Comic Reviews by Walt

T

Last week, I was able to redeem some “reward points” from Best Buy which I then applied to a purchase of the “Special Edition” of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. That made for a darned good price…even though I had to go to TWO Best Buys to find the edition that came with the Batman figurine. I must admit to some disappointment that this Batman is NOT part of the Infinite Heroes line…unlike the Green Lantern figurine that came with Green Lantern: First Flight this past July.

I was really looking forward to this new animated movie…particularly for the fact that the characters–Superman, Batman, and Lex Luthor–would be voiced by their “classic” voices from the Batman, Superman, and Justice League/Unlimited animated series.

In anticipation of the movie, I read the graphic novel the day before it came out, which was both blessing and curse. It was a blessing in that I got a real kick out of things that were taken word-for-word from the source material…but it made changes and omissions that much more glaring, having the original so fresh in memory.

The basic plot of the movie is that Lex Luthor has been elected president (he ran on a promise of change/improvement to horrible economic conditions throughout the country). As president, he’s brought meta-humans under government supervision…and those that refuse to work FOR him personally (such as Superman and Batman) are outlaws. Luthor is then made aware of a huge kryptonite meteor heading toward earth, and seeks to manipulate things to set Superman and Batman in poor light while raising his own status in the public eye to even higher levels. When he puts a bounty on Superman’s head, the super-powered baddies come outta the woodwork, including villains not normally fitting in a story such as this.

The thing I noticed immediately with this film was the animation itself. It seemed really simplistic, with a lot of static backgrounds, and limited movement in the foreground as I watched. Something about it throughout the film seemed to be of lesser quality than the Green Lantern film from earlier this summer.

At the same time, I really dug the visual style of the characters–I liked their visualization, based on Ed McGuiness’ art from the source material. This combined with the classic voices is enough to almost overcome the animation limitations…at the least, I’m willing to let it go for my enjoyment of the visual design and the voices.

There are some minor omissions–the future-Superman doesn’t show up, and there’s no sign of nor mention of Green Lantern. The change that bothered me the most, though, was the ending…especially with a character’s role being swapped, when the character swapped out actually appears in this same movie (it’s not like it had to be changed because the character wasn’t used!). I get that the change was made presumably to keep this as much more of a “buddy flick” rather than the first arc of an ongoing series…but to me, the original ending would still have been perfectly valid here.

All in all, I was thoroughly entertained by this film, even though it’s incredibly short. I get that it takes time to create animation, and so an animated film will be shorter than live-action…but I’d rather wait a bit longer to get a film with a bit more to it.

The extras with the special edition make the package worth far more as a whole than just the film itself. There’s a Blackest Night documentary looking at the opening of the story–I’m pretty sure this is recycled from the Green Lantern: First Flight DVD. There’s also a nice documentary looking at the history of Superman and Batman as a team. This was quite interesting, and I tend to enjoy analyses of the characters, so this was right up my alley. It also allowed me to put a couple more faces with names I’m familiar with.

There are some other extras that–honestly–I haven’t gotten to yet.

Overall, I’m very glad I picked this up. It’s not quite up there with Green Lantern: First Flight and Justice League: New Frontier…but I enjoyed this more than Wonder Woman…and CERTAINLY far, far moreso than I did the Superman: Doomsday film (I hold to this day that the only worthwhile bit of having bought that one was the retrospective documentary about the original Death of Superman comics).

Even if you aren’t into buying dvds…this is well worth renting to just watch it once. It’s nothing deep, but makes for a little over an hour’s good entertainment.

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