Doom and Doomer: Superman Doomsday

DOOM DELUISE: You didn’t think we could pass up doing a “Doom and Doomer” on a movie with Doom in the title, did you? Jim and I even sat through 75 minutes of this so we could bring you Doomkopf’s “Doomsday” Doom and Doomer.

Ok, to start off with, let me ask you, what were you expecting from this movie going into it?

JIM DOOM: I was expecting the Superman equivalent of “Mask of the Phantasm.”

DD: So you had the bar fairly high up. Did it live up to your expectations? What are your overall impressions of “Superman/Doomsday,” having just finished it no more than ten minutes ago?

JD: The bar was fairly high up, and the only way in which it came close to expectations was in the visuals.

I thought the movie itself sucked, and I think its major problem was in not knowing who its audience was. It seemed like it was trying to be all “adult” with the cussing and the very graphic violence, but the drama and emotions were roughly at the level of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

DD: I’m confused. I was quite moved when Alvin made the owner guy angry. Almost to tears, actually.

JD: This movie also almost moved me to tears. And Superman, much like Simon, wears an S on his chest.

However, this movie lacked an Alvin, a Theodore, and a Dave.

And a good plot.

DD: Y’see, my thoughts going into this movie were that the scope of it was simply too big. From what I knew, which wasn’t much, I thought they were going to try to take on the entire Death of Superman, Funeral for a Friend, and Rise of the Supermen story-arc, which, thankfully, they kind of streamlined.

The only problem in the streamlining is that they ignored any sorts of plot development and characterization and dramatic dialogue in favor of having nearly 65 minutes of fighting and five minutes of Lex Luthor plotting, with about another five left over for Lois to feel bad and Jimmy to sell out.

JD: I did think they did a decent job in figuring out ways to eliminate those parts of the comic book story that would’ve just required tons of explanation. The streamlining – at least on paper – seemed to at least be moving in the right direction.

DD: Exactly.

JD: But yeah, it was just tons of fighting and I got really, really tired of it.

And it was just one of those movies that you couldn’t think too hard about, otherwise it would all come crashing down. And whenever you have a story that fragile, you just can’t get emotionally invested in it.

Batman Mask of the Phantasm showed that you can make a cartoon that’s also a really good movie. Superman Doomsday seemed to kind of fall back on the idea “Oh, we’re a cartoon, so we can take all these shortcuts…”

“But we’ll say damn, hell and ass and have people’s necks get snapped and get shot in the face so that we seem all mature.”

DD: Yeah, when Lex shot that girl in the face, it got me to thinking, which, like you said, is something you really can’t do with this movie. What did he do after killing his assistant? Hire another assistant to clean up the body and then kill them, only to hire another to clean up that body?

JD: I didn’t think that hard. I wish I would have, because then we could have made more jokes out loud.

DD: By the way, I was fully expecting Clone Superman to get his hair cut in that salon just to show that there was a reason why the Real Superman’s hair grew so goddamn fast.

He grew flowing locks in, like, a month!

JD: I wonder if he grew really long fingernails too.

But this movie was full of just stupid bad moments, like the robot having to sit down when Superman died, Lex Luthor expecting Fake Superman to just come walking into the red-sun room that Luthor had completely explained to him before, nonsense like that.

DD: Oh yeah, for sure. But to be fair and objective, let’s make a quick list of the overall good and bad elements of this movie.

The good: You said you were impressed by the visuals?

JD: Yes, especially when stuff was in motion. The way smoke would billow, or the way army tanks being tossed in the air would rise and fall in that sort of parabolic manner. Everything in motion was dramatic. It’s just too bad that the context rendered it emotionless.

I probably could have done some clever wordplay there. No emotion to the motion, something like that.

Motion ocean, what’s your potion.

Like, such as, and.

Sorry, the good.

1. The high quality animation.

DD: Yes. I agree that the visuals, in motion, were pretty to look at.

JD: 2. Lois was hot for a cartoon.

I was offended when Lex told her she looked horrible. No she did not.

DD: That’s another good with a caveat. Goddamnit.

JD: But that’s not a complaint about the movie. It’s okay to disagree with the villain.

Okay, I have another one:

3. Lex Luthor was believable as an antagonist, because he told Lois the Hot Cartoon that she looked horrible. BASTARD!

DD: 4. The level of destruction involved in the fighting was fitting for the type of action they were trying to convey. I was afraid that the Superman/Doomsday fight wouldn’t come across as enormously as it did in the comic, but they really nailed that.

JD: Yes, but for being so concerned about saving people, Superman was sure willing to take out a ton of buildings. And I don’t think he checked them before leveling them.

Dangit, sorry, I’ll come up with another good thing to make up for that.

5.

Hmm.

5 looks like an S? And speaking of S, that was a nice monument they built for him.

5. Metropolis builds nice Superman monuments, even when he’s not gracious enough to stay dead.

Okay, that probably doesn’t count.

DD: Yeah. It wasn’t as nice as the giant golden effigy they made in the comic books.

JD: Oh I have one – 5. I liked that they gave Superman a way to kill Doomsday that wasn’t just punch after punch after punch, okay, that one did it.

Superman was clearly getting beaten in the fight, so he had to resort to something beyond fisticuffs. He did. It was a pretty good out, in my opinion.

But I’m spent, I’m out of good things.

DD: Yeah, we’re really grasping here.

Let’s talk about the bad.

JD: Hot dog!

DD: 1. The voice acting was just awful.

JD: Totally. There was no feeling whatsoever in the acting. You figure since it’s a cartoon, it’s got to be REALLY bad for anyone to notice.

DD: It’s no wonder Anne Heche can’t get people to believe she’s in love with Superman, though. She’s a dyke!

JD: Maybe that’s why he grew his hair out.

DD: And got an earring?

JD: No I mean Superman. But good point about Jimmy’s earring. It’s like Rosie O’Donnell and Tom Cruise.

2. The characters were shallow cliches. Perry is a gruff old man. Lois is a tomboy. Jimmy is a kid.

One of the things I really liked about the Batman movie was how so many people had these shades of gray. They were still somewhat simple cartoon characters, but they took the time to think about how they would act and what their flaws were.

Again, though, that just gets back to that same criticism of how shallow this movie was.

DD: Indeed it does. When you don’t really have anything other than one dimensional characters kind of floating through the shell of a former story,it’s no wonder it came across as pretty soulless.

3. For as large scale as the fighting was, where was the equally large response from the world (in general) and the superhero community, specifically?

When Superman bit it, we got a reaction shot of Lois and Aunt May, and that’s pretty much it.

I mean Martha Kent.

JD: I was wondering about that, but it seemed they made a conscious decision to make Superman the only superhero. I was fine with that, as long as they were going to decide to be consistent.

As far as the world’s reaction goes, yeah, that would’ve helped make it more significant when he died. And then it would’ve been even better if they showed the world being all annoyed when he was alive two weeks later.

4. This doesn’t really relate to the quality of the movie, but “Superman: Doomsday” was a stupid title considering Doomsday is dead less than a half hour into it.

DD: 5. The character designs. Luthor looked like he’d been on meth for the past couple years, and Superman had a weird divot in his chin.

JD: And his weird cheekbones were distracting too.

DD: Yeah. And Luthor talked like he’d been on meth the past couple of years too. What was with that monologue at the end, about how we all know that gods can die. Who is “we,” exactly? I don’t know of any gods that died.

JD: You know, that’s a good point. On the surface, his ramblings just sound like standard villain jabbering, but if you do stop to think about what he was saying, it’s like “Well, no, actually Lex, that doesn’t really make any sense. No wonder Fake Superman destroyed your endless lab of super-fetuses.”

And Jimmy had an earring.

DD: And what happened to Pa Kent? Is he dead?

JD: Killing off Pa Kent seems to be all the rage these days. Didn’t he get killed off in the other movie? Or in the comics or something? Maybe I’m imagining it.

DD: In the Death of Superman/Return of Superman stuff, didn’t Superman meet his dad in heaven, who helped him back to Earth? Yeah! Because his dad died during Funeral For a Friend.

JD: I don’t remember the comic book return. I stopped reading during the Reign of the Supermen. Too bad this movie didn’t have the New Kids on the Block Superboy.

DD: Or the Sunglasses Superman.

He was cool.

JD: Or the other stupid ones.

Like Stupid One #3.

And Stupid One #4

DD: Steel and Cyborg-Superman?

JD: I guess. Was Sunglasses Superman the one with the bone fragments on his clothes?

DD: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

JD: Didn’t he have some kind of bony protrusions?

DD: No, that was Doomsday.

JD: No, I know what Doomsday’s bone things looked like. Hold on, let me print out a picture for you.

Hmm, my printer is broken.

And I don’t know what I’m talking about.

DD: Oh well. Final thoughts. Out of five stars, what would you give this?

JD: Well, I’m hesitant to give it any. The one bit of history I wish they’d have revised was the Supermullet. I feel like giving it any stars would say “Hey there, there is one tiny demographic that should see this movie,” but I don’t feel that way. The animation was nice, but not like it was worth watching this.

It seems to celebrate its previously unmatched level of mainstream cartoon violence; its PG-13 profanity is without any sort of dramatic context; and fans of the comics will likely be turned off and people just looking for a cool Superman movie will be left wanting.

Again, it wasn’t all bad, but certainly none of the good makes up for a movie that I was was forgettable.

DD: I agree completely, but, to be fair, even if it was memorable, you’d probably forget most of it.

JD: I tend to only forget stuff that I want to remember…So I’ll likely be reciting lines from this movie next year.

DD: I think that it was, for the first step in DC’s new cartoon line, it’s quite a misstep.

JD: Absolutely. Maturity is not a product of strong language and violence. It’s a product of understanding the consequences of actions.

You can have a mature cartoon that is accessible to all ages and worth watching regardless of a comics background.

This failed.