Let me go on record and say that I’m a big fan of the regular DC animated universe, especially Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. Speaking frankly, Bruce Timm is my god and I worship at his altar. He and his team created the cleanest, smartest, best-written takes on the classic DC Comics characters that have ever been done. Sadly (or maybe not so sadly, since the DCAU version of Doomsday was gimped), Superman: Doomsday isn’t set in that universe.
Superman: Doomsday is theoretically based on the infamous “Death of Supermanâ€? storyline from the comics. However, it’s drastically different to the point that aside from involving the Doomsday character and Superman temporarily kicking the bucket, they’re completely unrelated. It bears only the vaguest resemblance to the original comics story, to the point that I’d consider the “inspired byâ€? line on the package to be false advertising.
So, it’s not really an animated adaptation of the “Death and Rebirthâ€? story from the comics, and it’s not related to the other small-screen DC adaptations. I’m going to try my hardest not to judge this movie by comparing it to the main DCAU (as it’s usually shortened to). It’s not fair to say, “Justice League did this or that better.â€?, and it’s unfair to say that this movie sucks just because it’s not like the comics version.
Well, the movie sucks, but not for those reasons. I’ve had to subject myself to this travesty twice in a row – once to actually watch it for the review, the second time to get the screencaps and double-check some of the quotes. It doesn’t get better with repeated viewing.
Let me say right off the bat that the writing for this movie is terrible. Characters give stiff-sounding speeches that would probably be fine on the comics page, but are just ludicrous on screen (even given that Superman is bloody well supposed to be cheesy and melodramatic at times). Some parts make me think of a badly-written anime dub instead of anything originally written in English.
The movie starts out with Lex Luthor apparently watching a montage of the Man of Steel, all the while melodramatically musing that Superman is a benevolent god and suchlike, but there’s always a time for a god to die. I’m not going to get into the whole “Superman is Jesusâ€? angle some people have put on the death and resurrection of Big Blue. Luthor’s not really helping.
Then, the scene shifts to Metropolis, which looks unsurprisingly like it did in Justice League and the rest of the DC animated universe. I’m going to come right out and say that the animation is decent, but it’s not a hell of a lot better than the standard DCAU shows. There are some nicely-staged moments, but there’s nothing in this, visually speaking, that makes you jump out of your seat saying, “that’s awesomeâ€?.
We then see Lois Lane in Perry’s office, arguing with him. Perry White looks pretty much like any other incarnation of the character. Lois, however…Lois’s animation model has a kind of lolicon thing going on. She looks more like a Teen Titans character than anything else. I can’t look at this without thinking, “If Summer Glau or Christina Ricci got dumped into the DC animated universe, this is what she’d look like.â€?
While we’re on the topic of Lois, Anne Heche is bland but serviceable. I don’t know why they bothered to get a fairly famous actress to do her voice, because there’s really not much to Lois. She just has to be dumb enough to stick her nose where it shouldn’t be, then yell for Superman to rescue her. Seriously, there is nothing else to this woman.
After Perry finishes chewing out Lois, she goes out and runs into Clark. If you haven’t been living under a rock the size of the Maitre d’s unusually large potato-shaped head, you know who this loser is. We’ll get into him later on, but look at the size of that fucking chin. He’s supposedly off to Lower Beelzeslovakia or New Jersey or some other godforsaken Third World hellhole as a foreign
correspondent or something.
The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.
When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.
Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".
His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.
When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.
After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.
Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).
Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.
Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.
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