Voice cast: Jason Isaacs, Amy Acker, and Diedrich
Bader
Director: Sam Liu
84 minutes (15) 2020
Warner Blu-ray
[Released 16th March]
Rating: 7/10
Review by Donald Morefield
Based upon Mark
Millar’s graphic novel from DC’s Elseworlds, this animated movie offers alternative
history in a sci-fi guise that’s anti-communist and yet fervently anti-capitalist,
too. Although, technically, it is a remake, following a TV adaptation, Superman: Red Son (2009), this cinematic
feature by Sam Liu (the maker of Batman:Gotham By Gaslight, Reign Of The
Supermen, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines),
takes flight along a very different timeline to those in recent live-action
cinema.
After some anti-Stalinist
rhetoric includes Superman’s discovery of dissidents enslaved in gulag prisons,
this USSR ‘Man of Steel’ must consider hard Russian choices and ponder, albeit
briefly, whether any form of ‘necessary evil’ is ever morally acceptable. Despite
being a symbol of great Soviet power here, the alien orphan Superman appears
humble, at first. Could awareness of his own propaganda value result in the
avoidance of Cold War antagonism, or a meta-human arms race from the 1950s and
1960s, in favour of utopian dreams? What happens is that Superman ends the Korean
War in three hours.
Oceans away, the compassionate
Lois Lane is unfortunately married to arch-capitalist Lex Luthor, who prompts America
to respond strongly against perceived threats from Russia’s Superman with a juiced-up
clone named Superior Man. Brainiac shrinks a Russian city to bottled size, but
the monstrous A.I. is soon lobotomised by super-science. Super-terrorist Batman
brings death and destruction, and insidious plans to defeat Wonder Woman and
Superman in defiance of the world’s heroes. Meanwhile, Roswell style UFOlogy
leads to a fearless squadron of Green Lanterns working for... yes, President
Luthor.
Animation
standard is regrettably quite basic, but the movie’s brisk pace and
story-telling sketches provide many fascinating new alternatives to the familiarity
and established lore of the Kryptonian mythos in DC comics or media. When a worldwide
crisis and final battle pits super-powers against cyber-strategy, the stakes
are sky high. The way this movie is written, as a popular studio production,
there is a significant respect for ordinary Russian people, and the proverbial
good Americans, but none for the machineries of state power.
Officials are
untrustworthy, and only decency and honour on both sides can evade global
catastrophe. It’s a formula that often works just fine in modern fairytales and
so the very best moments in Superman:
Red Son are always when it mimics those fantasy themes, and overlooks most
of the inherent science fictional elements. If the Brainiac menace can be
viewed as if it’s a symbolic dragon that needs slaying, the movie seems to make
more sense.
Bonus material
includes:
- Showcase animated short Phantom Stranger (15 minutes) has a van-load of teens, apparently inspired by the Scooby gang, confronting a vampiric villain until the final girl is rescued by a paranormal hero
- Cold Red War (17 minutes) is a documentary featurette
- Plus, motion comics, and sneak previews
