Superman: Unbound
In my anticipation of the screening i’m going to Monday night for Man of Steel, I picked up Superman: Unbound, the animated movie. While admittedly, I am much more of a Batman fan, Superman has his high points as well. Supergirl, Brainiac, Lois Lane and the general cast you would expect (minus Lex Luthor) round out the movie for a fun hour, with only a few questions left to ask afterwords.
One of the first things I look for in an animated movie in the DC Universe is, is this something that you could enjoy without knowing the in’s and out’s of the comics? While Superman is a story that most people are familiar with, this one was a pretty safe bet. If you’ve read Superman: Brainiac by Geoff Johns, there are no real surprises here. If you haven’t read it, with any rudimentary knowledge of Superman, you should be able to understand what is happening pretty easily.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Women have something against pants in this city.
What I don’t understand, is why they pushed the same old stereotypes at us in the movie. So, we start off with a rescue of Lois Lane by an aggressive Super Girl (who, by other super hero standards wasn’t really being all that out of line), and then Super Man. After a telling off of Super Girl for going too far and her emotional outburst, Super Man returns as Clark Kent to stop a creepy dude at the Daily Planet from hitting on Lois Lane.
Insert another disaster that turns out to be a probe for Brainiac, but also about 30 minutes of Lois Lane and Clark Kent arguing about his fear of commitment. Seriously? The girl hero has to be emotional, the hero guy has to have a fear of commitment, and the heroine needs to be pushing marriage? I guess a throw back to an older age in comics, but didn’t this book only get published 5 years ago?
Superman takes off to try and find Brainiac, in part to protect earth, and in part because the story Super Girl told him about how Brainiac came to Krypton, his robot minions attacked and killed many while literally taking the city of Kandor. The entire city, and those in it. How he knew where to find Brainiac, I must have missed. Interestingly enough, this is one of the moments where you see Superman SPECTACULARLY fail in trying to save people. He thrashed some robots around, attacked Brainiac’s ship, but just wasn’t able to stop the missile that blew up random planet o’ distressed people’s sun, and destroying their planet.
Superman is captured by Brainiac, but he doesn’t seem as distressed as you would think for someone who just witnessed the annihilation of a planet! Superman meets Brainiac, and he sees that when he takes cities from planets, he actually keeps them in tact, but miniaturizes them. Superman is then put with the other Kryptonians in the miniaturized city of Kandor, where he meets with Super Girl’s parents (also, his aunt and uncle). He hatches a cunning plan to escape by performing subversive acts to lure the enforcer robots to his location, and then grabbing on to them when they were being ‘recalled’, or transported out of the city. You would think if you have built in the ability to transport things, you would also have the ability to not transport the man hugging said things. But… okay. The veil of disbelief is still somewhat in tact.
Long scene of Superman escaping by beating up Brainiac and escaping with the still miniaturized city of Kandor, he returns to earth where Super Girl has a major freak out that Superman has led Brainiac to earth, lots of super fighting, and super being caught by the bad guy. Again. Brainiac miniaturizes Metropolis, and is torturing Super Girl and Super Man again, and they escape… again. Ooooookay… this veil of disbelief is getting really thin, but go on.
Screw you Brainiac
While Super Girl is off trying to stop the missile that is going to blow up our Sun, Superman is trying to stop Brainiac, there is this amazing scene of a miniaturized Lois Lane flipping off Brainiac as he peers into their glass canary city cage. There is also quite a bit of gore in this movie, and Super Man telling Brainiac to go to hell, as he tosses his body down a pit, a la Vader v. Emperor in Starwars. A little bit of a departure from the boyscout i’m familiar with, but still. I dig it.
Here is where they lost me. To stop Brainiac, Super Man pulls Brainiac down to Earth, where he is no longer in complete control. He beats him into submission in a pile of mud, telling him about all the dirt, the sounds, the bacteria… everything out of Brainiac’s control, who finally fizzles and more or less blows up. Seriously. He stops him by triggering his crazy OCD, and pushing him into the mud. I think Munk had way better story lines than that, and he didn’t have super powers!
That veil of disbelief is just gone guys. I cannot buy what it is you’re trying to sell me here. I’ve known Brainiac as a crazy difficult villain that requires all you’ve got to stop him, and then some. I felt let down at the end here. Add Metropolis being put back in place (where I wondered how did Super Man know exactly what spot to put the city where it wouldn’t explode whatever it would push into if it weren’t in EXACTLY the right spot) and a marriage proposal from Clark Kent to Lois Lane, I was ready to flip the table and walk out.
While I enjoyed the animation, I enjoy the dive into the DC Universe, and even some fun times with Super Girl, I have to say, Super Man: Unbound was underwhelming. Keep your fingers crossed that Man of Steel is way better!
