BEFORE: OK, here we go with the second part of a double-dose of Superman-based animated films today.
Frances Conroy carries over from "All-Star Superman" to voice Martha Kent again.
THE PLOT: Superman and Supergirl take on the cybernetic Brainiac, who boasts that he possesses "the knowledge and strength of 10,000 worlds".
AFTER: Ugh, I'm still reeling from the confusion and nonsense that propelled the "All-Star" story forward. I can't understand why that comic series was voted as one of the best Superman stories of all time, I'm just not seeing it. Today's second film is a little more straight-forward, not so obtuse and "arty", and it features Brainiac coming to Earth in his giant skull-shaped ship. This seems a little like the plot of that "Superman Lives" movie that Tim Burton tried to make, which never got through the screen-test and art direction phase.
Basically Brainiac is the ultimate collector, something that comic-book fans are familiar with, only he collects whole cities instead of comics or toys. Sometimes he's depicted as a green-skinned alien, only here he's more of an alien robot, who flies around the galaxy in a giant skull, finding cities that he likes, shrinking them down and putting them under glass. When Brainiac comes to Earth, this is how Superman ends up with the bottled city of Kandor, which was a plot point in yesterday's film. Here Kandor is referred to as the capital city of Krypton, and when Superman ends up in the tiny city, it's really the first time in his adult life that he's been to a Kryptonian city, so it's a chance for him to learn about his culture and meet Supergirl's parents, who I think are his aunt and uncle.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, first there's an alien probe that comes to Earth, and it contains a destructive robot drone. Supergirl recognizes design, and realizes that the robot is an advance scout for Brainiac, because she saw one like it shortly before he bottled Kandor, which was shortly before the destruction of Krypton. So Superman, to keep Earth safe, flies out into the universe to find Brainiac - only this sort of backfires, because it alerts Brainiac to the fact that Earth exists, and at least one Kryptonian lives there. Up until this point he might have skipped over Earth and not been interested in it, so, umm, thanks, Superman? Also, please stop helping!
It's a little unclear whether this film suggests that Brainiac blew up Krypton, but his basic M.O. is to roam the universe looking for civilizations, and when he finds one, he bottles a city and adds its vast knowledge to his own, then I guess he blows up the world so it can't change any more, which would result in his knowledge being incomplete and out of date.
Superman escapes from Kandor and leaves with the bottled city, but Brainiac then flies to Earth and puts a big chunk of Metropolis inside a container to add to his library. Do you want to bet whether he takes the part of Metropolis that contains the Daily Planet, including Lois Lane and all of his co-workers? Of course it does. So now he's fighting to save the city and the woman he loves (oh, yeah, in this Superman story Lois already knows that Superman is also Clark Kent, and Lois and Clark are dating, but they haven't been doing so publicly). You're gonna get it now, Brainiac.
Supergirl stops the missile that would have blown up Earth's sun, while Superman crashes Brainiac's ship and defeats him with, what, the power of bugs? Apparently once you get cyborg Brainiac off his ship and out of his so-perfect environments, he can't really handle all the chaos that life and nature has to offer, so he goes a little crazy and shuts down. This seems like a fairly big cop-out, Superman didn't really DO anything here but take him to a swamp and let him get covered in mud. Then Superman puts the bottled city of Metropolis back and everything's back to normal, right?
Just imagine if Superman didn't put the city back at EXACTLY the right spot, or the right angle though. As Metropolis grew back to normal size, what if the streets didn't line up exactly right, or the power lines or the sewer system, and everything was just a bit off after that, requiring massive repairs and renovations? I mean, what's the chance that everything just fell back into place as it was before, probably there would be citizens complaining that their office used to have a really good view of the sunset, and now since Superman wasn't that careful restoring the city, now they've got blinding sun coming in through their windows in the morning, and they can't concentrate on work? Just saying.
Also starring the voices of Matt Bomer (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Stana Katic (last seen in "CBGB"), John Noble, Molly Quinn (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Diedrich Bader (last heard in "Bartok the Magnificent"), Jason Beghe (last seen in "Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief"), Alexander Gould (last heard in 'Finding Dory"), Sirena Irwin, Wade Williams (last seen in "Venom"), Melissa Disney, Michael-Leon Wooley, Will Yun Lee (last seen in "Rampage"), Andrea Romano (last heard in "Superman/Batman: Apocalypse"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Life of the Party")
RATING: 5 out of 10 metal tentacles
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