Rating:

A friend and I had an argument recently. This argument was about whether Superman movies were awesome or terrible. We indulged in a bit of mature back and forth on the subject—”You’re an idiot, Superman rocks!” “No, you’re an idiot!”—but when all was said and done, I came away having learned three very important things: I was right, he was wrong, and Superman is great.

So I was naturally in a Superman kind of mood last night at the video store when I saw Superman: Doomsday, a 2007 direct-to-DVD animated feature. A quick scan of the back of the box revealed it to be an adaptation of the Death of Superman comics series, which remain the only comic books I’ve ever bought. This sort of thing is right up my alley, plus I figured it’d only provide me with more proof that I was right and my friend was wrong.

Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Here’s the story. Some of Lex Luthor’s lackeys are digging way down in the earth for some reason or another, cracking jokes about Satan’s rectum (seriously), when they come across a big buried safe. Locked inside is Doomsday, an enormous spiny guy with hair like Johnny Winter who ultimately gets out and sets to work punching everything in Metropolis. Under ordinary circumstances this wouldn’t amount to much more than an inconvenience, but Doomsday punches everything so hard it explodes or dies. And, alas, one of the things he unleashes his fists of fury on is Superman.

In the aftermath of Superman’s death by punching, a lot of changes take place in Metropolis. Jimmy Olsen becomes cool, Lois Lane becomes even more pouty, and crime rates rise into the stratosphere—until, that is, Superman reappears and starts cruising around town like nothing ever happened. Virtually every person in the city accepts this as completely normal; only Lois even seems to consider that someone returning from the grave might warrant a little investigation.

It’s revealed that this new Superman is actually a clone created by Lex Luthor as part of a pointless and ill-explained scheme. Which is good, right? I mean, it would be a little insulting to our intelligence if Superman just popped back to life with no more of an explanation than “I’m Superman! I don’t really die.” Wouldn’t it?

It would and it is, because that’s exactly what happens. It turns out that the genuine Superman may have been merely dead but wasn’t really most sincerely dead. So naturally, it all comes down to Superman having to get rid of Superman-A and take back his rightful place as Metropolis’s only ultra-violent spaceman protector.

So, unfortunately, the story just isn’t able to hold your attention. Certain individual scenes are great fun to watch, but they never come together to create a quality whole. Among those scenes that do work are the two major fights, first between Superman and Doomsday and later between the two Men of Steel. Both are major action sequences, with all kinds of destruction and exploding glass and shock waves and hard, hard punching. Bones crunch audibly, city streets are filled with holes, and sometimes buildings are knocked down just for fun. These scenes, at least, are truly great.

As for the artistry, just as on the earlier Superman: The Animated Series, the movie excels not in animation but in design. The movement is sometimes jerky rather than fluid—though special care seems to have been taken with the fight scenes—but the design of the characters and of the backgrounds is something to see, being true to the character’s comic book origins while moving beyond it and developing its own artistic style. This movie doesn’t take place within the same continuity as the previous DC animated TV series (Remember the Batman cartoon? Wasn’t that great?), but the style is very similar to the excellent work done there.

So it looks like Superman: Doomsday boils down to pretty pictures, ten minutes of cool fighting, and not much else. That’s pretty disappointing because I really do like Superman a lot, and while this isn’t as bad as Superman IV, it’s by no means good enough for me to in good conscience recommend it. I’m afraid this particular Superman movie is really kind of stupid.

I just hope to god my friend never finds out about it.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• More Adventures with Superman
• My Superman Woes
• No Supes for You
• Superman: Getting Worse Each Time I Think About Him
• Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale