Special Edition Podcast
Show Notes
This past Tuesday saw the release of Warner Bros. Animation’s inaugural film from their new direct-to-DVD DC Comics adaptation series: Superman: Doomsday! Brought to you by animation legend Bruce Timm, Superman: Doomsday is a loose adaptation of The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen storylines. The cast includes Adam Baldwin as Clark Kent/Superman, Anne Heche as Lois Lane and James Marsters as Lex Luthor (What, did Joss Whedon cast this movie?). We were all pretty psyched about this release (one of us in particular – guess who?)!
Running Time: 00:18:41
Did you check it out? What did you think? Be warned, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might not want to read any further or listen to the show. There be spoilers about.
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Anybody seen the Superman/Doomsday DVD yet?
I really really loved it!! It seems to have better acting and story quality than the Marvel animated movies. I will say that I hated the stupid lines that they drew on Superman’s face. Really really good though!!
I saw it. I thought is really good except I didn’t think Anne Heche did a good job with Lois Lane’s voice.
Is this thing suitable for kids? If nto, I need to hide the box when I bring it home.
I would assume they would make it suitable for all ages, but does it have a rating? I think I read somewhere that it’s rated PG. I could be wrong…or just illiterate.
It’s rated PG-13. There’s blood and violence and people die.
It is PG-13. I watched it last night after my 5 and 7 year olds went to bed. I’m not going to show them this for a couple of years when the youngest (the boy) is close to 8. I think my oldest (the girl) could probably watch this now, but it wouldn’t be fair to the other. I’ll hide it for now.
Don’t think about the book. Don’t think about what has been done before. Realize that this movie is a stand alone flick. A world where Superman is the only superhero. Basically, this could be someone’s very first exposer to Superman on film. Once I was able to “deal” with this (comicbook fanatics have to “deal” with these things concering films telling comicbook stories), I was ready to watch the flick. Actually, this took very little effort to “deal” with on my part. I was damn excited from the day they first announced that they were making these DTV films. The Marvel DTV series had prepared me to not expect too much and I ended up quite suprised at my enjoyment of this movie. It is definetly better than anything by the Marvel line. This is not better than the second Hellboy animated, but just might be on par with or just below the first Hellboy animated. A solid B grade. Luthor steals the show and the fight sequences are incredible. The drawbacks for me were the annoying voice of Lois and the freaky lines on Superman’s face. Love or hate this movie, everyone will agree that the bonus features here are fantastic. The 10 minute JL: New Frontier feature was so exciting to watch that I watched it again. This looks to be the animated film that’ll set the bar. Awesome stuff!
C.
It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it seems to me, after watching Marvel fail at it for the last two years, that maybe in the near future we can get adult animated movies done right.
This movie was just the essentials of the story, at 70 minutes it has to be. But Timm and the other writer do a very good job at getting to the heart of the story. That said though, I think that they lose a lot of the emotional impact of having the world without a Superman because of the run time. There is a Superman of some form or another running around this film for all but about eight minutes of screen time.
Where they succeed however is with the initial battle which is fantastic, I enjoyed the relationship between Lois and Supes very much, as well as Lois reaching out to Martha, and Evil Lex Luther just kicked ass.
This was just a taste of what I hope will be a very successful direct to DVD run for DC. Bring on the New Frontier.
Awesome Kevin Smith cameo and callback to his Superman/Warner Brothers script!!!
I had mixed feeling about this one.
The story is good although I would have enjoyed watching a more faithful adaptaion of the comic book.
I agree with the people who found Superman’s cheekbones disturbing and Anne Heche’s voice track out of sync. The dialogue in general also suffered.
However, the battle between the Supermen were interesting.
The documentaries on the extras section are probably the best part of the DVD. Here you ge tto listen how the story originated from the its creatos and seeing Louise Simonson cry as she describes her most heart-felt moments is… weird.
Why are you all so down on the marvel animated ones. They aren’t that bad. This is only better because it has a much stronger story since they are somewhat following a damn good story.
The problem I have with the Ultimate Avengers 1 and 2, is that they had in my opinion an awesome story to follow and they chose to ignore it.
Why not just use what Millar and Hitch had done in the books? Instead Marvel chose the path of broader appeal, which produced a product that was just bland across the board. It was dumbed down for a mass market.
Not that The Ultimates was exactly highbrow fare. The comics played with the original concepts of the Avengers and produced something that was not only fantastic artistically, unlike the animated movies, but generally an interesting read. Some of my favorite comics of the time.
Marvel just wasted an opportunity to give us something new. They were all ready going with a more adult rating (pg13), why not take the next step and give us something truly for adult. Instead they went the cheap and quick way and produced something instantly forgetable.
I do think that Iron Man and Dr. Strange were better offerings, but again its almost as if they chose to ignore the comics all together.
I just think that as comic fans we become complacent when we see characters that we love in another medium. We are just so jazzed to see these characters on a broader stage that we forgive all of the shortcomings. We are not going to get better quality unless we demand it.
On the flip side we have to support the quality entertainment that we do get. So fight the impulse to buy X-Men 3 and save your money for The New Frontier (god, I hope it is going to be good).
I’m getting the DVD tonight and plan to enjoy it sometime this weekend.
I have lowered my expectations, although not quite to Ultimate Avengers levels. The Marvel movies are truly, truly awful. I’ve stopped watching them at the 10 minute point of Iron Man. They just suck.
Wow… It’s surprising to see people’s opinion of Marvel’s DVDs.
I’m mostly a DC guy when it comes to comics. I’ve never read The Ultimates or The Avengers, yet I loved the movies. Maybe becuase I didn’t know the source material.
It’s not really surprising. Marvel always gets more shit for its product than DC.
I liked the Ultimates movies and the Iron Man movie; I look forward to checking out the Dr. Strange movie.
Superman Doomsday was okay not the greatest thing but it was pretty good but come on do something why was it PG-13 it was not that disturbing the Pirate movies were worse.
I’m not a big Superman fan, didn’t read the story in comic form and I loved this movie. It made me wish that this had been the storyline for Superman Returns.
I thought it was very good, but the ending made me uncomfortable. I mean, Superman killed the clone. Superman does NOT kill.
He killed Doomsday.
Its not like killing them was what he intended. He had to fight as hard as he could and they happened to die. In a battle like that its believable that the blow that stops them would also kill them.
Batman doesn’t kill. Superman…undecided.
“Batman doesn’t kill.”
…anymore.
Superman may not kill, but watch out for his six year old! That m*#&$*#*#*$&er is stone cold.
I think I said it once, here at Ifanboy…
Marvel DVD’s lack the great comic book artist doing the layouts of their storyboards. Thus, the action on the screen suffers and it gets too boring too soon. That’s where you can tell Timm’s experience in both media (comics and animation)
I liked Superman Doomsday. Missed the voices and the reign of the supermen.
So I got the DVD in the mail today (it was ten bucks on Amazon I figured, what the hell) and overall I really liked it. I’d say a solid B to B +. The only problem is some of the dialouge in the first half hour feels a bit cluncky, but Capizzi tends to do that with his scripts.
But some highlights:
Superman vomiting blood…awesome!
The dropping of Toyman was the shit.
Doomsday was well done.
I had no problem with the voice acting and actually found I enjoyed the voices in the side characters (Perry White, Jimmy).
If anything I wish it were a little longer, not much, but five minutes here or there to flesh some things out. Also the design of Superman was a little wonky in the face (he has lines on the side of his face I believe to make him look more lean, but it was just distracting. But I know TImm didn’t want to do the same design and I can respect that) but I’d say it’s a nice addition to the DC animated stuff.
Great episode guys.
I think it was said in the commentary during one of the episode of Superman the Animated Series that the “S” logo is missing from the cape, because that is very hard to animate and make look good. So that might be one reason why that iconic torn cape shot was so short and why the “S” was absent.
I think that everyone should check out the Marvel Animated Doctor Strange. I just watched it the other night and, after seeing all of the others, I think it is the best one that Marvel has done so far. The acting was better for sure and the story was also well put together I thought. I suppose it could be that I also have a soft spot for old Stephen Strange…but I think everyone should watch it before they write off the whole line of Marvel animated movies altogether.
The Marvel and DC movies share a lot of creative people, especially in storyboards. The Ultimate Avenger movies switched producers in midstream to go with the guy who did all the old Marvel shows. Hence the similarity in look.
Frank Paur was the creative lead in Iron Man and Dr. Strange but did not control story other than make suggestions and the normal changes that happen in storyboarding. Both these movies are worth a look for the sake of discussion.
But as to adapting comic book stories to animation, other than origins, I don’t think there’s a strong reason for it. One, characters are revamped continually anyway by writers good and bad and two, comics are constantly coming up with new stories, why should animation be different? Plus, adapting a story into another medium demands new choices and compromises. One can make a great film and still piss off the fanboys.
WB picked the Death of Superman as a starter story for the same reason they did the story in the comics: it’s a high profile attention getter.
I agree with Tad. I don’t think the Marvel animated ones are quite as bad as they have been made out to be.
But I am curious about something that maybe someone can answer. Have you ever watched the little mini-movies that are on video games such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance or x-Men Legends II? They put the best of these scenes on the extra features of the Doctor Strange DVD. The quality of those movies is absolutely breath taking. There are several times where it almost appears real. Why is it that there are no full length movies done with this same type of quality? Is it too time consuming or expensive or something? Granted each of those little scenes is only a few minutes long…but if you add up the total run time of all of them across the game and you have a chunk of a movie’s runtime already.
It would be awesome to see a full length feature done with this type of CGI (or whatever it is). Any thoughts?
The cut scenes from Ultimate Alliance made me want to buy the game. The script for the game is…rough, but there are some beautiful images.