The Chef Reviews Superman: Doomsday

Let me go on record and say that I'm a big fan of the regular DC animated universe, especially Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. Speaking frankly, Bruce Timm is my god and I worship at his altar. He and his team created the cleanest, smartest, best-written takes on the classic DC Comics characters that have ever been done. Sadly (or maybe not so sadly, since the DCAU version of Doomsday was gimped), Superman: Doomsday isn't set in that universe.

Superman: Doomsday is theoretically based on the infamous “Death of Superman� storyline from the comics. However, it's drastically different to the point that aside from involving the Doomsday character and Superman temporarily kicking the bucket, they're completely unrelated. It bears only the vaguest resemblance to the original comics story, to the point that I'd consider the “inspired by� line on the package to be false advertising.

So, it's not really an animated adaptation of the “Death and Rebirth� story from the comics, and it's not related to the other small-screen DC adaptations. I'm going to try my hardest not to judge this movie by comparing it to the main DCAU (as it's usually shortened to). It's not fair to say, “Justice League did this or that better.�, and it's unfair to say that this movie sucks just because it's not like the comics version.

Well, the movie sucks, but not for those reasons. I've had to subject myself to this travesty twice in a row - once to actually watch it for the review, the second time to get the screencaps and double-check some of the quotes. It doesn't get better with repeated viewing.

Let me say right off the bat that the writing for this movie is terrible. Characters give stiff-sounding speeches that would probably be fine on the comics page, but are just ludicrous on screen (even given that Superman is bloody well supposed to be cheesy and melodramatic at times). Some parts make me think of a badly-written anime dub instead of anything originally written in English.

The movie starts out with Lex Luthor apparently watching a montage of the Man of Steel, all the while melodramatically musing that Superman is a benevolent god and suchlike, but there's always a time for a god to die. I'm not going to get into the whole “Superman is Jesus� angle some people have put on the death and resurrection of Big Blue. Luthor's not really helping.

Then, the scene shifts to Metropolis, which looks unsurprisingly like it did in Justice League and the rest of the DC animated universe. I'm going to come right out and say that the animation is decent, but it's not a hell of a lot better than the standard DCAU shows. There are some nicely-staged moments, but there's nothing in this, visually speaking, that makes you jump out of your seat saying, “that's awesome�.

We then see Lois Lane in Perry's office, arguing with him. Perry White looks pretty much like any other incarnation of the character. Lois, however…Lois's animation model has a kind of lolicon thing going on. She looks more like a Teen Titans character than anything else. I can't look at this without thinking, “If Summer Glau or Christina Ricci got dumped into the DC animated universe, this is what she'd look like.�

While we're on the topic of Lois, Anne Heche is bland but serviceable. I don't know why they bothered to get a fairly famous actress to do her voice, because there's really not much to Lois. She just has to be dumb enough to stick her nose where it shouldn't be, then yell for Superman to rescue her. Seriously, there is nothing else to this woman.

After Perry finishes chewing out Lois, she goes out and runs into Clark. If you haven't been living under a rock the size of the Maitre d's unusually large potato-shaped head, you know who this loser is. We'll get into him later on, but look at the size of that fucking chin. He's supposedly off to Lower Beelzeslovakia or New Jersey or some other godforsaken Third World hellhole as a foreign correspondent or something.

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