The Man of Steel makes his return to the world of animated feature films, and to be honest....I don’t know what to make of it.
I have a bit of a dilemma: I just finished watching the new Superman animated feature film "Brainiac Attacks", and for the first time I can remember...I don’t know what to make of a Superman-related movie. Earlier in the year when it was announced that WB would release a new direct-to-DVD animated feature based on Superman, I was more than happy. Hot on the heels off the outstanding Batman feature The Batman VS Dracula I was really eager to see what WB would do with the Man of Steel seeing as how this film would be released one week before Superman makes his triumphant return to the big-screen in "Superman Returns.”
Adding to my excitement it was announced that MOST of the original cast from Superman the animated series would reunite to voice their respective characters in the new film. Tim Daly (my personal favorite Superman voice) would return to bring his stern, yet humble voice to Clark Kent/Superman, Dana Delany once again provides the PERFECT voice for Lois Lane, and even George Dzunda and David Kauffman would be returning to reprise their roles as Perry White and Jimmy Olsen respectively.
Now that I’ve seen the movie, I really don’t know what to think of it. I can tell you that I am SERIOUSLY disappointed that neither Clancy Brown, who has BRILLIANTLY provided the voice for Lex Luthor for over a decade, or Corey Burton who brought his amazing voice talent to the character of Brainiac did not return for this film. I really don’t know why they didn’t return, especially Brown who just recently finished his duties voicing Luthor on Justice League Unlimited, but they didn’t and they were sorely missed.
Instead, Powers Boothe (who I believe provided the voice of ‘Blight’ on Batman Beyond) steps in to provide the voice of Lex Luthor, and Lance Henriksen (Bishop from the ‘Alien’ movies) brings the character of Brainiac to life....sort of. Honestly, I don’t know what the casting director was thinking in casting these two. No offense to either actor, but come on—they didn’t even try to duplicate what had been done before. I seriously think the casting director chose Henriksen as a sort of “joke” since he played the cyborg Bishop in the ‘Alien’ films....not funny at all. Corey Burton brought a sort of eerie ‘emptiness’ to the voice of Brainiac, while Henriksen makes him seem almost comical in a way.
The film itself is decent, but what REALLY brings it down is that they try to stray too far from what has already been established in “STAS” and Justice League Unlimited and it just doesn’t work. We all know that the Luthor from either series was an evil, scheming character that was hell-bent on destroying the Man of Steel at whatever cost. He was serious, he was cruel, and he NEVER came across as being a completely bumbling moron....until now. The Luthor in "Brainiac Attacks" almost comes across as an animated version of the character portrayed by Gene Hackman in the original Superman movies, which would’ve been fine had the Lex not already been established as a serious character in the earlier series. While watching this film I often felt like Luthor was Brainiac’s bumbling henchmen, complete with dancing around and almost Joker-like one liners.
Brainiac is a completely different story all together. At times he seems too comical, but throughout the course of the film he does maintain his “lifeless” personality to a degree. Henriksen does his best to deliver Brainiac’s signature dialogue, but in almost ever instance he falls flat. Maybe I’m biased, but since Corey Burton did such an amazing job voicing the character in all previous incarnations, it’s hard to accept this Brainiac as THE Brainiac.
In spite of all it’s glaring flaws, the film is not without it’s strong points which come in the form of the animation, action sequences, and even some of the plot. The animation is clean and crisp, and only has a few minor hiccups that are barely worth mentioning. All of the characters look as they did in the original animated series (which is a good thing), and the backgrounds look fantastic with some help from CGI. The action sequences are really where the movie excels. The fight scenes between Superman and Brainiac are some of the best I’ve seen in any animated feature in quite some time as they really give you a feel for the level of destruction Metropolis endures during the numerous battles throughout the film. Another enjoyable aspect of the film comes in one of the sub-plots involving Clark Kent and his struggle on whether or not to tell Lois his secret. I won’t spoil it for you, but there is a scene in which Clark makes his decision that REALLY had me on the edge of my seat due in part to the tremendous voice acting, and outstanding animation (particularly in that scene).
It’s hard for me to sit here and go on and on about how I didn’t absolutely LOVE a Superman related project. The geek in me just wants to say how wonderful it was on every level simply out of my love of the character, but the realist in me knows that even Superman can’t be perfect ALL the time (ugh, even that was hard to say). As I’ve said before, this movie wasn’t COMPLETELY bad, in fact the good parts in the movie were VERY good, but unfortunately they were spread too far throughout the course of the 72min runtime of the film. Will I still buy this DVD when it comes out on Tues? yeah probably, if not out of loyalty to Superman than for the bonus features that are on the disc.
The one thing I will say for this film is that it has succeeded in the fact that it has me even more hyped for Superman Returns in just one week!