By Brandon Nolta

It only took 14 years, but Bruce Timm, one of the big dogs in superhero animation, finally got around to making a film of the 1993 comic landmark The Death of Superman. SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY is a direct-to-DVD film that pares the series down to essentials—Superman vs. Doomsday, death, rebirth and a few moral questions along the way—and presents it in a fashion much darker than the more recent animated series. This is not the more complex but light Superman of JUSTICE; this film is closer in tone to BATMAN BEYOND: RETURN OF THE JOKER, and like that astonishingly grim flick, this film isn’t for kids.

As it all begins, Superman (Adam Baldwin) and Lois Lane (Anne Heche) are enjoying a romantic interlude at the Fortress of Solitude. Despite having dating for six months, Lois still hasn’t twigged to Kal-El’s other identity. Nice investigation, Lois. Anyway, a hush-hush LexCorp project is tunneling into the Earth when it discovers a spaceship buried for millennia. The drilling machinery cracks the ship, which opens to reveal Doomsday, who begins slaughtering everything in sight while Lex Luthor (James Marsters) coldly watches over live video. Doomsday soon reaches Metropolis and starts raising premiums everywhere. The Man of Steel shows up and takes on Doomsday alone (nobody else to help in this version). A titanic struggle kills them both, but Lex, peeved that the Man of Steel had the gall to die at somebody else’s hands, decides to bring Superman back. Soon enough, there’s a red-and-blue defender patrolling Metropolis again, but this one doesn’t have Superman’s enlightened views. When a second Superman appears, with longer hair and a new suit, things go south in a hurry, and trust becomes tough for Kal-El to find.


For those fans familiar with both the recent versions of Superman on TV and the original comic series, SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY has some surprises in store. The film jettisons much of the original storyline, leaving only the manner of Superman’s death and one explanation for Dark Superman’s arrival. More strikingly, the tone of the film is much better suited to Batman than Superman. Lex cold-bloodedly kills his majordomo Mercy (Cree Summer) in his office to cover up his involvement in Doomsday’s discovery. One of the first things Dark Superman does is fly an unrepentant Toyman (John Di Maggio) high above the city … and drop him to a splattery death on the streets below. Doomsday itself is shown as remorseless, crushing and mangling bodies all about. It’s shocking to see Superman handled with the same degree of grim that Timm brought to BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and the later DC projects.

Apparently wanting to break from the established voices for Superman characters, the filmmakers brought in some unusual choices to fill the various tights and shoes. Adam Baldwin makes for an interesting Clark Kent/Superman; his Kent isn’t particularly distinct, but Baldwin brings a note of menace to Dark Superman, clearly outlining the character’s difference from his genetic source. There’s not enough brass in Heche’s work to make her believable as a reporter, but she pulls off the softer moments well. The filmmakers did have one clear-cut casting triumph by putting James Marsters in the booth as Lex Luthor. Not even the wonderful Clancy Brown has ever managed to put this much coldly rational venom in Lex before, and Marsters (who had a nice turn on SMALLVILLE as Brainiac) goes for broke. With precise diction and a barely suppressed hiss, Marsters’ Luthor comes across as a methodical genius keeping bloodrage in check through sheer willpower. This portrayal is the first I’ve ever seen where you truly believe Luthor is capable of anything because he’s a brilliant madman and not just because the story tells you so. He makes a fine, scary Luthor, and fits right in with the edge Timm and company have brought to the material. Anybody below the age of eight may be put off by this take on Superman, but for those of us that have grown up but not away from superheroes, SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY is a rich and inventive take on this chapter of the Last Son of Krypton’s saga.