Movie Review: The Death of Superman

DC Animated Movies: The Death of Superman [2018]

So this movie is... interesting. For those that are not quite aware, DC has been doing animated adaptations of their most iconic comics since 2007 and releasing them as direct-to-DVD movies, and the very first of these (or one of the earliest, anyway) was Superman: Doomsday, an adaptation of the iconic and frankly quite controversial issue where Superman gets killed. It's an... it's an interesting movie that takes a whole lot of liberties, and maybe we'll cover it on this site individually, but it's a movie that while had a decent production team, ended up with an abridged story that was in my opinion pretty sub-par.

Then came 2014, where they decided to actually not just make standalone movies that aren't interconnected. People love watching things when they are in a series, so they decided to take the then-more-current New 52 rebooted universe and adapt some of the bigger stories, essentially making its own "shared universe" with a relatively consistent art style and voice cast. So far we've got War, Son of Batman, Throne of Atlantis, Batman vs Robin, Bad Blood, JLA vs Titans, Justice League Dark, Judas Contract and Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay.

And now they finally go and do a more faithful adaptation of the Death of Superman storyline, and it's split over two movies. The Death of Superman was released last year in 2018, while the follow-up, the Reign of the Supermen, is released earlier this year. I've not been keeping up with the DCAUOM movies, and was gifted this pair of Blu-Rays a while back.

So here goes! First I'm just going to talk about the technical aspects of The Death of Superman, which is something that I am not the best at doing. We've got a pretty stellar voice cast, with most of the previous DCAUOM veterans returning to reprise their roles, with the main newcomers being Rebecca Romjin (Mystique from the live-action X-Men movies) as Lois Lane and Rainn Wilson as Lex Luthor. The latter was a wee bit too cartoonish for my liking, although that might just be the script as opposed to the delivery. Romjin is fantastic as Lois Lane, and while it might be hard to hold a candle to Dana Delany from Superman: TAS, it's still a very well-done depiction of her. (As an aside, Black Lightning's Cress Williams and Marvel Netflix's Rosario Dawson voice Steel and Wonder Woman respectively, which is fun).

The animation in this episode is pretty damn top-notch. Granted, the movie itself is actually surprisingly not that big on fight scenes, with the Doomsday fight happening around slightly after the halfway mark and not lasting all that long. There's a couple of shorter fight scenes that honestly aren't a whole ton to talk about, but the Doomsday-vs-Justice League and the subsequent Doomsday-vs-Superman fight are definitely done amazingly well. There was one shot of Doomsday tossing a half-phasing Martian Manhunter into a gas station that made me go whoa.

The adaptation is actually pretty god damn successful. I'll get the meat out of the way first, because in a movie titled "Death of Superman", it's sort of a given that Superman will die. Back in the 90's, it was meant to be this big event that was more of a publicity stunt than anything, and while I did like the comics when I first read it, it was, in retrospect, a pretty shit way for Superman to go out. This movie ends up focusing a whole lot on "who Superman is fighting for", with a significant amount of the story being devoted to exploring Clark and Lois's relationship, because in this continuity, it's apparently the first time that Superman reveals his identity to Lois amidst some relationship drama.

And, honestly? It's done amazingly well. Despite knowing that Superman and Lois Lane is the DC Universe's OTP (poorly-conceived decisions in New 52 comics notwithstanding), it's still pretty great to see Clark get all nervous to the prospect of bringing Lois to meet his parents, and Lois's frustration at being left out of the loop by Clark despite being dating for a while is amazingly portrayed. Clark also gets some really nice advice from Flash, Diana and his own parents (all pretty great scenes on their own), which are all extremely neat emotional moments. This builds up to a pretty nice, quiet revelation (which Lois initially takes as Clark breaking up with her) of Clark's real identity at Bibbo's diner, ironically mere moments before the fateful battle with Doomsday is about to take place.


And the fight's pretty well-animated, as noted. We've got the fight with the Justice League (the A-Team this time around, instead of a bunch of B-listers in the original comic) being pretty damn brutal as Doomsday tears through the League with only Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman really being any sort of challenge to Doomsday. More than his original comic or live-action counterpart, this is a Doomsday that I genuinely feel like he is unstoppable. And when Superman does end up fighting Doomsday it is portrayed as him barely trying his best to survive and slow Doomsday down while rescuing people like that video game kid. It's... it's honestly pretty well-done.

And the way that Superman dies ends up being a far more intimate and personal way, straight-up flying to break Doomsday's neck in order to save Lois Lane one final time, which in my honest opinion is a far, far more emotional death than the "oh they punch each other really hard one last time" in the comics.

The subsequent epilogue actually got me to tear up a little, something that I was not expecting considering this is a decades-old story that I have read a couple of times, which really speaks to just how well done the animation, music and voice-acting are. Perhaps one of my favourite moments in this entire scene and where the wetworks started flowing was the subdued scene of Pa and Ma Kent being told to step backwards during the funeral, with the guard off-handedly noting that "Superman is like family to us all". Another particularly well done scene is the monologue by Bibbo Bibbowski, a recurring minor character I'm always fond of, reciting his comic-book counterpart's prayer asking God why a hope-bringer like Superman has to die while some washed-out sailor like him remained alive. Bibbo gets a pretty decent amount of screentime in this movie, actually, and I respect that.

So that's the titular Death of Superman. Extremely solid Superman/Lois movie. A lot of the same problems I have with Doomsday himself still stands, with him being a generic snarling rage-monster with no motivation, although this movie seems to imply that this incarnation of Doomsday is sent to Earth via Boom Tube. Neat way to tie Doomsday into a larger storyline, if nothing else.

But that's not the entire movie! Lex Luthor has a bit of a subplot in this movie, being on house arrest and basically trying to show up Superman by being the "real" protector of Metropolis. I get that Luthor's presence is necessary due to us building up the Reign of the Supermen storyline, and Luthor is integral to Superboy's origin, but this whole sequence just feels like it just something to give Luthor something to do. It is admittedly pretty satisfying to see Doomsday beat the smugness out of Luthor's robot armour, but ultimately I felt like it felt more like a distraction more than anything.


The JLA have a fair bit more screentime, and with them being mostly inconsistently portrayed for the past half-dozen New-52-verse movies, it's nice to see them interact with each other like humans. Flash getting married and making wisecracks about the Titans or being the cleanup team is neat, and I absolutely love that Flash's marriage and the revelation that Iris knew his secret identity pretty much since the start of his career (it's scary, just like marriage) is a nice motivator to Superman's own building up of his courage to finally tell Lois about his secret identity. Wonder Woman and Superman have amicably broken up after their New 52 inspired romance in War, thank god, but Diana still remains awesome in giving some solid relationship advice to Superman. We also get Cyborg apparently starting to patch things up with his dad, and he gets a fair bit more screentime than the other JLA members, which is not particularly noteworthy, but still nice.

Batman's... Batman's kinda there. It's actually neat to see Batman not actually be the main focus of the movie. He's still the leader of the League's away team while they are fighting Doomsday on that small town, and he gets more recurring screentime compared to all the others who get one-shotted, but he ends up basically fulfilling a dude-in-distress role more than anything. That crack about a parent-teacher meeting is HILARIOUS, though, and easily the comedic highlight in the movie.

Something that ends up taking a large amount of time in the first half of the movie when the focus was more on Superman's soul-searching and his relationship with Lois? The brief foreshadowing to the Four impostor Supermen that will be the focus of the next movie. Some really great usage of mid-credits scenes as a format, too, by the way, of highlighting their rise to Superman-hood. John Henry Irons perhaps gets the shortest and most forgettable, basically just showing up at Cyborg's dad's lab and making a reference to a cameo he had in that one movie and how inspiring Superman is. The Eradicator's cameo is perhaps a wee bit more easy to miss, being part of a Superman-showing-off-his-culture moment, although him taking over the spaceship and flying off to the Arctic at the end of the movie is perhaps the most "buh-wha?" stinger. Meanwhile, Superboy, as noted, is part of Luthor's storyline, being established as one of his many, many supervillain projects. It's neat, I guess, although for those less aware of the comic book storyline this is based on, Superboy really probably felt like a built-up weapon that Luthor didn't use in the final battle.

Hank Henshaw (Cyborg Superman) gets perhaps the longest scene of them all, with the focus squarely on him, and it's... it's actually pretty well-told and tragic. We skip away the Fantastic Four subverted mutations story from the comics, and just goes straight to having Henshaw as a fanboy with a lot of faith that Superman will save them, just like he does... but when the satellite that he, his wife and his friends are working on are crushed by the meteorites that herald Doomsday's arrival, it ends up being a misplaced faith. Some really well-done direction and voice acting for that segment, for sure.

Anyway, it's a pretty well-done movie, and basically continues the trend that despite their problems, the DCAUOM is far, far more successful at drawing emotions and portraying epic fights compared to the live-action counterparts of these things. Perhaps the biggest point of contention is that this movie managed to make me cry for a death I knew was going to happen, but the emotions involved are well done enough that it feels genuine. Easily one of my favourite DCAUOM movies, honestly.


Roll Call: [because why not?]

• Heroes: Superman, Flash, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Queen Mera, Robin
• Villains: Intergang, Bruno Mannheim, Lex Luthor, Mercy Graves, Doomsday, Cheetah, Metallo, Dr. Dabney Donovan
• Others: Dan Turpin, Maggie Sawyer, Bibbo Bibbowski, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, dt. Klyburn, The Eradicator Program, dt. Silas Stone, John Henry Irons, Cat Grant, Steve Lombard, Perry White, Hank Henshaw, Jonathan Kent, Martha Kent, "Superboy", Alfred Pennyworth, Ace the Bat-Hound

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• A bunch of continuity nods include Batman noting about his improving relationship with Damian Wayne (which took place over the past couple Batman-centric episodes); Wonder Woman referring to his romance with Superman in the first two New 52 movies; and Cyborg referencing Apokolips a couple of times. 
• The storylines in this movie basically adapt the entire arc leading up to The Death of Superman, interspaced with some events of the Four Supermen's backstories, Clark revealing his identity to Lois, and replacing the Justice League roster with the ones in the pre-established universe. 
• Doomsday shares his post-resurrection counterpart's abilities of being able to adapt to stronger opponents. The heat vision he has is specifically taken from the live-action Batman vs Superman's take on Doomsday, though. The way Doomsday kills Superman, via a bone spike through the chest, is also taken from that movie.
• In the same vein, Superman snapping Doomsday's neck is likely a reference to how he kills Zod in Man of Steel.
• Luthor briefly disguises himself with a red wig and fake beard, which mirrors his appearance during the period that the comic run of Death of Superman takes place in where he is disguising himself as "Alexander Luthor Junior", his non-existent son. 
• Pa and Ma Kent mention Clark's old girlfriends, Lana Lang and Lori Lemaris. This version of Lori's apparently on the swim team, and, to those who isn't aware, is actually an Atlantanean mermaid in the comics. 
• One of Clark's lines as he dies is "what a lucky man I was...", which is taken from The Final Days of Superman. 
• Clark and Lois have a brief "I've got you" / "You've got me? Who's got you?" exchange, taken from the original Superman live-action movie, although the lines are swapped and the context isn't a rescue. 
• Cyborg makes a gag on "same Bat-time, same Bat-channel", a reference to the Adam West Batman TV show of the 60's.