Spoiler Free Movie Review: Superman Unbound!

Now I know a lot of fuss is going on about Star Trek and Iron man 3. But lets not forget that DC has put out yet another animated film. This is also something to get excited about as they usually do an awesome job when it comes to this.

In this film Brainiac and Superman meet for the first time after one of Brainiac’s droids lands on earth.

The first thing you notice when watching a DC animated film is the artist’s renditioning of the characters. In Superman vs The Elite he had an extremely pronounced jawline, giving him a stranger more cartoony look that I felt didn’t really go with the darker themes they were trying to convey. In this film they lost the hard jaw going with a sleeker look. I like the look for the film.

The Characters

Superman/Clark Kent

Super Girl/Kara Zor-el

Brainiac

Louis Lane

Jimmy

These are just the main characters I can list without giving away too much of the story line.

Superman is going through a lot, he’s a busy guy and the terrorists in Metropolis are starting to bank on this. However his cousin has shown up and tries to take his place during is busier days.

The relationship between Superman and Supergirl is well thought out and plays very well throughout the movie. In fact the side story of Supergirl’s growth and struggles is one of the high points of the movie.

However Supergirl’s babbling dialogue can get very annoying, very quickly. It is as if someone was writing a caricature of a teenage girl and threw it into every word she speaks. The writing for her dialogue doesn’t detract completely from her story but it did pull me out of it from time to time. Her dialogue being so cliche is strange as they definitely put a lot of dedication and effort into making Louis Lane extremely strong, independent, and feisty, everything we’ve come to love from her.

My issues with this movie don’t end there however. While I do enjoy Louis Lane’s character and Supergirl’s struggle to find herself in this new world, the rest of the movie just doesn’t do it for me. My usual problems with Superman come into play many times here. For example when he first fights the droid probe it’s a little tough and can take several hits from him, however eventually it is shown that a desk chair can be used to defeat it. Superman’s own power levels drastically flip flop throughout the movie which is another huge issue for me when it comes to him. Either nothing can constrain him or he’s locked in stop switching it for dramatic purposes, its become to obvious.

As I like to stick to spoiler free reviews this one will be rather short, sweet, and to the point.

3 Stars out of 5. While the voice acting is really good and the idea is well thought out. The overall execution was lacking, surprising coming from a DC animated flick. I wouldn’t recommend watching it but if you have nothing else to do…I’m sure you could find something better to watch than this one…In fact I’ll be uploading a review on a few other DC animated films very soon so stay tuned for that!

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Wiseguy Industries

The New Justice League Movie, some ideas but maybe to little, to late.

So for quite awhile now I’ve been hearing about Warner Brothers attempting to make a Justice league movie. Lest we forget –

Yeah if you’ve never seen that it’s a still collage from the Justice League of America made for tv film. A fun game is to try and watch all 82 minutes of it without throwing your television into the street in anger, (did i say fun game? I meant “substitute for being in a saw movie”).

This little mistake may be why the WB has focused so much on their animated films, (awesome) instead of expanding smaller characters into feature length live action films. They are scared. To be sure they’re characters were never as…realistically character driven as Marvel’s characters. The reason Marvel became so popular in the first place is because Stan Lee’s focus was on showing normal people who attain SUPER powers and that’s why they show up so well on screen. I mean sure the 90s marvel films all sucked but that’s because they ignored what made the characters great in the first place.

So now that Marvel has found its mark with the Avengers, DC is licking its chops ‘cuz boy do they smell money. I’m sure those executives at WB and DC sat in the tallest building just drooling all over the table.

“THINK OF IT OH THE MONEY!”

“YES WE’LL MAKE MILLIONS,BILLIONS!”

(and then the one guy who makes sense)

Uh guys, wouldn’t we just be copying Marvel? And don’t people usually respond negatively to cheap knockoffs clearly made for nothing more than the money?

Then this happens…

Yeah they are making it, so lets just talk about what they SHOULD do.

WHAT THEY SHOULD DO

They SHOULD have a lead in to it entitled “World’s Finest” Starring Batman and Superman. If you aren’t familiar with the animated “movie” (it was really a two part on Batman the animated series later released as a feature length film). It has The Joker going to metropolis with a lot of Kryptonite, he’s somehow found out that it’s superman’s weakness and he knows the one guy who will pay for him to be gone (if you’re good at something never do it for free).

This ends up being the first true meeting of Batman and Superman as Batman finds out what Joker’s up to and takes a trip to save Superman. This perfectly sets up the relationship between the two and as I think their relationship is one of, if not the, best friendship in superhero history, I would really like to see this on the big screen.

Them teaming up at the end to defeat the two could lead to a further idea in Batman’s head to set up an entire team in case of a giant event. Thus the Justice league could be born without having to do several other movies like Marvel did. One new superman movie, one new batman movie, world’s finest, Justice League. Bad-A-Boom Bad-A-Bing like magic.

WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN

I’m not a pessimist, I’m not an optimist, though I try to be. In truth I’m a realist and I’ve seen this go bad before and in my darkest nightmares I see the worst that could, and probably will happen. No they won’t get Schumer to direct it, that would incite a full fledged nerd war. But they will make several bad decisions. Such as poor casting in all venues including director. They were talking about Ben affleck but after Daredevil people just aren’t as warm to him in the superhero genre. I’ve also seen the name Michael Bay floated around, he can stick to the Daredevil’s spawn of TMNT and racist robots thank you. Preferably they’d get JJ Abrams to direct it but he’ll be doing star wars AND star trek (lucky). So who does that leave? uh a bunch of people actually that will be spitballed around a room and then thrown away for whoever they think has the big enough name to bring in the money.

They won’t develop the characters properly.

There would be WAY too much CGI. It’d be to the point where they couldn’t even have certain key characters because of all the powers the Justice league utilizes.

Basically this is just a big flaming ball of turd waiting to happen. However maybe they’ll listen to the fans for once and pull of a spectacular film. Or maybe they’ll just pull it completely.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Wise guys guessing

They Canceled Young Justice! A fan’s outrage

Bad news for fans of good television everywhere. Another deadly blow has been struck against our people in the quest for quality television. No not another “Baby Mama” reality show, we won that battle. No I am referring to the cancellation of one of the newest, yet most beloved shows on the newly dubbed “CN”. Young Justice, one of the best superhero shows in recent memory, has been taken off the air. The worst part about it is the network has not even given a reason why. All that can really be seen is that “Teen Titans Go” has, apparently, usurped the mantle of teenage crime fighters as they will be on the air this season in Young Justice’s former time slot. Now I understand financially why a switch from dark material to more comedic…”stuff” could potentially put more money into CN’s already overstuffed pockets. However by the same token if you will, they could definitely lose money by attempting to rehash the same idea that was already effective, and still rather current. The old teen titans only went off the air a few years ago. I currently watched every season and it still stood up very well. To be clear “Teen Titans GO” is based off of a comic book, that was based off the original television series, that was based off the comic book “The New Teen Titans.” Too much? I know but i digress, there is no real reason to attack a show that hasn’t even seen the light of day. I only mean to address the fact that remakes are starting to take over original ideas. Thus leading to the cancellation of one of the most innovative superhero shows on television.

Different-

This show stood out in several ways. First off it was set on Earth-16.  This allowed an unprecedented amount of maneuverability for the writers. Being an almost completely untapped area in the DC universe, they didn’t have to deal with most of the preconceived notions of the heroes and their back stories. This lead to a world that, even though inhabited by heroes we know and love, still felt fresh and new.

The villains

I can’t say enough about the villains. they were extremely well done. Plus I’m a sucker for little know, underrated characters getting the spotlight. Blockbuster was awesome for me. Black Manta being brought in as a major character was pretty cool too.

The jump ahead

Most people were jolted by this seemingly random jump after the first season. I was included at first. However eventually I was able to understand that this was actually for the best, not only moving the story along past unnecessary and boring plots and got us right into the action. This also let me know that these writers were not scared, they were willing to do what it took to make this series work. These guys weren’t about pandering to the audience, they realized that the audience was there because they liked what they did in the first place, so give them what they need, not what they feel they want.

Diversity

I can not fully express my love for the diversity in this show. Not just the race thing, which was great, I mean bringing in milestone favorites like Rocket and Icon? Amazing! I was waiting for the Icon Vs. Superman fight! But the diversity transcended race by utilizing the histories and back stories of all the many different characters. Aqualad, Superboy, Robin, three different Flashes, Beast Boy? What’s not to love? Plus they were going to have one of my favorite characters of all time in the next one, Static Shock! Virgil was seen in a few teaser episodes looking pretty cool, not in full static mode but still pretty awesome.

So after all of the promising things in this show we are left wondering why, why they would take something this good off the air. Hopefully the answer will be “they didn’t”. The producer still claims it is a possibility of a comeback but we’ve all heard that one before. Still lets keep our fingers crossed and hope that CN (cartoon network died with the removal of Courage) makes the right decision. Here’s a petition, not sure if these things work but it’s worth a shot! https://www.change.org/petitions/cartoon-network-continue-young-justice

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

A man with a camera.