BEFORE: Drove back from Massachusetts this morning, by hitching a ride with my friend Don, who dropped me right at my office before heading up to the Museum of Natural History (where the kryptonite meteorites are on display, duh...) Then we went out to the Carnegie Deli for matzoh ball soup and a (split) reuben sandwich - which gave us the energy to walk back to his car so we could drive to Queens. It's been a long day, but I don't want to fall behind on my movies, still being 2 ahead of the count - so a shorter film tonight.
THE PLOT: When LexCorps accidentally unleash a murderous creature, Doomsday, Superman meets his greatest challenge as a champion.
AFTER: This is based on the famous "Death of Superman" story from the 1990's DC comics, but a greatly condensed and altered version. For starters, in this film Lois Lane has been dating Superman for about 6 months, and doesn't know (for sure) that he and Clark Kent are the same person. This sort of takes away from the tragic element a bit when he dies - in the comic book, Clark Kent and Lois were already married during this storyline, I believe.
Another alteration is that this story takes place after the death of Jonathan "Pa" Kent - but in the comic books, it was Pa Kent's near-death experience that supposedly reached the soul of Superman in the afterlife and convinced him to return.
Also, in the comic books, no less than four replacement Supermen (Supermans?) showed up after the original's death - a young clone (who eventually became known as "Superboy"), a new hero named Steel, a Kryptonian device called the Eradicator in Superman form, and a super-villain disguised as a futuristic cyborg Superman. Here we just have one clone, who's a dead ringer for Superman, created and controlled by Lex Luthor.
I know, I know, this story is aimed at the kids' market, the tween crowd, so the story probably does need to be simplified - but did they have to dilute it so much? It's like "Comic Books for Dummies" - when comic books are pretty approachable for the teen market as they already are.
And Lois Lane is really annoying and whiny here - I guess part of that blame falls on the voice-work of Anne Heche, but the writing didn't help. I think I like last night's ineffectual Lois better than tonight's whiny one.
Spoiler alert - Superman isn't really dead, he's only "mostly dead", and he comes back to fight his evil clone and win back the hearts of the citizens of Metropolis. But you probably figured on that.
Also starring the voices of Adam Baldwin (I guess he's a regular on "Chuck", not a lost Baldwin brother...), James Marsters (who played Brainiac on "Smallville") as Lex Luthor, Swoosie Kurtz as Ma Kent, Ray Wise as Lou Grant...I mean, Perry White, and a vocal cameo by Kevin Smith as "Grumpy Man on Street".
RATING: 4 out of 10 kryptonite blasts
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