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DC Animated Fails Us, And Other Random Bits Of Crazy

By TK | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (16)

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First of all, here’s the shortest review I’ve ever written: DC Animated released their next direct-to-DVD movie this week, All-Star Superman. I was planning to give it a full review, because we all know I loves me some DC animated fare. There’s just one teensy problem: It’s boring. It hurts me to say it, but it was so dull I couldn’t even finish it. They completely shit the bed on this one — it’s painfully slow, the animation was clunky, and it features some of the most uninspired voice acting they’ve ever had (not even the voice of Christina Hendricks as Lois Lane could save it). And believe me, I adored Grant Morrison’s comic book series of the same name. Somehow they took all of that heartfelt, riveting drama and drained the life from it. There’s my review for you. I can only hope something better comes out of the upcoming Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

Next up, is apparently the US is getting in on the nonexistent Space Battleship Yamato craze (via Slashfilm). That’s not entirely true — there is a craze. They love it in Japan, and several Americans (myself included) are big fans of the old anime series. Anyway, apparently Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) has been hired to write script under its Americanized name, Star Blazers. It’ll be a live-action film. Which is weird, of course, because Japan is busy completing their own live-action film. Remember this piece that Steven wrote? Here’s the balls-crazy trailer for it:

Rutger Hauer is busy these days, and that pleases me. Ever since his quick but enjoyable role in Batman Begins, I’ve been hoping to see more of him. And here he comes, in all the weird-ass movies that you can shake a stick at. He’s already starring in the grindhouse piece of insanity that is Hobo With A Shotgun. Next, he’ll play Van Helsing in Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D. While I’m not thrilled about that 3d tacked on there, Argento always has me intrigued,
(FSR)

Finally, although it pains me to post this, it’s worth posting, I suppose. The painful part is that it’s essentially a five-minute commercial for Nike starring (grits teeth) Kobe Bryant. But, it’s directed by Robert Rodriguez, and co-stars Danny Trejo, Kanye West, Bruce Willis, And Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister. It’s mildly amusing.

Fuckin’ Kobe, man.










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Comments

A part of me is going, "NO! TK is wrong!" but I put more faith in your opinions on the animated stuff that's come out recently than not. GAH. I was hoping it would be good.

Posted by: duckandcover at February 22, 2011 9:11 AM

TK
All
Star
Superman

The acronymn says it all. I have to disagree it wasn't boring it was mind blowingly BAD. I'm a huge fan of DC animated and this was so bad my roomate and I couldnt even give it the MST3K treatment after a while. My roomate watched Ultrachrist afterward and his comment about it was "porn movie produvtion value without the nudity" and it was still a better film. Sorry just had to vent.

Posted by: Ikalvan2003 at February 22, 2011 9:49 AM

ditto on the all star superman. couldn't even be bothered to finish it.

I think it's that since dc's line of animation got so popular, they've been trying to slug them out faster. not to mention popularity usually activates the greed function on the suits and they start slashing budgets while reducing production time.

Posted by: idleprimate at February 22, 2011 10:14 AM

Kobe Bryant can go fuck a volcano.

What the twat, Rob-Rod? What the twat, everyone!

This rapist piece of shit was on Conan [O'Brien] the other day too!

Gah! Nobody cares but me... Somebody bring on the fucking zombie apocalypse, I'm ready.

Posted by: DarthBrookes at February 22, 2011 10:36 AM

Let's hope Star Blazers is better than Yamato. The trailer looked so promising, and then it just ended up being a disappointing mess of cliches. That didn't stop it from making a ton of money over here, though.

Posted by: Shibuyama at February 22, 2011 10:44 AM

Well, then I guess I'm glad I didn't pre-order the All-Star Superman DVD like I had planned on. I'll just wait for the Netflix Instant Queue to add it. It does seem odd they couldn't translate that story right... I mean, Morrison's stuff is out there, sure, and Quitely's art is very specific, but it seems ripe for direct translation in animated form...

Speaking of, I watched Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (or whatever the full, real title is) and I was thoroughly disappointed in that. It had flashes of amazigness, but was mostly just child's play and less compelling than an episode of Super Friends. Sigh.

At least we'll always have Batman: Under the Red Hood.

Posted by: RobP at February 22, 2011 11:01 AM

Nothing could be improve upon the presence of Kimutaku. NOTHING!

Posted by: mb at February 22, 2011 11:01 AM

Shibuyama,
"The trailer looked so promising, and then it just ended up being a disappointing mess of cliches."

Hmm... i had thought the trailer looked like a promising mess of disappointing cliches.

Posted by: Scott at February 22, 2011 2:46 PM

My problem was they pretty much removed all the most personal and heartfelt stuff from it. I can almost understand why they got rid of Pa Kent's death because it depends on a lot of DC continuity(mostly to do with ONE MILLION, which I don't care about at all), but that was the part where Grant was dealing with his own dad's death. You could still have it in some other manner--but I guess without the future-Supermen he couldn't be in the past.

And then the Bizarro part. Now, that could be a movie all by itself--it's pretty dense. But I wanted to see it anyway.

What's unforgivable? Losing Superman preventing that suicide, which makes me tear up EVERY TIME I SEE THE PAGE. That? That's the moment where we feel why Superman is great. That scene is about him loving EVERYONE. No matter how small. It's the scene that carries the whole heart of the work.

What it does is it takes away the premise that Superman is EVERYMAN, that his story is everyone's story writ large. Not just another fight with Luthor, which is what they reduce it too. I wonder if MacDuffie even understood the book. (It also fails to bring across, as the book does, the sheer WASTE of Luthor's life)

The acting? Don't care. I expect lousy, arch, two-dimensional voice acting from DC animated stuff. Can't think of one, regardless of exceptions(Sisto and MacLachlan in NEW FRONTIER, James Woods in the EARTH-2 adaptation, Hendricks in this--she sounds best when she's tired and about to pass out. VERY natural and sexy in a sweet way), where that wasn't the case.

Posted by: John Roberson at February 22, 2011 3:16 PM

And then a second after writing that I read this:

"Breaking: Dwayne McDuffie, DC Comics & Animation Writer Dead"
http://bit.ly/dExTgb

So now I feel like a total dick.

Rest in peace, Mr. McDuffie. You will be missed.

Posted by: John Roberson at February 22, 2011 3:28 PM

The Black Mamba is his peni--
*swiftly suffocated under a pile of brown coats*

Posted by: Jim Doggie at February 22, 2011 4:11 PM

@John Roberson:

Superman saving that girl just being present is my favorite Superman moment ever. I was very disappointed to see that it didn't find its way into the movie.

"It's never as bad as it seems."

Posted by: Craigilicious at February 22, 2011 4:24 PM

Love starblazers!

Posted by: Jack Random at February 22, 2011 7:30 PM

love me some starblazers

Posted by: unholy panda at February 22, 2011 7:32 PM

It was said by the late McDuffie it was cut for time, but somehow I doubt that--it would have taken no more than a minute of screen time, and I'd rather have seen that than Bar-El and Lilo(which, as it's supposed to be about when you have to take care of dying relatives, has less resonance without Pa Kent's death).

Rest in peace, Dwayne, in any event; incidentally they're reporting it was "surgical complications" from a procedure last night. That's just wrong.

Posted by: John Roberson at February 22, 2011 7:49 PM

mb, I'm pretty sure anything could improve on the presence of KimuTaku.

Haha, well played, Scott. Unfortunately, I felt the movie just took itself too seriously to justify all the cliches. I certainly wasn't expecting anything super original, but at a certain point it just became more annoying than fun. I would totally watch it again with a bunch of drunken, heckling friends, though.

Posted by: Shibuyama at February 23, 2011 12:27 AM