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Well -- it's another month of not getting to write
my RPG module due to work, reading and trying to find
time to write some original works and ending up
writing a last minute movie review.
I'm sure someone else here is already doing one--
but here are my two cents.
This 75 minute film spends the first 30 minutes
doing a rather faithful adaptation of the comic
storyline that got me really appreciating the DCU.
Sure, I read some DC books prior to that mainly
Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew or Giffen era
Justice Leagues but The Death of Superman grabbed me
even though I knew he'd be back.
I think The Death of Superman and the
first few years after that the Superbooks were telling
great stories. I especially loved The Death of
Mxyzptlk spoof cover they did a few years later.
The movie skips three key parts of the original.
The big brawl with the Justice League which really
wasn't necessary to the story, but did serve a purpose.
In the original Doomsday goes up against Guy
Gardener, Maxima and Bloodstone (who I think was still
J'onn at this point). Those three were (at the time)
pretty heavy hitters and Doomsday swatted them like
flies. If without the ad campaign and TV news you
knew the fight with Supes was going to be a major
brawl.
The film handles this eloquently by having his attack
several military outposst before the main event. It's
satisfying but it didn't have the same 'Holy Crap!'
feel that beating the crap out of the Justice League
did. Nine times out of ten the military is useless in
any fight Superman is in.
They sadly cut out my two favorite subplots of The
Death of Superman. I don't know about most people but
I liked the story with the teenager who didn't get
along with his family and his struggle when his town
was smashed up by Doomsday. I'm a sucker for
parallelism in subplots. The other cut worth
mentioning is that they leave out John Henry Irons.
While his part in The Death of Superman was small, I
still liked the idea of a normal man trying to redeem
himself because he thought if Superman hadn't tried to
rescue him he might have survived.
The second half of the movie is where it loses
track. They sort of combine Cyborg Superman and
Superboy into one character and have Luthor behind the
cloning and not Cadmus. I get the reasoning for this.
In comics you can have a cast of dozens because you
can theoretically have as many issues as you want to
focus on them. A movie has to be short.
The problem is the second act where the resurrection
occurs. There are many deviations from the original
(which can be expected) but whereas the first half
was very strong, the middle seemed more like a poorly
conceived third season Lois and Clark episode complete
with a cute and somewhat funny but distracting guest
star-- in this case professional fanboy Kevin Smith.
Don't get me wrong-- I love Lois and Clark but face
it Fanboys, season three was pretty crappy. (I also
love Kevin Smith's movies especially Mallrats and
Dogma.)
The third act picks up again and while not quite
true to the text, it stays closer to it. It's not the
Reign of the Superman, but the dialogue does reflect who
the characters are and is believable for the versions
we've seen on most variations on DC continuity.
Overall: C+
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