of a skeevy perv, but nothing compared with Toyman's delivery. Well done on both Marster's and Dimaggio's parts. Adam Baldwin did an excellent job with Supes. His lines as Dark Superman were chilling in their normalcy. It was all just so matter-of-fact. I knew I recognized Jimmy's voice, but when I saw who it was, I couldn't figure out why. Then I looked up Adam Wylie's IMDB entry and found that he's been doing voice over work for quite some time, as well as many television appearances. I think I knew him best as the little kid on Picket Fences back in the mid-nineties.
For those of you that saw Superman: Teh S uck and came away feeling vaguely disappointed, or outright outraged, I recommend you pick up Superman: Doomsday and see how a Superman story should really be told.
I give Superman: Doomsday five out of five Unstoppable Killing Machines on a scale I just made up that doesn't mean anything.
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5 comments:
In regards to all of the senseless carnage that Doomsday wrought, there was something that I meant to mention in my review of the movie but forgot (in fact, I didn't even mention Doomsday himself at all).
The thing I liked about all of the carnage scenes was that it showed him to be rather like a child in certain respects. A murderous, destructive child to be sure, but a child nonetheless. Specifically a child with no attention span. I liked the way he just moved from victim to victim. Killing this guy - hey, a deer! Killing that. What's that coming down the road? Destroying truck, killing driver, ooh, hey, a whole city!
No prioritizing, just flitting about killing whatever captures his attention. Even when facing an actual threat in the form of Superman, he frequently turned away to kill something else that he happened to see.
I just thought it made him a little more interesting, as mindless killing machines go.
And he also looked cool as hell. With the exception of the cheekbones, the whole thing looked much better than the stills and trailers I'd seen had led me to expect.
And I think you hit the nail on the Heche...er, head in regards to why Lois was so off-putting initially.
But she did turn it around, and you had to love her telling Jimmy to "Stop being such a girl."
Good point on Doomsday. It certainly lent him additional weight as a character. I haven't read everything surrounding the death of Superman, but if I remember correctly, Doomsday didn't much of a back story until it was all said and done, did he? I was explaining the story to Stacy as we watched it, realizing that Doomsday's back story really had no bearing at all on his part in the movie. Having a cryptic alien message before his release was all you really needed to know about where he came from.
No, in the comics at the time there was no explanation of where Doomsday came from; you'd just seen the progression of his attempts to escape from underground, and then he was loose and wreaking havoc.
(At the time omeone had spread the rumor that Doomsday was an escapee from some sort of intergalactic mental institution; this prompted some mental health group to protest the negative portrayal of the mentally ill. They made an unsucessful attempt at having DC boycotted before DC said, "Shut up; you don't even know what you're talking about," or words to that effect.)
The only real characterization he was provided with was when he saw an ad on a TV in a store window for a big wrestling match in Metropolis. The prospect of this "battle," presumably, provided his impetus for heading to Metropolis from (IIRC) Ohio.
In the later revelations about his history, it was suggested that he was drawn to Metropolis because he sensed Superman's presence and had in-born recognition of a Kryptonian as his enemy.
Too much of a retcon, though; in the comics, Doomsday was similarly ADHD, and only paid attention to Superman because Superman kept insisting on it (Why so needy, Superman?).
One minor complaint I had about the DVD version was that, until the end, Superman made no effort to move the battle to someplace with fewer bystanders. In the comics he tried, but Doomsday wasn't having any of it and kept forcing the battle back to Metropolis.
Oh, and without the shield, the scene in the DVD showing the tattered piece of cape flapping in the breeze had none of the resonance that the similar scene in the comics had; in fact, it was the cover image on the "standard" edition of #75.
Ah, so the dvd followed the original comic even closer than I thought. That's good to know. Interesting point about the cape. I have to agree. It didn't convey the same depth of meaning and emotion as the comic's iconic scene. Very odd considering how closely they followed the comic in other places.
Shield on the cape = too much of a pain to animate.
That's even the reason they left it off in Superman Teh S uck.
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