Amazon Unbox downloaded this movie to my Tivo right after it taped the introduction of Superman to The Batman cartoon series, the current anime-inspired version of Batman. And to my surprise, all of the voice actors from the Justice League cartoon series were back in the Batman cartoon: George Newbern as the serious Superman, Dana Delaney as the sarcastic Lois Lane, and Clancy Brown as the debonair and devious Lex Luthor. With both on my Tivo, it was easy to make a comparison between the two animated depictions of Superman.
Warning: This review contains spoilers. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
The character designs have been altered a bit from the Superman animated series. Superman (voiced by Adam Baldwin) has bizarrely drawn cheekbones in this movie. Everyone else more or less looks the same, although Lex Luthor (voiced by James Marsters) is a "white guy" again; the Superman cartoon cast him as a Kojak-like darker skinned man who became progressively lighter skinned in each incarnation. Lois (voiced by Anne Heche, of all people) still looks like Lois, wearing impossibly short skirts and yet achieving an amazing range of athletic moves. Three cheers for animated physics!
Superman: Doomsday really enjoys its PG-13-ness. People say funny cuss words like "freaking," have relations, and die -- bloodlessly, but they still die. This is an animation for grown-ups, folks!
The voice actors do a suitable job. Heche is actually the best of the bunch, providing a full range of emotions to Lois. Adam Wylie is great as Jimmy Olsen, but I don't give him quite as much props as he's not exactly new to the DC animation universe (he's the voice of Brainiac 5 in Legion of Super-Heroes). The most egregious loss is Brown as Lex Luthor. Clancy Brown's gravelly baritone has always given the character a subtle menace. In Superman: Doomsday, Lex is just a bald guy with an attitude.
And thus we have the first of several problems with this movie. Lex is a one-dimensional villain bent on destroying Superman. You know you're in trouble when you can make "he's so evil..." jokes. For example:
- Lex is so evil, he has the cure for cancer but doesn't share it with the world!
- He's so evil, he has a special room created just for beating up Superman!
- He's so evil, he shoots his own henchmen to cover up his operations!
After a long, protracted fight with a goofy-looking muscle-bound gargoyle named Doomsday, Superman dies.
What made the death of Superman so important was the way the writers dealt with his death. Superman is as much a divine being and an iconic symbol as he is an alien who protects Earth; his death had emotional repercussions on the level of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, and the comics made a point of showing what a world without Superman was like. His death helped create Steel and Superboy and other heroes I didn't keep track of because I wasn't reading the comics at the time.
You won't find any of that here. We have a few minutes of mourning, a few minutes of revelations (Lois knew Superman's identity, Lois meets Martha Kent, Lois and Superman were getting it on), and then Superman returns. Only he's mean.
And so, Superman: Doomsday isn't just about Superman dying at the hands of a super villain - it's about Superman being the not-so-noble guy we always knew he could be. This new, resurrected version acts with brutal efficiency. That's most epitomized by his murder of the Toyman after Superman 2.0 discovers that Toyman escape from prison and killed a little girl in a hostage crisis.
There's a reckoning, of course: two Supermen battling it out, comparable to the Doomsday fight only with more blood and clever asides. And like the end of the movie, punch for punch, the old Superman (Animated Series) beats the new Superman (Doomsday), hands down.
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