Then we cut to…the middle of nowhere. Maybe Utah. Or the moon. Or Afghanistan, since that’s where Clark was supposed to be going. Or maybe it’s the moon. Lex Luthor has a team drilling into the Earth looking for some new energy source. The work crew complains, including a gratuitous reference to inserting a probe into Satan’s rectum. Yes, Satan’s rectum. In case you didn’t notice, this movie is rated PG-13. The truth, however, is that the violence and destruction aren’t really worse than we saw on screen in Justice League. However, the writers seem to have deliberately thrown in things like “Satan’s rectumâ€? and the occasional “hellâ€? just to remind us that this isn’t a “kids’ cartoonâ€?. There’s the occasional bit of blood, but far from the gallons of it spewed out in most anime series (and really, no worse than the occasional burns and such that showed up on Justice League). These bits really stand out because the main DC animated universe has shown that you don’t need swearing or necks snapping or the like to have “matureâ€? animation.
Once the workers finish having a laugh at the thought of Lex Luthor sticking a probe up Satan’s ass, they find a spaceship buried since “before Christâ€? (as they put it). Inside it is the star of the first half of our show, Doomsday himself. Of course, we don’t get that
for a few more minutes, because we cut back to Lex Luthor being a dick.
Everyone who knows much about Superman lore knows that there are two flavors of Luthor: the mad scientist version, and the scheming businessman version. While the mainline animated universe managed to combine the two quite effectively, this version of Lex is definitely just the “mad scientist” version. There’s another “let’s put in something matureâ€? moment as, just to prove that he’s really fucking evil, Lex tells his assistant, Mercy, to turn an instant cure for cancer into a lifelong treatment. This is done, of course, because long-term treatment would make him more money. He’s really fucking evil, get it?
On the topic of voices, James Marsters (best known for playing Spike on Buffy) as Luthor is okay, but he’s not anything special. I will say that his voice lacks the dignity of Clancy Brown’s version from the mainline animated universe. Perhaps it would be different if Marsters was given better material to work with – he gets almost as many over-the-top dramatic speeches as Superman, and they’re generally clunkers (with the exception of the “godâ€? speech from the opening). Granted, over-the-top dramatic speeches are in character for Lex Luthor, but many of his lines make me think he needs a Legion of Doom and a big spaceship shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet (yes, I know they did that in Justice League Unlimited, but Clancy Brown somehow managed to make even that shit seem cool).
While we’re on the topic of Lex, I really should mention his steadfast assistant, Mercy. Mercy is a blond with no fucking nose. Seriously. It’s like she had plastic surgery and they turned her into Michael Jackson. Mercy is unfortunately voiced by Cree Summer, who is one of the three Antichrists of voice acting (the other two being Jim Cummings and Tom Kenny). Cree Summer has one voice – annoying. It’s the equivalent of slicing your eardrums with an Exacto knife, but less pleasant. Thankfully, later on in the movie, Lex pulls out a gun and shoots her to prove that he’s really fucking evil. Or maybe it’s to cover his tracks. Whatever.
After Lex gets his report that his peons have found something buried in Satan’s rectum, we cut to Antarctica or wherever the hell it is that the Fortress of Solitude is located. If this sounds like the movie is jumping around a lot, it’s because it is. This is cut more like a half-hour TV show than a two-hour movie. Anyway, we see Superman working on something with cells and something that looks like a cake decorator. Get this: he’s working on curing cancer. The fuck? Superman is a scientist? And of course, if Superman did make a cure for cancer, he’d probably give it away for free, because he’s not really fucking evil like that Luthor prick.
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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