DC Animated Superhero Retrospective Series - Superman: Doomsday (2007)

Written In January 2014

Two things before we get into the review:

1. I have not yet read the Death of Superman story arc, but I am aware that this film deviates greatly from it. I may review this movie again on another day when I have read the book, but as of now, I will be reviewing this as it’s own stand alone film.
2. At one point in this movie we get a quick cameo from Kevin Smith where he makes a comment about Superman trashing a giant robotic spider, this is a little in-joke about how Kevin Smith was once hired to write a screenplay for the unproduced Superman movie, Superman Lives, which would’ve been produced by Jon Peters, directed by Tim Burton, and starred Nicholas Cage of all people as the titular Man of Steel. The guy even had a costume test!

Anybody else want to watch that movie, just to know how much a train wreck it would’ve been? Anywho, time to explain what the movie’s about.

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

The film opens with a narration by Lex Luthor (James Marsters), highlighted by images of Superman doing heroic deeds. Lex describes Superman as a god on Earth, but insists that “there comes a time when even gods must die.”

Lois Lane (Anne Heche) and Superman (Adam Baldwin) are romantically involved, but Lois is unsatisfied with the arrangements of their relationship. Superman insists that they keep it a secret from the public by limiting their encounters to the Fortress of Solitude, and he has not yet confided in her that he is actually Clark Kent, although she already suspects.

Workers from LexCorp unearth a spaceship while digging for one of Lex’s projects, inadvertently releasing a genetically-engineered supersoldier known as Doomsday. Doomsday kills the entire digging crew and begins a bloody rampage towards Metropolis. He kills a deer, a dog, the dog’s owner, and a truck driver (it is implied that other people fell victim to his homicidal fury, as well.) Superman meets the monster there and the two engage in a devastating cross-city battle. Superman ultimately kills Doomsday, but succumbs to his own injuries and dies in Lois’ arms.

The world collectively mourns their fallen hero, and Metropolis honors him with a memorial. Lex, having previously ordered his assistant Mercy Graves to cover up LexCorp’s involvement in releasing Doomsday, kills her to ensure that no one but he knows the truth. Superman’s friends cope with his death in various ways: Jimmy Olsen takes a job at a seedy tabloid newspaper called National Voyeur; Perry White becomes an alcoholic; and Lois visits Martha Kent for counsel.

In Superman’s absence, Metropolis is overwhelmed by emboldened criminals. At one point, Toyman uses a giant mechanical spider to hold a bus full of students hostage. Lois, still grieving, decides to get the children out on her own. As she does, Toyman tries to kill her and a little girl by throwing the bus over a building. As it happens, Superman apparently digs out of his grave, saves Lois, and apprehends Toyman. However, he does not seem quite the same, missing Lois’ apartment as he flies her home and acting surprised when she kisses him. She dismisses it as shock from his supposed “death”. When she receives a call from Martha wondering why Clark has not called home, Lois becomes suspicious.

The resurrected Superman is revealed to be a clone, created by Lex from a blood sample retrieved after Superman’s battle with Doomsday. As such, the clone’s knowledge is merely what Lex has programmed into him. Lex is keeping the real Superman’s body preserved in a tube for his personal amusement, unaware that Superman is still barely alive. He also periodically tortures the clone Superman in a special lead-lined red-sunlight room (to show the clone who is boss, and out of frustrated desire to have killed the real Superman). A robot from the Fortress of Solitude recovers the body and begins restoring Superman to health, a fact Luthor discovers when his surveillance monitors register a signal disruption of several seconds.

Meanwhile, the Superman clone’s attitude darkens when he hears about Toyman killing a four-year-old girl, and in retaliation kills Toyman as he is being escorted to jail. The city is stunned, and Lois suspects he is not Superman. The clone begins threatening the populace into abiding by the law, convinced that terror will prevent crime. The police can do nothing to stop him. Lois discovers Lex’s plan to clone Superman.

Upon returning to Lex, the clone is berated for his behavior. Lex orders him to find the real Superman’s corpse and threatens to kill him if he goes out of line again. Instead, the clone deduces the mechanism behind Lex’s threat — a lead-shielded kryptonite pellet in his brain — and removes it, then sets off to deal with Lex. At the same time, Lois discovers the true nature of the clone after tranquilizing Lex and searching his files with Jimmy’s help. She and Jimmy discover that Lex is cloning an army of Supermen. (Luthor’s cloning technology had undoubtably improved since the earlier attempt resulted in the creation of Bizarro). After Lex awakens and almost shoots them both, the original clone arrives. He saves Lois and Jimmy and destroys the cloning facility, killing all the yet-to-be- awakened clones. Unable to kill the clone, Lex tries to hide in the special room, hoping to lure him in, only to have the clone instead lock him inside and toss the entire room to the street. This latest presumed murder triggers military action. The military attempt to kill the Superman clone, but they fail as the entire force is eradicated by the clone’s heat vision alone.

The robot has revived Superman and has him undergo intensive rehabilitative exercises under concentrated solar energy to bring his power level back to max.

Hearing the news, the real Superman resolves to help, even though his powers are not yet fully restored. To improve his odds he dons a black sunlight-absorbing “Solar Suit” and brings a kryptonite gun (built by Lex Luthor) his robot retrieved from his archives. The two engage in a massive battle, with Superman’s kryptonite gun failing to hit the much faster clone. Jimmy and Lois grab the kryptonite gun to help Superman, though still unsure if he is the real deal or not. The fight culminates at Superman’s memorial, where Lois manages to hit the clone with a kryptonite blast. The clone destroys the gun, leaving only the kryptonite canister. As the two Supermen continue their battle, the canister sticks to the clone’s chest with mud, and Superman vaporizes it with his heat vision. The clone, overcome by the kryptonite vapor, falls under the memorial stone he was holding. Before dying, he tells Superman to protect the people. Lois is sure of the real Superman once he kisses her, and the crowd is similarly happy that Superman is back.

At Lois’ apartment, Superman sees that she misspelled “resurrection” in her article. He mentions winning a spelling bee at Smallville Elementary, revealing himself to be Clark Kent. Lois is caught off guard, but the two share a smile and she happily embraces him. At LexCorp, a critically injured but alive Lex narrates the ending, saying how history has proven that gods can die, but they can also return from the dead. He smiles to himself, musing that there may still be a way for him to destroy Superman.

Am I the only one who thinks that the ending was sequel baiting? I mean I don’t get the point of having Lex say “Maybe there’s a way to kill Superman and make him stay dead after all?” Especially not since this was the start of the DC Animated Original Films line, meaning that none of the movies would follow continuity with each other. With the exception of two pairs of movies, one of which was actually released with two different animation styles. That’s the one thing with this movie that genuinely leaves me scratching my head. Either way, let’s talk Pros and Cons.

PROS:

• Terrific casting all around!
• Adam Baldwin is great as both the good and bad Supermen, knowing him from playing Jayne on Firefly, a character who has far more in common with the likes of Lobo, it was very surprising to find that he could play such a kindly and noble figure. Great job voicing the big man big man.
• Anne Heche, the actress who plays Lois, does a lovely job as well! I wasn’t quite fond of her at first, she sounded a tad off to me, but as the movie went on she grew on me quite a bit!
• James Marsters as Lex Luthor! Oh man, this guy gave me the creeps big time! I haven’t seen Buffy and Angel, so I don’t know a ton about his character on there, but I know him from playing Brainiac on Smallville and boy was he good there. This guy is an amazing actor! I especially loved the one scene where he’s beating the crap out of Superman’s Clone and we don’t know that he’s a clone yet, and the language he uses it feels so deranged because it doesn’t sound like a typical villain gets the upper hand on the hero type dialogue, it sounds like an angry house wife yelling at their husband for walking out on them or something. *shivers* It’s like that bit with the Joker constantly calling Batman “darling” in The Dark Knight Returns.
• The action is fantastic, of course!
• There’s a scene where Lois goes to visit Martha in Smallville so they can grieve Clark together. I actually really like this, because the entire world only lost their hero. But Lois and Martha lost more than that, they lost someone they loved as a person. They lost a man who was so deeply important to them. It’s like, say, when a kid at your school commits suicide, and everyone in the building sort of mourns collectively, but it’s just that sort of sentiment of “Oh God, poor kid!” But there’s people who that poor kid might’ve been friends with, or they might’ve been some Teacher’s favorite student, or something. There’s people who just see a person who’s gone and are as sad as anyone else would be, but there’s also people who actually knew who this person was. What made them laugh, what made them cry, what made them happy, what made them sad or angry or anything else. And that’s who Martha and Lois were to Clark. Everyone else just lost Superman, but they lost a loved one.
• The final scene between the original Superman and the cloned Superman, the latter’s parting words to the former were asking him to protect the people. I really like this because it shows that the “evil” Superman wasn’t truly evil, Lex said it himself, he has all of Superman’s morals but not his mind. He was still trying to protect the innocent and the weak, and making sure that the bad people get their comeuppance. He just went about it in the wrong way. And he just wants to make sure now, that the real Superman will still continue doing what Superman does best. Stand up for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
• I really dig the idea that Lex would be angry that someone else got Superman before him. He’s always wanted the Man of Tomorrow head on a platter, but he wants that platter served up by and for himself. He doesn’t want him beaten to death by some raging engine of destruction.
• The scene where Lois makes out with Lex disturbed me more than actually seeing Superman die, and that’s saying something.
• There’s a bit in the fight with Doomsday where Superman looks clearly exhausted, I really dig that because Superman is rarely put up against a foe who is actually better than him physically. It reminded me a bit of the fight between Batman and Bane in Dark Knight Rises, where the hero who’s used to be the toughest fucking guy in the room, realizes that he’s actually losing a fight for once. Come to think of it, that makes sense since Rises was partially based on Knightfall, which came out the same time as The Death of Superman.
• The final scene with Lois and Clark is classic Superman!

CONS:

• Jimmy Olsen is made a douche for some reason.
• There’s not a ton of evaluation of what’s happened by the end, nobody’s really critical of whether or not this Superman can be trusted after what’s just happened.
• You have Doomsday in this movie and yet there’s very little blood, why? You want the PG-13, go and grab it by the balls! Doomsday ain’t gonna make for a very bloodless movie folks.
• This one’s more nitpicky, but I don’t get the choice they made with how they showed Lex killing Mercy Graves. He takes out a gun, aims at her head, then we cut to outside the building with a wide shot of Lex’s office from the outside, we hear the gun shot, and see a bright light surrounding a silhouette of Lex pointing the gun and Mercy’s body falling. I don’t get why they chose to do it that way. Why not just close up Lex’s hand holding the gun, show his hand jerk slightly with a gunshot sound and then pan over to Lex’s face for his reaction.

For the start of a new project, Superman: Doomsday is a BOLD place to start. Bruce Timm and Company likely had no idea this would work out- Well, they probably figured it would, based on the sales of their previous direct-to-video animated flicks, but regardless, it was ballsy of them to say “Okay, what story should we base our first animated film NOT based on any of our shows? I KNOW! THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN! THAT’S A REALLY COOL ONE, RIGHT?” It was gonna be big, and it IS big. I’m gonna give it, an 8.5 out of 10!