The real Superman’s resurrection is just as stupid. See, apparently, due to his Kryptonian physiology, the laws of human death
don’t apply to him…after he seemed to die (really, it was just some kind of Kryptonian healing trance or something), his faithful robot
(voiced by Tom Kenny, but mercifully restrained) retrieves his cooling corpse and reanimates him. See, Superman can’t really die. The
point of the “Death of Supermanâ€? storyline was to prove that despite Big Blue’s powers, he is mortal. Here, he isn’t, which
completely rob the story of any real impact. In the comics, there were very unique circumstances that allowed the Eradicator to revive
Superman (and in fact, the Eradicator warns him not to count on it working again). In this version of the story, death is just another
speed bump. Next time he croaks, his faithful robot will come get him and he’ll respawn three days later just like that Jesus guy.
While the real Superman (given the hippie long hair he got in the comics when he returned from the grave) is lifting weights and
soaking up the sun, Dark Supes trepans himself with his heat vision to remove a capsule of Kryptonite from his brain. Seems Luthor
put it there to control him. So, apparently, in addition to trying to cure cancer, Superman can do brain surgery. Okay, so the Justice Lord Superman lobotomized people this way. I still find it mildly disturbing that he’s able to bore a hole in his own head.
Back at Really Fucking Evil Tower, Lois (who has gathered up Jimmy from his new job at a tabloid – apparently,
Superman’s death made him decide to sell out) confronts Luthor. After he tries to seduce her (yes, they resurrected the old “Lex as
Clark’s rival for Lois’s affectionsâ€? idea), Lois drugs him by sticking a huge needle in his neck, then proceeds to ransack his office. If Lex
Luthor’s such a fucking genius, why doesn’t he have something as simple as a password on his computer to protect the location of his
Evil Secret Lab?
Ever since Super Friends went off the air, writers have been working hard to make Lex Luthor seem like an intelligent
villain. This movie has undone 20 years of progress and made him into a blustering idiot again.
In the basement (or wherever Lex keeps his Evil Secret Lab), Lois discovers hundreds of Superman clones in vats, and the first
clone shows up to tell Luthor to piss off. Lex, seeing his creation go rogue and being really fucking evil, yanks out his
handy-dandy remote, dramatically presses the button…and nothing happens. To his credit, Lex handles it with the usual Luthor aplomb. He doesn’t lose his cool and just mutters, “Oh, hell.â€?
This might be better if we hadn’t seen the same thing on screen hundreds of times (Luthor’s reaction to it is priceless, though).
Since when has a remote-controlled implant designed to kill someone if they get out of line ever worked? It’s so clichéd that it should
be on the Evil Overlord List. When I set out to conquer the world, I’m never going to implant a capsule of poison or a bomb or anything
else in a minion’s head to control them, because they always find a way to disable it, and I’m not going to figure it out until I press the
damn button and expect them to keel over. It’s just embarrassing.
Eventually, the real Supes stops watching TV long enough to go back to Metropolis to take on his doppelganger (who has by now
killed all of the other duplicates by boiling them in their tubes). There’s another brawl in the middle of Metropolis, of course. You’d
think by now the city’s citizens would get sick of rebuilding after all these super-rampages.
It’s like Tokyo and Godzilla – no matter how
many buildings get destroyed, the people never just say, “Fuck this.” and move to Kyoto or Kansas City or some other place not subject
to periodic kaiju attacks.
Before the two Supermen go at it, they spout awful speeches at each other. Adam Baldwin delivers these lines like he’s reading
them off of a cereal box. Baldwin is talented and has done good voiceover in the past. The voice director is, as usual for animated DC
work, Andrea Romano. She usually gets the best out of everyone, but here she’s failed. These speeches sound like they knew how
awful the writing was and simply gave up. In my head I can see Adam Baldwin in the recording booth turning to Romano and saying,
“Aw, hell, can’t you just use the first take? Lemme take ya out for a beer.” (For some reason, in my head I always see Adam Baldwin
taking people out for a beer. He seems like the kind of nice guy who buys everyone a drink.)
During the fight, Lois is dumb enough to stand in the middle of the street while glass rains down. Of course, this is the same
woman who went 50-some years without realizing that Clark is the same guy without his glasses. She’s not real bright.
After Superman’s evil twin is beaten, everyone immediately proclaims the real one to be their savior. Is everyone in Metropolis as
dumb as Lois? Just because he beat the rogue Superman (And just how do they know the ‘evil’ one’s a clone? They fucking
don’t.) doesn’t make him the real thing. This is a case of Comic Book Logic. Normally, I’d forgive this, but on top of the other crap
this movie has already subjected me to, I’m not going to. I’m in a vindictive mood.
Of the disc’s special features, the most notable is the documentary about the “Death of Superman” storyline in the comics. Why
does it have a documentary on the comics storyline when the movie is almost completely different and doesn’t even include any of the
four Supermen?
Overall, this movie isn’t as bad as, say, Battlefield Earth. But then, nothing – absolutely nothing – is as bad as Battlefield
Earth. It’s maybe not even the level of sheer awfulness of the Garfield movies. But Lord knows it isn’t good. It manages to
hit on nearly every comic book cliché, and doesn’t even put a unique spin on any of them. The Chef gives it two out of five undead hot
dogs.
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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