Review of Superman: Doomsday (2007) by Charles S — 24 Dec 2009

After years of waiting for Warner Brothers to develop an awesome film version of "The Death of Superman" this is what we get.

What's worse is that the filmmakers, writers and animators are comic book geeks, who are responsible for bringing us the fantastic DCAU(Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justic League, Justice League: Unlimited, Static Shock, The Zeta Project, Gotham Girls, Lobo, Batman; The Mask of the Phantasm, Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman).

The flaws in this are evident, the voice acting is not as good as I'd expect, with many of the voice acting to be fast paced or the lips not matching the voice. The animation is okay, the animators have been drawing these characters since 1996 a certain way, so naturally it would be difficult to change it up. Many of the PG-13 elements that are there, I feel are just there because they can be, that wasn't the purpose of these films. The running time is also a problem, this could had been a 2 hour film and many parts of the graphic story could have been added and play well, but it wasn't. We don't get the Justice League, or Alexander Luthor Jr or any of the iconic moments of the story. I do enjoy the animation given to the dark looking Superman, with the long curly black hair. The fight between Doomsday and Superman is also a great moment, giving this film a "head above water" save in the score department.

Its ashame that this wasn't the first in a series of DTV films that chronicled the Death and Return of Superman comic series. I mean really, it would have been great to be waiting for the next film, like a comic book fan waits for the next issue.

I wouldn't say that you should avoid this, but considering who is responsible for this film, its disappointing.

The DVD does feature a pretty good commentary by the creators, they try to explain why they made their deletions and combined some materials, but in my opinion, there's no excuse.

3 out of 5 stars.