The Death of Superman 2018
DC has failed pretty miserably competing at the box office with Marvel. Marvel has just been consistently making better movies, while DC has made popular, but terrible movies like Aquaman and Batman v. Superman. 2020 marked another failure in Wonder Woman 1984. But all of this time, DC has been quietly releasing animated movies, mostly direct to video, that have gotten surprisingly good reviews. How many? The Death of Superman is their 32nd movie in the series (now up to 40). I had not seen any of them until today and had barely heard of them until the last couple of years. I’m not sure how much money they make given the home video market is terrible, but they can be rented online as well. This movie earned a 92% favorable rating from Rotten Tomatoes (unlike most of the series, it had a limited theatrical run). However the rating came from only 13 reviewers, so I think a sliding scale may be at work or self-selected reviewers. I was still impressed, but with some caveats. First, the animation isn’t that good. These movies only make a few million dollars, so they don’t spend that much money on them (issuing a few every year) and it shows. It reminds of Speed Racer with herky jerky motion and too many frames that are just completely still. Though there are some decent stars voicing the characters, they all sound kind of bland. But even with the low budget, the story comes through and this movie is pretty compelling, giving some character development to Superman and showing a lot of other members of the Justice League. With all of these movies based on comic books, animation actually seems like a better fit for the genre. It is only 81 minutes, so not too much can happen, but it works. There is a little more violence than usual and they say “ass,” but some of the DC animated movies are actually R rated instead of PG-13 like this one. Keep your expectations low and you could enjoy this movie, and maybe more from this series. I do have another one I picked up at Dollar Tree that I may watch even though it didn’t get as good reviews (Batman: Assault on Arkham).
Written: 21 Feb 2021
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital