Superman: Red Son
If you ever wondered what it would look like if Superman were to annihilate Stalin... well, this has you covered. I liked it to a degree, but this is definitely a clear example of these animated films being far less than their comic counterparts. So much of what made the comics great is lost in the adaptation here and some of what is changed is seemingly changed because "eh, why not?"
I give it some credit for trying to tackle certain things from a different angle, but I question the choice to make them so seemingly arbitrary due to the current social climate. Also, it suffers quite a bit from a look of overall cheapness in animation quality, which really saddens me. It's not new territory for these films, given how cheap the 2019 release of Wonder Woman: Bloodlines looked but compared to other animated films that Warner Bros. & DC have released, the drop in quality in that department is a steep cliff.
I also watched Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
Enjoyed it much more than Red Son. The animation quality being almost night and day in difference between the two.
The one issue I have with it though, is that it's just so... dark. Like, grimdark. It tries to play it up for laughs (seeing King Shark chomping off heads and limbs of people he fights against, for example) but then other times it just goes kinda overboard on the violence to an excessive degree (at one point it makes it clear that Starfire has been bisected and it shows her guts spilled on the ground, just to name one of the over-the-top segments). I don't shy away from violence, but there's a point where even I start to question if it's hitting that line of sadistic pseudo-porn, even if the aim is to convey that war is anything but sunshine and rainbows.
This film is the closing act of some of the previous films (starting around The Flashpoint Paradox) and its ending feels a bit like a cop-out but in that traditional comic book fashion. I don't hate it for that, but at the same time I feel as though it could have been set up without the "okay, we can wave a hand and this will change" trope coming into play.
For all its grimdarkness (it even manages to squeeze some "F" bombs in there to remind you that you aren't watching a Saturday morning cartoon) it does pull off the lighter moments (not the eating people parts but other sequences and dialogues) well. Or, I suppose that due to all the edgy and dark stuff, the lighter moments have greater resonance and impact. Something as simple as Etrigan mocking John Constantine when Robin threatens to chop off his hands if he tries to steal anything ("I REALLY like him!) is just genuinely funny and a nice breather between all the horror the movie wants to throw at the viewer otherwise.
Post edited May 08, 2020 by TheMonkofDestiny
