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ALL STAR SUPERMAN DVD
(****)
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ALL STAR SUPERMAN DVD Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
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Directed by:
Sam Liu |
Written
by:
Dwayne McDuffie |
Starring the Voices of:
James Denton, Christina Hendricks, Anthony LaPaglia, |
Running time:
75 minutes
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Released:
02/22/11-direct to dvd |
Rated PG-13
for sequences of action and violence, language including brief innuendo, and
some sensuality. |
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"This is the intelligence upgrade that superhero cinema drastically needs,
rather than the blow-dried popcorn recently churned out."
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All-Star Superman is the smartest Superman movie
ever made.
A sizable portion of the credit for the full-length animated film’s cerebral and
visual ambition belongs to writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, whose
Eisner-winning All-Star Superman comic book miniseries blew critics and readers’
minds with an out-of-continuity recounting of Superman’s last days.
Adapting Morrison’s sprawling storytelling to film was no walk in Metropolis
Park. Which is probably why All-Star Superman, a straight-to-DVD-and-download
release, marks the first feature film adaptation mined from Morrison’s career,
during which he’s spent decades rebooting both obscure and popular superheroes
like Doom Patrol and Batman and creating possibly unfilmable epics like The
Invisibles.
Veteran comics-to-film producer Bruce Timm, recently deceased screenwriter
Dwayne McDuffie and director Sam Liu also deserve credit for bringing All-Star
Superman’s deep brain and heart to cinematic life. The film remains faithful to
Morrison and Quitely’s comics without watering down their fringe science,
astronomical action, earnest romance and envelope-pushing comedy.
While some teriffic sections of the miniseries were cut — including Morrison’s
existentially inverted (read: normal) Bizarro named Zibarro — All-Star Superman
remains a loyal, loving cinematic distillation of one of the writer’s most
memorable efforts, as well as the most thematically and emotionally ambitious
Man of Steel film in existence.
The film faithfully adheres to the general arc of Morrison and Quitely’s
12-issue series, which boasted a premise more cerebral than any Superman film
ever made. When Lex Luthor (voiced by the deliciously evil Anthony LaPaglia)
sabotages a scientific mission to the sun with a freakish monster bomb, Superman
(an excellently restrained James Denton) is over-saturated with solar radiation
during the inevitable rescue. That dramatically boosts Superman’s already
significant powers, but also slowly kills him. Graceful and brave in the face of
a surprising mortality, he sets about to knit together the loose strands of his
life and destiny through a series of Herculean, heart-warming challenges.
He discloses his secret identity to Lois Lane (Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men
and Firefly), who he spirits away to the vast museum of his Fortress of
Solitude, where clone-bots fashion a serum and suit that allow the love of his
life to become a superhero for a day. He also achieves an uneasy peace with
Luthor, who’s imprisoned for crimes against humanity yet manages to survive an
execution and wreak havoc upon Metropolis.
Along the way, Superman deals with all manner of distractions designed by
Morrison to pay homage to past comics and flesh out the character’s infinite
possibilities. He arm-wrestles mythological B-listers Atlas and Samson as a
birthday present to Lois, and saves her life from a time-traveling Ultra-Sphinx
demanding an answer to the irresistible-force paradox.
Disguised as Clark Kent, he fumbles behind Luthor during a prison break
instigated by a monstrous iteration of the villain Parasite, which destroys
everything in its path while sucking the life out of anyone who gets in the way.
It’s a fearsome rampage that might give kids nightmares.
But the film’s greatest attributes are the subtle but ingenious instances drawn
from Morrison and Quitely’s comics, which could have easily been left behind
were All-Star Superman a less loyal project. Luthor’s floating robot recites
Moby-Dick, and Superman keeps the key to the Fortress of Solitude beneath his
doormat. (It’s just like any other key except that it is made from a dwarf star,
making it impossible to lift for anyone but Superman.) Superman keeps a lost and
lonely Sun-Eater as a pet, while hammering tiny suns and galaxies into being to
feed the octopus-like creature’s galactic hunger. Talk about your mind-wipes.
You will find no such ambitious narrative concerns in any of the Man of Steel
films previously created, which have greatly aged since Richard Donner’s classic
Superman, the best of the cinematic bunch, landed in 1978. The majority of them,
including 2006 effort Superman Returns, are designed to humanize the Man of
Steel for those who cannot comprehend his limitless potential — to make him
romantically and socially relatable while we pathologically pretend to be
immortal superheroes.
But Morrison and Quitely’s comic, and McDuffie and Liu’s animated adaptation,
bravely exploit that infinite possibility and achieve the same desired effect:
All-Star Superman, the comics and the film, find Superman at his sweetest, his
most human, precisely because they ask so much of him rather than saddling him
with a couple of easily surmountable challenges. Or, worse, recounting his
oft-told back story for a new generation. Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan
should take note before rebooting the Man of Steel franchise in 2012 with Henry
Cavill wearing the supersuit.
We’ve rarely been where All-Star Superman takes the character, in comics and
especially in film. We’ve probably never seen Jimmy Olsen walking around in drag
for no reason at all, or Superman turning into pure energy. Name the Man of
Steel movie where Lex Luthor comes to his senses once he’s able to see the world
as Superman does, watching atoms dance in the electromagnetic spectrum.
This is the intelligence upgrade that superhero cinema drastically needs, rather
than the blow-dried popcorn recently churned out. From Iron Man to Batman
(excepting Nolan’s run), movie-makers have unleashed a series of underwhelming
fantasies that ask little of their audiences. All-Star Superman is an absolutely
refreshing break from that capitulation. Here’s hoping Hollywood is watching,
and learning. |
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ALL STAR SUPERMAN © 2011 Warner Home Video
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2011 Alternate Reality, Inc.
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