Batman: Year One (2011)

Director: Sam Liu, Lauren Montgomery

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Ben McKenzie, Eliza Dushku, Jon Polito

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah… I mean, I know that I’ve read the source material a couple of times, and I’m, like, 75% sure I watched the movie at some point.

Did I Like It: This really should have worked. Other animated DC films have attempted the unenviable task of translating—that should probably read jamming—stories of epic scope into runtimes which can only be feebly called a feature-length runtime. Here, a four issue miniseries seems apt for the adaptation. One could conceivably read the entirety of the series in the time it would take to watch a movie.

And yet, this one doesn’t work for me. Maybe I’m just fundamentally underwhelmed by the level of animation available for a direct-to-DVD release. Maybe I blanche at the idea of fully going along with anything Frank Miller does anymore, after he wrapped himself up in fascism and rationalizing it away as libertarianism, and the book itself wouldn’t hit the same way any more (to say nothing of revisiting The Dark Knight Returns or any other Miller-Bat-book). Miller might have chilled out a bit again in recent years. The jury is still out on that assessment, but in any event, damage to his reputation has already been done.

No, the real flaw is the casting. McKenzie never feels like Batman, which is probably right on the money as the first line of his obituary is likely going to be his portrayal of Jim Gordon in Gotham*. Miscasting the central role is bad enough, but even the casting decisions which are right on the money feel like they are poorly served. Both Cranston as Gordon to Dushku as Selina Kyle could have easily played their roles in a live action production, but instead feel like they are phoning in their performances. I honestly don’t blame them. The only performer who manages to pull off anything resembling magic is Polito in the relatively small role Commissioner Loeb. While watching, I would have sworn Ed Asner was actually playing the role, much to the late Polito’s credit.

*Which, even as of this typing is a show for which I have tried desperately, but continued failing, to amass any affinity.

Superman: Red Son (2020)

Director: Sam Liu

Cast: Jason Isaacs, Roger Craig Smith, Diedrich Bader, Amy Acker

Have I Seen It Before?: No, but I did read the graphic novel upon which it was based, and man did it have one of the weirder endings of any of the Elseworlds DC tales, and that is saying something.

Did I like it?: In the past, I have been down on some of the DC animated films in their attempts to jam year-long comic events into movies often less than ninety minutes. The barest sketches of their complex plots tend to eschew the little moments that made the storylines special in the first place. Other entries, like Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) try to expand shorter stories in awkward ways.

Here, it seems like the four-issue miniseries is the ideal source for this format. We get all of the more interesting parts of the original, and they are able to trim just enough off the plotline (read: that ending I wrote about earlier) to make the story work even better than the comic. It’s far smarter than the average DTV movie, weaving Cold War hysteria and twentieth century history with just the right level of speculative fiction. 

The conflict between Superman and Batman is both more understandable, and far trickier to resolve. These two will not become good friends all of a sudden based solely on shared trivia. I’m looking in your direction, film I won’t bother artificially inflating my word count by mentioning.

It’s a little passé to engage in the “What if Kal-El’s Kryptonian Pod landed somewhere other than the Kent Farm?” speculation. True Brit places him in the stilted neurotic place in the English countryside. Brightburn (2019) imagines if the devil himself was delivered upon the Kents instead of a gentle space Moses. Even I once wrote several more pages than I ought to of a story that imagined the Last Son of Krypton landing in the middle of a Reagan re-election rally, and quickly becomes the scion of Truth, Justice, and the Republican Party*. This was that first venture into that speculative territory, and given that the film sheds the more head-shaking aspects of the graphic novel, I dare say I might recommend this film more.

*Okay, the comic script was bogus, but now that I type it out again, it has a certain appeal in some other format.

Reign of the Supermen (2019)

Director: Sam Liu

Cast: Jerry O’Connell, Rebecca Romijn, Rainn Wilson, Cameron Monaghan

Have I Seen it Before: In all the very loose adaptations of The Death of Superman, WB and DC have never really leaned into the other half of the story. So, no I guess I’ve never seen it.

Did I Like It: It’s exactly what it promises to be, if a little slight.

Gotta admire a movie that takes the piss out of its long-running title in the first opening minutes, especially as it tries to move beyond the similarity between the original, more Nietzsche-esque elements of the character’s prototype. I’m a little less sure if I admire the choice to make Superboy (Monaghan) as 90s radical as he was in the source material, although they do manage to include a whiff of Bieber-esque celebrity for the character that is a little more now.

Is this the first review—or even first piece of writing at all—that features both the terms “Nietzsche-esque” and “Bieber-esque” in a single paragraph? God, I hope so.

The animation is a little cheap in places. Not sure if we can expect much more from a Warner Bros. direct-to-disc production, but a boy can dream. Also, the story wraps itself up far too quickly. Trying to jam in nearly a year of comics into a movie just slightly over 80 minutes long seems like a flaw inherent in the form. I’m not sure I can fully recommend it, but then again it’s not the worst adaptation of the resurrection of Superman that’s ever floated across our screens.

A couple of weird nitpicky things that I can’t quiet get completely over:

Having a world where there is both Cyborg (Shemar Moore), a member of the Justice League and a Cyborg Superman (Jerry O’Connell and Patrick Fabian) feels like some muddled story-telling, even if they hang a lantern (ha) on it. I guess, that’s just what the League brand is now.

Having Batman—even halfheartedly—suggest Green Lantern take a shot with a bazooka at Superboy feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of the character, but then again, this isn’t Batman’s movie, so I guess I can allow it.

While having a Hillary-esque woman be POTUS is certainly a world I would prefer to live in. And yet, it feels sort of an easy shot, but then again our wolrd is one full of easy shots.

Death of Superman (2018)

Director: Sam Liu, James Tucker

Cast: Jerry O’Connell, Rebecca Romijn, Rainn Wilson, Nathan Fillion

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve seen this story, before yes. And read it, in both comic and novel forms. How I ever got married is beyond me.

Did I Like It: Yeah. Why not?

By my count, this is—excluding the Super Nintendo game from the early 1990s where the whole point of the first level was to die—the fourth adaptation of the Death of Superman. Like the others, it reflects a Justice League of its time (i.e. Batman has a son, which was unthinkable in the pre-Nolan era, and everyone has a smartphone) but it hews closer to the original source material than any of the others. Excluding possibly the abandoned Tim-Burton-directed-Nicolas-Cage-starring movie from the late 90s that lives on in our hearts for how weird it could have been.

Interesting gambit, casting a married couple as Superman and Lois Lane. I’m not sure if Jerry O’Connell has the essence of Superman down as much as some other actors, nor do I think that Rebecca Romijn quite has the energy of an ideal Lois Lane, but they are both flying circles around Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth, so as with most Superman adaptations, all is improved when we grade on a curve. While Rainn Wilson wouldn’t look the art in a live action production, his voice works. Then again, Eisenberg didn’t even have a voice that worked. So, there you go.

Does manage to grab the Superman-as-Kennedy motif that the comic reached for more effectively than any of the other adaptations. While I’m more excited about the followup Reign of the Superman (2019), Bibbo is there, and he’s the character I’ve been waiting for the movies to get to. Everything good about Superman can be found in Bibbo. If you don’t know who Bibbo is, it’s entirely possible that this move may not be for you.

Ultimately, the structure the movie has more of a feeling akin to part one of a multi-part TV episode, which is not the greatest sin in the world. Additionally, we’re so far from the days of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) to expect that much out DC animated movies.

It’s damn sure better than Justice League (2017) or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and that’s saying something.