Warner Bros did an amazing job making sure that Superman - Doomsday didn’t get leaked to the internet a month before release. Screeners are sent to reviewers around that time and they usually get “misplaced” and end up on your local newsgroup/torrent site. Well, Superman - Doomsday didn’t get pirated until the 16th!
… and now that it has been released on DVD it isn’t exactly enjoying amazing reviews. The biggest complaint from fanboys is that it doesn’t follow the graphic novels well enough. The biggest complaint from critics is that it feels hollow.
The best review is one that AICN posted:
To top it all off, this is quite possibly the gayest Superman ever portrayed on film. I don’t mean that in a derrogative sense, I mean that in the sense that this film is laced with slightly veiled homo-erotic phrases or imagery. At more then one occasion, Lex refers to Superman as a “Beautiful God.” There’s a seen were Lex is fighting his evil Superman clone, straddled on top of him and asking “Why did you leave me?” For a moment, not just myself but the others watching the film with me, honestly thought Lex was gonna kiss him! Throw on top of that a few shots of Supes in a thong with his flowing locks and some oil wrestling between the two Superman and you really get to wondering.
My favorite part had to be when evil Superman grabbed the now long-locked Superman by the hair, repeatedly pulling him down to “Knee” him in the face. Of course, all we see is Superman’s head bobbing up and down a few times, before falling to his knees and onto the ground. Evil Superman follows this attack with, “Now who’s better EQUIPPED to defend the city.” I almost fell out of my chair.
Christ, slash sites are going to have a field day with this. Homoeroticism aside, I’m going to pick up a copy just because it is part of the Timmverse. Plus, it is written by Duane Capizzi, the guy who writes The Batman - and that series isn’t all that bad. Not all that great either, but it isn’t bad.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
It’s not part of the Timmverse; it’s an iteration of it. It looks like it and is designed like it, but it’s not JLU-related.
Superman/Doomsday is stand-alone, much like the upcoming Teen Titans and New Frontier are stand-alone.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Duane Capizzi is also wrote the Superman: Braniac Attacks movie. Still, Superman: Doomsday is pretty good.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I agree with Squahasha. Also, “a derrogative sense”?? Either that guy doesn’t even type his reviews into Microsoft Word first, or he never learned what the red squiggly lines meant. Good lord…
September 18th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Some of the best superhero beatdowns I’ve ever seen. Maybe even better than Supes fight with Darkseid in the series finale of JLU.
Is it “hollow”? It does what it can with the running time and IMO it is an improvement on the orginal storyline. I enjoyed far more than any of the Marvel releases.
And as for the “homoerotic” element…um, I didn’t see it. Still, I could be wrong. The review is from AICN, and if any group of folks on the net know homoerotic when they see it, it’s AICN.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
If you guys actually went to the site and saw the review, as with most AICN material, it’s a fan-submitted review. “Hey Harry, Long time fan of the site, first time contributing.” is usually how it works.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Sami accurately says that AICN simply “posted” it. I was merely making a snarky comment at their expense because I find most of their reviews, staff-written or not, to be…uh, not to my taste, shall we say.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Duane Capizzi isn’t that good a writer. I tried watching THE BATMAN but the stories were clearly aimed at a pre-teen audience and were written to bleed all the drama out of every situation. They’re frankly dull (though still superior to the awful Fantastic Four animated series which is just completely unwatchable). I have to think Bruce Timm had uncredited input to the Superman script if it is good.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:06 am
The Batman didn’t get good until Duane Capizzi left the show to do other projects.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Timm didn’t have uncredited input to the script, he was co-writer.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I haven’t seen it yet, but no way could this possibly be more homoerotic than Smallville, right? Is that actually possible without going full blown gay porn?
September 19th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I liked the homoerotic content. There was even a tip of the hat to my good friend, John Byrne, contained in the movie.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:06 pm
As an original work, despite its apparent homoerotic underpinnings, they could maybe have gotten away with this waste of time, but marketing it as the Death of Superman trilogy makes it a failure.
Whether you read the comics, graphic novels or the novel you’d have to be blind not to have noticed the complete lack of any meaningfull effort to actually follow that story. What they did was take the idea that Superman died, the antagonist that was in the original story, and then completely recreated the story themselves. Was it hollow? Damn skippy it was.
Plus it was terribly boring. Ooooooh, a fight. Who cares? Where was the compelling drama of the lives which were shattered by the events? Where was the impact that reached around the globe? Instead of Funeral for a Friend, we got fifteen seconds of eulogy, and the story moved on. Instead of Reign of the Supermen, and the destruction of Coast City we got a clone (and not Kon-El) and a pale immitation of a Bizarro fight.
Instead of The Death of Superman, we got a lame rip-off that really doesn’t offer any storytelling of value.
Save your money and your time.