With a long history of creating fantastic animated DC comic films, DC brings us the newest from the collection, Superman Unbound. Released on Blu-Ray this film is an adaptation of the 2008 story arc “Superman:Brainiac” by Geoff Jones. The film was directed by James Tucker and scripted by Bob Goodman.
This film focuses a lot on relationships. Such as Superman and Louis Lane’s secret as well as the man of steel and his cousin, Supergirl’s relationship. Through Supergirl and an intruding force that invades earth, Superman learns of an omniscient force that has been attacking planets and taking major cities as science experiments on his ship. This force is known as Brainiac and in his collection of minaturized cities lies Kandor, the capitol of Krypton. Superman must rescue Kandor and Metropolis from the grips of Brainiac before his power is increased.
The cast includes:
Matt Bomer as Superman
John Noble as Brainiac
Stana Katic as Lois Lane
Molly Quinn as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl
Frances Conroy as Martha Kent
Wade Williams as Perry White
Diedrich Bader as Steve Lombard
Stephen Root as Zor-El
Alexander Gould as Jimmy Olsen
I was not impressed by this film. Which is a lot coming from me. I’ve seen almost every animated feature out of the 16 that DC has released as of late and have thoroughly enjoyed almost all of them. The Dark Knight Returns series was brilliant. Lego Batman was filled with fantastically written comedy and beautiful voice acting. I feel like Unbound fell to the side. The graphics were nothing to write home about. I was extremely bored with the antagonist. I did however like the unpredictable bond between Superman and Supergirl. The focus on the fact that she is unreliable and could fly off the handle at any time was very true to her younger persona and perfectly placed in this film. There was even a heart wrenching moment between her and Louis having a girl talk. I feel like Superman’s biggest flaw is that he will never completely understand humanity and that is why he strives so diligently for constantly doing the right thing. In this film he is constantly perturbing some flavor of understanding and feeling which I feel is extremely disingenuous to who Kal-El really is. Overall I thought the story line was lacking. I won’t count it as a complete miss though. Out of 16 films for one to not be completely impressive is still extremely impressive.