Month: March 2019

Released: November 1984

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Rated PG

Run Time: 125 Minutes

Distributor: Tri-Star/Warner Bros.

Genre: Action/Fantasy

Cast:
Faye Dunaway: Selena
Helen Slater: Kara Zor-El/Supergirl
Hart Bochner: Ethan
Mia Farrow: Alura
Simon Ward: Zor-El
Peter O’Toole: Zaltar
Mar McClure: Jimmie Olsen
Peter Cook: Nigel

In the pantheon of DC superheroes, Superman reigns supreme as the original and most iconic superhero ever created.  As the last survivor of the doomed planet Krypton, Kal-El a.k.a Superman, was sent to Earth by his father Jor-El.  Over the years, DC comics has provided Superman not just with enemies like General Zod, Brainiac and Darkseid, but also with allies like Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and various other superheroes.  One of those other superheroes was none other than Kara Zor-El, better known as Supergirl.  She first appeared in 1959 as Superman’s cousin.  The character has since become an important part of DC’s line-up of superheroes, in part because it shows that Superman wasn’t the only member of his family to survive Krypton’s destruction.  Giving Superman someone that he can actually relate to gives the character a whole new dimension.  Kara Zor-El has appeared in many stories in the DC universe over the past 60 years, both in print and in film.  While the character can be seen in the most recent Supergirl tv series and several animated films, she had a bit of a rocky start in the films due to the 1984 live-action film starring Helen Slater.

Supergirl opens in the lost Kryptonian city of Argo as young Kara Zor-El is talking to Zaltar where he shows her the Omegahedron, a spherical object that powers the city.  After using the Omegahedron to make a creature, the creature tears through a nearby window that sucks the Omegahedron through it.  Using his magic wand(as it can only be described), Zaltar seals the breach, but is confronted by Zor-El, Kara’s father.  Wanting to retrieve the Omegahedron, Kara steals a ship and takes off after the object.  On Earth, a witch, Selena finds the sphere and decides to keep it for herself so she can rule the world.  Oh, boy.  The story here is pretty much non-existent aside from what I just described.  The plot is so all over the place, you can scarcely figure out what’s going on.  So, Kara shows up on Earth with the intent on saving her people from certain death, but she enrolls in a nearby school, despite the fact that she’s obviously smarter than everybody there.  So much for urgency, I guess.  The film’s villain, Selena is intent on dominating the world by…hypnotizing a local park worker.  Right.  There is no overall plot thread that should be tying all this shit together.  Instead, what we’ve got is a bunch of random scenes that are just that….random.  The story is an incoherent wreck.  I like the fact that we get to see surviving Kryptonians, but after Kara leaves, we never see them again.

I have to give credit where it’s due.  The casting in the film is really good.  You’ve got legendary actors like Peter O’Toole and Faye Dunaway just hamming it up and Mark McClure returns as photographer Jimmie Olsen.  The surprise here is Helen Slater as Supergirl.  Even though Peter O’Toole and Faye Dunaway seem to know that they are in a bad movie, Helen plays it as straight as she can.  This was the actor’s first movie and while her performance wasn’t revolutionary, it was very earnest and endearing in many ways.  Peter O’Toole was a legend in the film industry before he died.  I think he knew what kind of movie he was going to be in when he took on the project, so it looks like he’s having a blast.  Faye Dunaway is something else here.  I don’t hate her performance.  In fact, I thought it was very entertaining.  Faye plays the character so over-the-top that if the character had a mustache, she’d be twirling it with glee.

Let’s talk about the visual effects.  I’ll be honest:  There’s a lot of interesting stuff that’s happening here, visually.  There is a scene in which a shadow demon is attacking the school that Kara’s attending, and the practical effects there are pretty decent.  There’s a moment in which Kara grabs a light pole, charges it with lightening and beats the demon back with it.  The effect is cheesy for sure, but it’s still pretty entertaining.  The sequence that takes place in the Phantom Zone is actually pretty.  We’ve never really seen what the Phantom Zone looks like until this movie, and it’s strange, but it still has an interesting look about it.  The final confrontation at Selena’s castle is pretty nifty too.  However, it’s all for nothing because the direction in this movie is really bad.

While I think that there is good stuff in this film, especially the music score by the late Jerry Goldsmith, I’m afraid that the bad stuff outweighs the good.  While I enjoyed the performances from O’Toole and Dunaway, their talents are wasted here.  There was also no reason for Kara to attend school on Earth, especially since the lives of her family and people were clearly at stake, but the film throws that out the window.  Kara attending school almost killed the movie outright.  It was slow, plodding and didn’t really go anywhere.  I get that Helen’s character was a “fish-out-of-water” kind of character, so some of that was to be expected, but the school moments ground the movie to a halt.  While some of the set designs were pretty cool, the costumes for the citizens of Argo City were terrible.  Supergirl’s outfit was really the only good costume, and they got it right…except for the fact that she somehow has it when she gets to Earth.  No explanation is given for how she gets that outfit.  While I said that some of the visual effects were interesting, they weren’t very good.  You have some very obvious blue-screen effects happening, especially in the last battle where Supergirl is being tortured by the demon.  It’s awful.  That being said, it’s still better than having the same shot of Supergirl flying at the screen over and over again.  Not only that, the film ends pretty abruptly.

Personally, I would place Supergirl in the “so bad, it’s good” category.  It is an objectively bad film.  But it’s a film that did put forth some effort despite its low budget of $35,000,000.  It’s very obvious.  So…who do we blame for this mess?  Is it the actors?  No.  Is it the director?  Yes.  What about the Salkinds, the producers?  Yes.  I don’t know how this movie got the green light.  Jeannot is not the worst director in the world, but he wasn’t the right person to direct this film.  If you’re going to do a film about a female superhero, I think you need a woman to direct it.  I felt a slight undercurrent of misogyny in this film.  The way that women are portrayed in this film isn’t particularly flattering, especially the teenagers.  The character of Kara Zor-El is supposed to be a teenager, so that would have given teenage girls a superhero that they could identify with, but this movie completely butchers it and opts to rely on tired cliches, stereotypes, and sexism.

1984’s Supergirl was so poorly received that some people thought that it was partially responsible for Kara Zor-El being killed off in the comics in 1985 with the Crisis on Infinite Earths story-line.  While there have been several Supergirls in the comics afterwards, Kara Zor-El wouldn’t return as Superman’s cousin until 2004.  When your movie is bad enough to get a superhero killed in the comics, you really screwed up and Jeannot Szwarc screwed up big time.  This is the kind of movie that would’ve killed a director’s career.  Between Jaws 2 and this, Jeannot hasn’t directed a memorable movie since.  In fact, he’s been relegated to TV shows.  Is Supergirl worth checking out?  I think it is, if only to see what kind of train-wreck it is, but it’s not entirely disposable.  Helen Slater was perfect as Kara Zor-El and some of the effects and action sequences were okay.

My Final Recommendation:  I sentence Jeannot Swarz and writer David Odell to the Phantom Zone for 5 years to think about what they’ve done.  5/10.

Released: September 2007

Directors: Lauren Montgomery/Bruce Timm

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 75 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action/Animated

Cast:
Adam Baldwin: Superman/Clark Kent/Dark Superman
Anne Heche: Lois Lane
James Marsters: Lex Luthor
John DiMaggio: Toyman
Ray Wise: Perry White
Adam Wylie: Jimmie Olsen

While I’m not what you would call a big comic book reader, I did get around to reading The Death of Superman.  This story about Superman’s death and subsequent resurrection had an enormous effect on fans around the world.  It’s not the first time that DC had actually killed the character, but it was the first time that the death of Superman had real emotional weight and serious consequences.  The story not only took on what it would take to actually kill Kal-El, but also in how the world would respond to such an event.  People got real emotional about the character not realizing that DC had an ace up their sleeve, The Reign of the Supermen.  Some people thought that it was a gimmick, and a lousy one at that, but the impact that the story had on the comic book industry in general was felt for years.  The impact was so much that people were wondering whether or not that such a story could be made into a movie.  Ideas were getting thrown around for the better part of a decade, but nobody really knew how to do it properly.  Now, most people would look back to Zack Snyder’s Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice film as the first attempt at bringing The Death of Superman to life.  Here’s the thing, though:  It wasn’t.  The first crack at the story was back in 2007 with the animated film, Superman/Doomsday.

Superman/Doomsday opens as miners come across a mysterious alien bunker.  Confused at to what this thing is, the miners take a closer look at it when it opens and a large monster jumps out and starts killing everybody.  Shortly after leaving the mine, the monster goes on a rampage throughout the country-side while making its way to Metropolis.  Alerted to the impending threat, Superman faces down the monster known as Doomsday in an epic battle that ultimately leaves both the monster and hero dead.  After a period of mourning, even by Lex Luthor, the city is later relieved to find out that Superman is still alive, but is he the same?  Look, I’ll be the first to admit that turning The Death of Superman into a film wouldn’t be anything less than a monumental challenge, especially if you want to do it right.  I read the comic and subsequent novelization back in the mid-90s, so when this animated film came out in 2007, I was confused.  Where was the Justice League?  What about the 4 Supermen that showed up months after Kal’s death?  This animated feature is a total wreck.  Say what you will about Batman V. Superman, at least that movie had the decency to build up to the final battle with Doomsday.  Here?  They crammed so much crap into 75 minutes that none of it really works.  The only thing that this film gets right in terms of story is the fight between Superman and Doomsday.  That part was epic, but there needed to be a larger build-up to that, and it was handed to us within the first 25 minutes of the film.  The rest of the film goes into these nonsensical subplots that involve Jimmie Olsen quitting The Daily Planet to work for a sleazy tabloid paper and Lex Luthor cloning Superman to be his own personal assistant.  It was confusing, confounding, and irritating.  Don’t get me wrong, the movie moves at a brisk pace given its run-time, but there was absolutely no respect for the source material shown here.  By cutting a lot of the other stuff that included the Justice League, Superman/Doomsday completely undercut any goodwill that it would have garnered had more time been spent on it.

I will give credit where credit is due.  The film actually looks pretty decent.  The art-style is based on the look from the Superman animated series back in the 90s.  That was an awesome show, so I definitely dig the look of the characters and designs in this film.  Each character has their own unique look and design, from Superman, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor to Doomsday, Toyman and Jimmie Olsen.  The animation is actually pretty good to, as well as the sound design.  The fight between Superman and Doomsday is the highlight of the film, obviously, but you could actual FEEL the pounding that Superman takes and delivers.  The final battle between Superman and his clone is also pretty good.  The action and destruction sequences are top-notch.  The music by Robert Kral is actually pretty good, too.  There was definitely effort put into Superman/Doomsday, but not where it needed it most.

The voice acting is another area in which the film does a pretty good job, although there are some folks who have been miscast.  Adam Baldwin(who will always be Jayne to me) voices Superman in this film, and…..he does well enough, but what he was given wasn’t particularly good.  He comes across as mostly wooden, and that’s a shame, because Baldwin is a very talented actor.  Anne Heche fares a bit better as Lois Lane, giving her almost the same kind of fire and attitude that Margot Kidder did way back in the day.  Ray Wise was fantastic as the overbearing Perry White.  James Marsters, though, wasn’t exactly the right guy for the role.  Again, talented actor, but he doesn’t have that suave/threatening tone that the character requires.  John DiMaggio plays the criminal Toyman, and he’s suitably creepy.  Notorious film director Kevin Smith shows up in a cameo as a grumpy bystander that was actually pretty funny.  Not a big fan of Smith, but that was pretty cool.

If you had no idea about The Death of Superman story-line, then I could see you thinking that this would be a good movie, but here’s the problem: The Death of Superman got world-wide attention, so it was very hard to escape hearing about it at least, even if you never read it.  The fact of the matter is, is that Superman/Doomsday is just not good movie and it is definitely one of the weaker entries in DC’s animated film line-up.  Now, they mostly got it right with the recently released The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen, but even those films weren’t perfect.  The Death of Superman is one of the most controversial and beloved story lines in comic book history, so there are going to be issues bringing this story to the big screen properly.  Here’s what I want to see:  A proper live-action adaptation of The Death of Superman.  In order to get it right, the story would have to be split into three movies, each one at about 2.5 hours each.  The first film would deal with Superman’s death and subsequent funeral, the second film would deal with the 4 Supermen, and the final film would deal with the destruction of The Flash’s home city and alien invasion from Mongul/Darkseid.  I imagine it’s possible for them to attempt it again, but it’s going to be quite a while before it does.

I think Superman/Doomsday is a passable animated film.  If, like me, you really loved the actual story, this movie is going to piss you off.  I don’t hate it, but I find it detestable that the film-makers would try and cram in so much material that some of the more important aspects of the story would just get left out.  75 minutes is not long enough to tell the entire story.  Is it fun?  It can be, with some pretty solid action and destruction, but some of the voice acting is a little suspect and the overall quality of the film isn’t where it needs to be.  The story took the worst pounding, though.  Hopefully, someone, somewhere will want to revisit The Death of Superman and actually make a live-action film that is worthy of the story.

My Final Recommendation: 6/10

Released: October 2018

Director: Doug Murphy

Rated R

Run Time: 90 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Fantasy/Horror

Cast:
Matt Ryan: John Constantine
Damian O’Hare: Chas Chandler
Laura Bailey: Asa The Healer
Emily O’Brien: Renee Chandler
Jim Meskimen: Beroul
Rick D. Wasserman: Mictlantecuhtli

Can somebody explain something to me?  How is it that Marvel Studios, one of the biggest movie studios acquired by Disney, can have some of the most amazing live-action films ever made, but their animated offerings are rather forgettable?  Yet, on the flip-side of the coin, DC and Warner Bros, have had some issues with their live-action films over the past few years, but have mostly outstanding animated films.  Seems like an odd reversal, don’t you think?  I recently reviewed The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen a day or so ago and those were pretty damn good.  Not only that, DC’s animated Suicide Squad was a hell of a lot better than the live-action film that came out a couple years ago.  It seems to me that DC’s live-action offerings over the past 7 years, with the exceptions of Wonder Woman and Aquaman, have met with failure, both critically and at the box-office.  Their attempt at creating a universe like Marvel’s MCU is pretty much dead in the water at this point, but I’ll discuss that in a different post.  With that said, Warner Bros and their animation studio have taken some pretty serious risks by going to some really dark territory in animated films such Justice League Dark and Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay.  I’ve seen some pretty dark comic book movies, and of the animated variety, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like Constantine: City of Demons.

In City of Demons, we meet John Constantine, a master magician and expert on the occult.  He’s also very good at solving magic-related situations.  He’s also a broken man, who smokes and drinks himself to sleep every night because of a tragic event in his past.  A little bit of this past catches up with him as his old friend, Chas Chandler seeks his help.  Chas’s daughter is in a coma, but Chas believes that something supernatural caused it, so he enlists the reluctant aid of Constantine to help his daughter.  As it turns out, the child’s soul is missing.  In order to locate the child’s soul, Constantine calls on Asa the Healer to look after the child, while he and Chas go to Los Angeles to find answers.  I love movies that have a really dark tone.  It makes for a more interesting event.  The Dark Knight from 2008 was one of the darkest mainstream comic book movies ever to be released and it had an amazing story.  It was very dark, and so was the animated Justice League Dark film, but Constantine: City of Demons is grim-dark.  City of Demons started out as an animated web-series and was shown on the CW network, but it was recently released as full-feature on Blu-Ray and DVD.  While I love dark stories, City of Demons goes to some extremely dark and bleak places.  While I wouldn’t necessarily say that all the film’s risks paid off, but most of them did.  Because City of Demons started out as a series, there are moments here and there that seem to drag a little bit with a lot of exposition.  But the overall story is really good and engaging, and it has you in its grip from beginning to end, and boy what an ending that is, but I’m not going to spoil it for you.  You’ll have to see it for yourself.

City of Demons is a grisly movie.  This has to be one of the goriest animated movies I’ve seen in years.  It’s certainly the bloodiest that DC has put out.  While DC may have been antsy about putting in extreme violence in their live-action films, they don’t seem to have any self-control when it comes to their animated movies.  This is a violent movie.  It’s not just the gore, however.  There is a lot of graphically disturbing imagery that I wouldn’t have expected from an animated picture.  There is a moment when Constantine is invited to go to a “party” hosted by a nasty demon.  I won’t describe what takes place, but it really feels like walking into an animated Hellraiser film.  While the genre tag above says fantasy/horror, make no mistake about it:  City of Demons is a horror movie, through and through.  The action in the film is spectacular, but it is very ghastly.  It gets brutal, and the fact that it’s animated makes the violence more exaggerated and horrific.  They do stuff in this movie that you normally don’t see in a mainstream horror flick.  I’m not saying its a bad thing, but I AM saying that this is not a kid’s movie, whatsoever, and it’s certainly not a film for people with weak stomachs.

City of Demons wouldn’t work as well as it does if it didn’t have strong characters.  There is some really good characterizations and motivations that you see throughout the film.  The character of Chas feels like a real person who wants to save his little girl, while Asa the Healer seems like one of those demons that doesn’t seem to behave like what you would think a demon would behave like.  The main villain of the film is a legless, bull-horned demon that is as savage as he is manipulative.  John Constantine is one of those characters that not many people know about, but he is definitely very interesting regardless.  This guy is a full-blown alcoholic and damaged individual, but I would imagine you would be too if you knew you were responsible for an innocent child getting sent to Hell for eternity.  Like I said, this movie goes to some really dark territory.  The performances are fantastic all around with Matt Ryan reprising his role as Constantine.  This marks the third time that Mr. Ryan has taken the role, with Justice League Dark and the live-action series of Constantine.  His character isn’t a nice guy, but he does come around eventually to do the right thing.

The art-style of Constantine: City of Demons is very similar to that of previous animated features from DC, but I think it really works here.  It actually allows the imagery on screen to be that much more disturbing and violent.  The level of detail is amazing, even in the more…..gruesome moments it brings the whole world to terrifying life.  The creature designs are incredible, especially the ancient Aztec god that Constantine summons.  Again, this is not going to be a movie for everyone, as there are certain images here that could be a little too much for some people.  I do have some gripes with the film, though.  For one, the pacing seems to drag a little bit in the middle, and while I appreciate exposition, there’s a little too much.  There’s a phrase in the film industry that people need to understand: Show, don’t tell.  If there’s a character moment that the film-makers want the audience to understand, you don’t need words to explain it.  Show it to them; trust them to figure it out on their own.  More often than not, they will.  Trust the audience, that’s all I’m saying.

Overall, though, I think Constantine: City of Demons is really good.  Again, it’s not going to be for everyone, but for those that like this style of story-telling and the dark nature of Constantine and his world, there’s a lot this movie has to offer.  Just be aware that this movie has some serious bite to it.  It’s definitely worth checking out.

My Final Recommendation: Don’t summon demons.  It never ends well.  9/10.

WARNING:  THERE WILL BE MAJOR SPOILERS!!

Released: Death of Superman – July 2018; Reign of the Supermen – January 2019

Directors: Jake Castorena, Sam Liu

Rated PG-13

Run Time: Death – 81 Minutes; Reign – 87 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros./Warner Animation/DC

Genre: Action/Adventure/Animated

Cast:
Jerry O’Connell: Superman/Clark Kent
Rebecca Romijn: Lois Lane
Rainn Wilson: Lex Luthor
Rosario Dawson: Wonder Woman
Nathan Fillion: Green Lantern
Jason O’Mara: Batman

In the comic book world, everybody knows who Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman are.  They are basically the Holy Trinity of comic book superheroes.  Superman was from the planet Krypton, with Wonder Woman being an Amazon princess, and Batman essentially being the only normal human out of the three, albeit extremely rich and intelligent.  Over the years, more and more superheroes were introduced like Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, The Flash, Captain Marvel/Shazam, and the Green Arrow.  This was mostly before Marvel Comics entered the picture.  These characters became iconic over the decades.  Everybody knew that Batman was just a human being amongst gods, essentially.  Everybody knew that Wonder Woman was not just a pretty face, and everybody knew that Superman was the face of DC comics.  He’s basically that company’s mascot.  So….what happens when you take the comic book industry’s most iconic figure since the 1930s and you kill him?  You piss off a lot of people, that’s what.

The Death of Superman follows Superman/Clark Kent as he tries to reveal to his girlfriend Lois Lane that he’s Superman, while Lex Luthor continues to plot against the Man of Steel.  Meanwhile, an asteroid smashes into a satellite and spaceship killing everyone on board.  The asteroid slams into the ocean unleashing a vicious beast that only lives to kill, Doomsday.  Making its way across the United States, the Justice League are forced into a confrontation with the beast only to be nearly killed by the monster.  Superman finally intervenes and fights Doomsday in an epic battle.  He succeeds, but at the cost of his own life.  Reign of the Supermen picks up 6 months after the devastating battle when four mysterious beings show up, all claiming to be Superman.  Back in 1992, DC Comics released what would become one of the most infamous and controversial comic book series of all time, The Death of Superman.  The reception to the story was one of shock, sadness, and ultimately anger.  It was a huge risk for DC to do something like this to a character that had been around for 60 years at the time.  It was something that was all over the news.  It pissed people off, but it allowed people to see what a world would be like without Superman.  It was an incredibly powerful story that actually impressed the creator of Superman, Jerry Siegel.  It was risky and the fight between Doomsday and Superman has left an indelible mark on the comic book industry.  While some of the elements of the story were kind of cut from these animated films, the core of the story is intact.  There have been attempts to bring this particular story to life, namely the animated feature, Superman: Doomsday and Zack Snyder’s Batman V. Superman film a couple years back.  I really enjoyed both films, but neither one really did the story any justice(pun intended).  The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen animated films do a much better job at getting the story across than the movies I just mentioned.  Now, why am I reviewing both films in one post?  Well, each film is half of an over-arching story, so when you watch them back-to-back, you are essentially watching a full film.  While I think that The Death of Superman could have worked as a live-action film series, the animated films are actually the best way to go, because Warner Bros really botched the Batman V. Superman and Justice League live action films.  If you enjoyed the actual story, these films are a really good way of condensing a massive series into two and a half hours.

There have been some changes in the film from the original comics.  For one, Doomsday comes from outer-space, instead of escaping from an underground bunker.  When Doomsday takes on the Justice League, there are superheroes that don’t show up, like the Blue Beetle.  Not only that, Jonathan Kent, Superman’s adopted father takes his son’s death much harder in the comics than he does in the animated film, so much so that he has a heart attack and dies.  When the four Supermen show up, they eventually take on Mongol after he obliterates The Flash’s home city.  There’s a lot of condensing that Death and Reign had to do in order to get the films down to a more watchable level and I think they did an admirable job doing so.  They also get quite a bit right.  While the fight between the Justice League and Doomsday was pretty much one-sided, Superman’s encounter with the monster was far more brutal.  The animation is so good that you can actually FEEL the impact of the punches that these two titans throw at each other.  Despite the short run time, the first film actually gets us to really connect with the characters and when the final battle reaches its conclusion, the audience is left reeling.  I was honestly getting a bit emotional, and that hasn’t happened to me from a DC movie in years.  The second film actually does a pretty good job of throwing all the Supermen into the mix, giving each incarnation a bit of screen time.  I was also surprised at how not annoying Superboy was.  There is some really good characterization in these films that make you care about them.  Story-wise, I think The Death of Superman is the stronger film, at least emotionally and in terms of pacing.  That’s not to say that Reign of the Supermen is a bad film.  Not at all, but there are elements of the second film that just seem bizarre.  Replacing Mongol with Darkseid actually made a lot more sense, especially given the direction the live-action films were heading.  While he’s still more of a background villain in this film, Darkseid’s presence is nonetheless welcome.

The art-style of these films is pretty interesting.  I’m not saying it’s the greatest, but it does give each character a very unique look and style.  Everyone looks exactly how they are supposed to look and the explosions and action are top-notch.  I barely saw a use of actual CGI in these films, so they really have kind of an old-school look to them.  It’s a similar style that previous DC animated films have adopted with great effect.  The voice-acting is superb.  Jerry O’Connell is actually pretty good as Superman.  He definitely has that real confident no-nonsense tone that Superman needs.  Rebecca Romijn really gives Lois Lane a solid emotional core that makes her far more relatable.  Nathan Fillion plays Green Lantern, because of course he does.  Fillion is one of those actors that’s really good at anything he does, regardless of how good or bad the project might be.  If there’s a real weak link in these films, it’s Rainn Wilson as Lex Luthor.  Don’t get me wrong, the character is well-written, but Wilson’s performance is very weak in my opinion.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I just don’t feel that Wilson can really deliver the suave menace that Lex should convey.  The character is extremely intelligent and arrogant at the same time, but Wilson doesn’t really get it right.

The Death of Superman has become one of the most iconic and controversial comic book stories of all time.  There’s no getting around it.  The influence that it had is still being felt in comic books today, whether it’s Marvel or DC.  It was an incredibly ground-breaking story that took Superman and the Justice League in a new direction.  While there have been stories that deal with the death of other characters, none have had the same impact as The Death of Superman.  Zack Snyder’s attempt to bring this story to the big screen came to a screeching halt when Batman V. Superman and Justice League failed to perform at the box-office.  I think a live-action adaptation of the story CAN be done right, if Warner Bros. and DC can get the right film-makers behind it.  As it stands, however, The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen are probably going to be the best adaptations of the story for the time being.  I would honestly check these films out if you were disappointed with Zack Snyder and Warner Bros’ live-action films.

My Final Recommendation:
The Death of Superman: 9.5/10
Reign of the Supermen: 8.5/10