There have been many attempts to bring the infamous battle between Superman and Doomsday to other formats, but the 2018 animated adaptation is the one to finally nail it! Duke joins us for a conversation about this brutal rendition.

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Transcription

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00:00
Case
Before we start, I'm just gonna say I like this way more than I expected to.

00:04
Jmike
Yeah, I was surprised.

00:31
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm case aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, J. Mike Falson.

00:37
Jmike
Welcome back, everybody. So glad to have you guys today.

00:39
Case
Yeah, today is a really fun day because so just by virtue of the nature of this podcast, where we look at lots of Superman content or Superman adjacent content, and just because I have a lot of experience in that, and to a certain extent, this podcast is me being like, let's read this book with J. Mike and a guest and chat about it. And usually I'm not coming in cold versus today we are talking about the animated Death of Superman movie, which I had never seen before. We decided that were going to do a bunch of material about the death of Superman and the return of Superman. So we have watched now Superman Doomsday already. We read the comic last time, and this time we're talking about the animated Death of Superman. And holy shit, I really liked it.

01:23
Case
And I can't wait to have this conversation because today we are joined by Duke, everybody. Duke, welcome back. I am so glad to have you here for this conversation.

01:31
Duke
Thanks. I like talking about Superman dying a lot.

01:35
Jmike
Hey, wait a second.

01:39
Case
Yeah. For like, 50 years, he was definitively like, yeah, no, he doesn't die. And now it's just like every story he's in. Yeah, he could die.

01:45
Jmike
He could die.

01:46
Duke
Let's kill him off in various ways.

01:49
Case
No, I know there are all those imaginary stories, and as I was saying it, I'm like, well, no, I mean, there are stories where he died. It's just, it wasn't the thing he was known for. And then because there was this big event comic in the 90s, now he kind of is.

02:01
Jmike
Gloves are off. Everybody can die for good.

02:03
Duke
There's something to be said about how the. It was, it, the Jerry SIEGEl one that's a Superman story is still kind of like, really kind of, like, harsh, where it's like, geez, you really took this character away from him, and this is how he's going to kill him off. Like, no mercy, just dead.

02:19
Case
Yeah, that's the imaginary one with Lex.

02:22
Duke
With the, like, I reformed. I reformed. I would do all these great deeds. Hey, you want to test out this cure for.

02:34
Case
A. I wrote a play that we did for a stage reading of Lex Luthor giving a monologue to Superman's dead body, and it was deliberately homaging that specific. We had an actor who was down with green light flash or shining right on him like a green spotlight. And, yeah, so it was just like, green beam. And then we've got a bald actor reading this intense monologue about how it was necessary to remove Superman from the world because he was making the world worse. And I was deliberately thinking of that. But no, we're not talking about Lex Luthor outsmarting Superman today. We are talking about a knockdown dragout fight that was way better than I expected. Oh, my God.

03:21
Jmike
Yeah. After Superman Doomsday, you're like, okay. But this one, I was like, okay, I can kind of dig this is hitting all the right spots for me.

03:31
Duke
Yeah.

03:32
Jmike
Cyborg got his butt kicked. It was great. It was a great day. It was a great day.

03:37
Duke
It's one of those things where it was like, when it was announced initially, I'm like, oh, come on, guys. Can we not just prove me right in the idea that DC only wants to tell three stories and that's death of Superman, Dark Knight returns and I guess Flashpoint now. And I came into it dreading it. But the announcement of Peter J. Tomasi was writing it. We're not using Alan Tidick's Superman. We're using Jerry O'Connell. And I'm like, okay, I like Jerry O'Connell. And Rebecca remained stamos as Lois Lane. Rebecca remain. Right. Like, not San stamos as Lois Lane. And, oh, they're married and they have chemistry. That's nice. And the trailer came out and my reaction was, holy shit. They just wrote a story. They didn't write six issues of Superman punching doomsday as the panel gets progressively bigger.

04:33
Duke
And I was incredibly shocked by this movie, by watching it and going, this is one of the few times where they. Because they have animated movies where they explored the Superman Lois Lane relationship and how he wants to be with her, but he's afraid of revealing his secret identity. I think that was explored in the brainac movie where it was Superman Unbound, where they kind of explored, like, he wants to go further with her, but he can't compel himself to I think. So. I want to say it was because it felt like a little bit of an already done routine at this point with these amateur films. But I felt with this one, it felt a lot more grounded.

05:21
Case
Yeah, they did a really good job with a lot of relationships. They did a really good job with the extended Superman universe. He has a big supporting cast in this movie. And I was really excited about all of it. It wasn't just the Daily Planet. It was all of the Daily Planet. Plus, also Bibbo Babowski. We had Dan Turpin, and know, like, we're really setting up this world of the status quo. Superman. One of the reasons I was skeptical going into it is that they're using his new 52 based outfit, and the.

05:55
Duke
New 52 movies didn't really do any of them any service whatsoever. We don't really understand these characters as people. They just had Justice League films, so who the hell are they as people? Right?

06:07
Case
Yeah. They were adapting the Justice League stuff from New 52, which is, like, not the cream of the crop.

06:13
Duke
The new 52, it sucked. That Justice League round was pretty awful.

06:19
Case
Yeah. So it had a look that wasn't great. And it has a story that it is a common response to be like, okay, cool, he fights a guy and dies. Like, we've complained about that now, the two times that we talked about Superman, doomsday fights already with us trying to pick out the things that we thought were really good. And then this one came out. All of a sudden, I was like, holy shit, it is really compelling. And I'm also kind of glad that I hadn't seen this by the time we talked about the comic, because in our discussion of the comic, I was saying all these things that I thought were great that they were able to do in it.

06:55
Case
And then I see this, and some of the concerns I had about adapting it to another format were actually addressed here, which was really great. And it gave me a chance to sort of articulate what my concerns were thinking, that they could not be met, having seen Superman Doomsday, which is just such an inferior product. And there's one thing that is in that movie that I think is truly a good element of the Doomsday stuff. And that is when they show, from Doomsday's perspective, that he has this sort of mechanical view to everything, which I think is good. I don't necessarily know if I want that in every version, but I thought it was good there. Meanwhile, here we've got Superman, like the Justice League, and we have the big seven, Hawkman.

07:44
Duke
There was always that joke where it was like, you see, this is what happens when you get the fake Justice League to help Superman during the Doomsday fight. If the real Justice League were here, they'd actually step up. And then you get the real Justice League, and it's like, no, they're completely outmatched by this engine of destruction.

08:01
Jmike
Yeah, they tried their hardest.

08:03
Duke
And again, I had to restate that. I'm not a big fan of the new 52 Justice League movies. I think Justice League war is very kind of tedious towards the second 3rd act where it's just fighting. And I think Throne of Atlantis has some merits. But between that, this movie and Justice League teen titans, this was one of the few times where they felt like a team of friends, of colleagues. And I think so much of what makes this movie work is that it takes the time to really make you care about these characters. So when you finally do put them through hell in the third act, there's an actual visceral feeling of, holy crap, these guys might die. Or at least Hawkman should die. I mean, it's Hawkman. He just comes back. There's.

08:53
Jmike
Yeah, they give him a couple months to be back to normal.

08:56
Case
Yeah. And they're like, hawkman's still alive. I'm like, he is really?

09:00
Jmike
I feel bad for Wonder Woman because, oh, my gosh, she got the crap beat up.

09:05
Case
Yeah. But that's appropriate, though, because she's the one who's going to put up the best fight, which means that fight is going to be the most taxing on her directly.

09:13
Duke
Kudos to them getting rid of that ponytail and letting her hair flow. She looked awesome.

09:20
Jmike
When the bracelet popped, I was like, oh, snap. It just got real. It's about to go down.

09:26
Case
She was punched so hard that her.

09:27
Duke
Hair became sexier, her hair became longer. It's like, oh, maybe doomsday should just punch her into a better costume, because I don't like that roller derby costume at all.

09:40
Case
Yeah, the outfits in general have some issues. Like Green Lantern has the unnecessary just, like, green accents all over his outfit and the flashes, like the lines on the costumes. It's the designs they were working with, and there's only so much you can do. But, yeah, the new 52 look for Superman I don't objectively hate, but I think it takes a lot to make it look right in a shot. And I don't think the animated format is really good for it. Like, that shade of blue probably works better in live action than it would in animation cell. And, yeah, he just doesn't quite look enough like Superman. But you know what the big thing is? He acts like Superman. He behaves like Superman. The world treats him like Superman. He's not just some superhero. Everyone really loves him.

10:25
Case
And I think this movie does a really good job of setting up that this is a world where people have come to rely, respect, and enjoy the existence of Superman so that his death actually means something when it happens, especially the.

10:41
Duke
Yeah. Hank Henshaw, who's usually a weak link to me as far as Superman villains. Yeah, I think they did a really kind of a little heavy handed approach to it, especially when the meter is coming. He's like, well, Superman's going to save us. Superman's going to save us. It's like, all right.

10:57
Jmike
He always saves us.

10:58
Duke
He's always saving.

10:59
Case
You can always count on Superman.

11:00
Duke
It's like, okay, you can dial it down a little bit, buddy. But, yeah. And I think that's, again, one of the strengths of this movie is that it feels like a movie about a guy who's a pillar of the community, and they establish what communities he's a part of the Justice League, the Daily Planet, his family, the streets of Metropolis. And they really make it so that once you get rid of the sky, what happens? Everything falls apart. It's like the story of Balder dying. In norse mythology. Once Balder goes, it starts raining, the sun doesn't come up again because this guy was so beloved by everybody. Yeah.

11:42
Case
And in both cases, they can't be killed. That can't be the way that they die. And then all of a sudden, oh, no, that's a mistletoe arrow. And our invulnerable light being is dead.

11:54
Duke
Yes.

11:55
Case
Oops.

11:56
Jmike
Oh, my gosh.

11:58
Duke
Oh, no. Our slightly jesusy guy died.

12:01
Case
Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting looking at this whole thing where, again, the main story is this fight with doomsday. And so how do you keep that interesting? How do you space it out? When they did Superman Doomsday, the fight ends up being only the first third of the movie, maybe first half of the movie. And then it's all about the resurrection stuff, which, to be fair, this is a two part movie, the second part being the return of Superman. In a certain sense, that is how this is split up. But it's spending the full time actually focusing on the rising stakes. We established a status quo at the beginning. We get criminals who are exactly the type of criminals I want in a Superman.

12:44
Duke
Exactly.

12:45
Case
Because it's powered armor. Criminals who know it's Mannheim, who is like a name, but isn't like a big villain. So you don't feel like you're shortchanging that character. We're getting the appropriate amount of respect.

12:58
Duke
It's like Spider man fighting Hammerhead. You want to see the cold open of Spider man fighting Hammerhead. Ed Bernard Mannheim and Superman's hammerhead. He's just a mafia guy who works for the. Yeah. Space devil.

13:11
Case
And it's perfect. Here because it's intergang. They say it's apocalypse tech, but it's also Lex Luthor tech. And those armors look like classic Lex Luthor armors.

13:19
Duke
Yeah.

13:20
Case
So here, for all of that, it puts up not much of a fight against Superman, but that's the point. We see how conventional arms can't really handle these things, but Superman shows up, and we've got a bit of this morrisonian style nod to the golden age where he's a little bit more property damaging in his being super like, he smacks them down really hard and as a result, causes some damage. But he doesn't clean it up himself, but he arranges it for it to be cleaned up.

13:49
Duke
Barry, you deal with it. Nerd.

13:52
Case
Which I loved that the characterization on both Flash and Green Lantern, I adored in this movie. They both had real personalities. That felt good. I admit that Barry feels like Wally, but that's just a common complaint at this point.

14:06
Duke
I think with this version of Barry, it's like he is a bit funny, but they play up. He's a hopeless nerd. So I'm like, okay, there's enough Barry there where it's not too much like Wally until he starts making fun of.

14:24
Case
Which, fine, that's what people know at this point. I'm not going to get really that mad because he's perfect in the spot. I just wish that under the mask, he had red hair, but we don't even see it, so it doesn't even matter if you don't think too much about it. I mean, they call him Barry at one point, but not the point. Hal Jordan, I thought was a lot of fun.

14:42
Duke
My head candy for the DC League of Super Pets movies. That's Wally. Because that guy's got freckles. So I totally get.

14:49
Case
Yeah, like, we know a really solid Green Lantern when they're teasing Batman about having a parent teacher conference that I thought was just a really good moment there. It does speak to how compressed this timeline is that Damien's a factor in everything. Yeah, I like the danger room type fight that Wonder Woman and Superman are in and where they get to scold each other about using code names versus not codenames. That was a good part of sort of establishing what Superman feels like. He is very introspective in this all without us getting a voiceover or thought balloons or something to that effect.

15:29
Case
He is really concerned about moving forward with Lois and talks about it a lot with the leaguers who want to talk about it as opposed to their annual budget stuff, because this is the most bureaucratic version of the Justice League you could imagine. In addition to everything else, I guess not the most because they're not, like, clocking in, clocking out or anything like that. But it did make me think of squad and supreme, where there's, like, this pageantry to being part of this special club.

15:59
Jmike
Oh, man.

16:00
Duke
Squad.

16:00
Jmike
And do. I do like the fact that she brought up the fact that her little doll, or not dolls, but action figures did wonderfully this year. And she'd be willing to chip in whenever Bruce couldn't take over for I was like, oh, it's a little bander. Makes it all worth it.

16:17
Case
That made me think of the failed Wonder Woman pilot with Adrian Policki, where she's got, like, a merchant.

16:22
Duke
Yeah. Oh, my God. We're going to talk about pants to be darkened.

16:29
Jmike
Gosh, that show.

16:30
Duke
See, I got an SF debris laugh from you. I know it.

16:37
Case
Yes, indeed. SF debris is great. And if people aren't following his content, you should check that out because great insight into all of this material. But, yeah, I just love this bigger world that we open the characters in. And then I was a little curious what the deal with Lois and Superman were when we talked about Superman Doomsday, it was really weird that they were clearly having sex, but she didn't know who he. Like, that was just like, oh, that feels like you're crossing the line there.

17:06
Duke
Yeah.

17:06
Case
And in this case, it's a lot better. Like, for one thing, she is dating Clark in secret. So at first I was know because we see them, Lois and Superman together, and I was like, oh, does she not? Sure, I guess. And then it turns out she's with like, oh, maybe. Maybe she does know, but it's all a secret. Oh, she doesn't know yet, but okay, cool. Okay. And I thought it was, like, fun how that was a big thing Superman was going through, that him coming out, but him coming out to Lois as Superman was a thing that was going on in his head. And it's part of this big relationship moving forward about how important she is and Monpa can are.

17:50
Case
There are all nice elements to sort of increase the tension of like, well, I've got to protect the city because all the people I love are here.

17:56
Jmike
Yeah, I will say that I thought the whole him coming out of Superman thing was kind of, like, boring because it's like the whole I'm Batman thing that everyone chokes about, but he's like, look at.

18:07
Duke
I think to your point, it is a bit lackluster how he reveals it because he's literally sitting across from her at a bar, and he's like, it would have been a lot more funnier if it was like the Donner films where it's, know, Lois, I have something to tell you. And he falls over and she's like, clark, Clark. And he flies up, and she's like, oh, you son of a bitch.

18:30
Jmike
Oh, my God.

18:32
Duke
All those years of trying to prove that you're Superman and you son of a bitch.

18:37
Case
Yeah, that we're kind of missing, but it is at least nice to get because they wanted to deal. It felt like a justifiable reason for the justice leaguers to be like, hey, no, you handle this thing. You're coming out to your girlfriend as superman. It made sense because we established that they have that kind of convivial relationship with each other, the league, I mean, and that they understand that this is important for Clark specifically. They're, no, you go, do you? And then it gets too crazy. It's like when you take off a day at work and your coworkers are doing fine until an emergency happens and you have to come in. Yeah.

19:12
Duke
You come back and the office is on fire, and it's, yeah, exactly. And again, I wouldn't believe the Justice League doing this in the other movies, but because Tomasi did such a great job establishing. They're allies. They're all friends. This isn't Batman barking orders at everybody, and they all make it feels right. Like, yeah, just have your date, Clark. Have a day off, Clark. Nothing can go wrong. Everything will be just fine. Why are you saying that? Like, in the Irishman, it just does a still screen of Barry Allen, and then it says, like, barry was killed by Doomsday the following day. He was loved by all.

20:01
Case
Yeah, a lot of people should have gone down there, but it would have.

20:04
Duke
Been kind of dope. But, yeah, especially the sequel when you have to get rid of the Justice League anyways. And it's like, well, you kind of killed or put some of them in, like, a coma.

20:14
Case
Yeah, that does explain why they're not Hawkman's.

20:19
Duke
Like, here we go again.

20:21
Case
So at the end of the movie, when they're, like, congratulating everyone who fought in the battle against Doomsday and acknowledging that Superman had died and was, like, the real person doing, they're like, end the league. And they cut to Hawkman, and Hawkman's like, the helmet design that they give him makes him look like he's, like, a bit cross eyed.

20:38
Duke
Yes.

20:40
Case
And so I couldn't help but think it's just like, derpa. I got to hit the guy with the mace. It's good.

20:46
Jmike
He's not all there yet. He's got to.

20:48
Case
Well, but it's also Hawkman, so is he ever all there?

20:52
Duke
Hawkman's like, I'm so fucking quitting.

20:55
Jmike
I'm getting too over this crap.

21:00
Case
That's the spot where, like, a classic leaguer is not a more impressive one than what we got in the comics. In terms of the trade off of the comics like, Justice League roster that fought doomsday versus this, Maxima is pretty one to one with Wonder Woman here, and Bloodwind is literally martian Manhunter.

21:17
Duke
He's martian man. They're going through a bit.

21:20
Case
Yeah. And Guy Gardner and Green Lantern Hal Jordan are comparable in a fight. We don't need to really stress too much about the power discrepancies of the Sinestro core ring versus the Green Lantern core ring, but then the rest of them. Yeah, you got flash is great and cyborg is great, and Batman. Batman's there, probably should have died several times, but he doesn't, because he's Batman.

21:43
Jmike
Yeah, exactly. I was like, that's not never going to happen.

21:46
Case
Trade off for, like, ice and fire and booster gold would have done a lot better than Hawkman in that situation, for one thing, would allow him to survive at every point.

21:56
Duke
What? That's, you know, he was created by one of the guys working on that book, so you'd be, hey, it's not that harmed.

22:02
Case
Yeah, also true on that one, which I realized we didn't bring up when were talking about. It's like, yeah, booster gold is Dan Jergen's babies, so, yeah, I'm not going.

22:10
Duke
To let you hurt my hippo child.

22:14
Case
Yeah, not too bad. Just take his toys away.

22:18
Duke
Have doomsday smashed headcourt's head in with a car door. That's fine.

22:22
Case
Yeah, I did like the synergy of using Hawkman's mace with the. Yeah, that's. You would think you would just do that more often where it's my. Here's my cool gimmick weapon, flash. Take it and do it good.

22:34
Duke
If anything, it's like, we really don't need Hawkman. We just need this damn base.

22:38
Jmike
Yeah, we're going to sideline you for a while, but let us borrow your weapon to somebody who can use it better than you.

22:46
Case
Yeah. So in terms of the actual, like, all right, can this league hold their own? They do a pretty good job of justifying why they can't hear, for one thing. This does such a good job of having super fast doomsday. He is so brutal at every point. We introduce him after the initial asteroid falling, we introduce him crashing into the ocean and dealing with a bunch of Atlanteans, and that's pretty fucking brutal. And they immediately establish, like, oh, yeah, no, this is going to be not fun. No one's getting out of these situations in a way that is not horrifically.

23:23
Jmike
Scarred because the scientists, I want to say, wanted to go down, but Lex kind of forced him down there to go see what was going on.

23:31
Duke
Yeah.

23:32
Jmike
And they get obliterated.

23:34
Case
Like, the first guy, doomsday punches through the super thick glass, crushes his head, and then uses him to then swing the submersible into the ocean floor and fuck it up more. It just starts off gory.

23:49
Jmike
I will say. Like doomsday in this movie. He grabs people's head and uses them. Yeah, we're like blunt objects. And I'm like, wow, this guy is. Holy crap.

24:02
Case
He's a big tool user in this movie. He really loves throwing things at people, which is a really good element to this character. He's so fast and he's so vicious, and he will continue pummeling a thing once it's down until it's dead. And every time he is forced to reassess his combat situation, his natural response is to chuck very big things at whatever has surprised him and then follow it up by jumping at super speed and hitting the thing really hard after that, which works pretty well for him in this movie as a strategy, him taking down the Justice League. I'm like, oh, it's really impressive that it's working as well as it is. And, oh, wow, he took out mean. You know, obviously, he takes out Hawkman pretty fast, but then he takes out Green Lantern really quickly, and flash barely saves him.

24:50
Case
And you're like, okay, cool. I am seeing how we're establishing the power curve here. But then once Superman actually comes into the fray and you have a fight, well, really first with wonder woman, because we get a little bit of that with Martian Manhunter. But it's mostly that Martian Manhunter is intangible, and he's not able to do anything until he's able to force Martian Manhunter to become solid for just long enough to prevent Batman from dying, and then just tosses him immediately into a gas station.

25:22
Duke
And then Martian Manor lets out this blood curdling scream. Right?

25:27
Jmike
He is down for the count, which.

25:29
Duke
Is still horrific, even on my rewatches. Where it's like, oh, yeah.

25:33
Case
It's like, okay, all right. We just took out Green Lantern and martian manhunter, and it wasn't a big deal. Batman is good at running at this.

25:42
Duke
He's not doing much like another doomsday movie fight. Batman's smart enough to go, oh, God, I'm so. I'm screwed. I got to run away. Oh, shit. I got to hide under something. Which is totally fair. Dude, I get it.

25:55
Jmike
He's taking out gods and demigods. Like, I'm going to hide over here in the corner.

25:58
Duke
This isn't Bane. Where's Doomsday's big pump thing? I can throw my battering at, and then it destroys the pump thing, and I can kick him. He doesn't.

26:08
Case
Yeah, where's the quick time sequence that I can press in the right order to leave him exposed so I can hit him one time that actually matters? Then I dodge three times, and then the quicktime sequence again, like, doomsday, like, corners Batman.

26:21
Duke
Batman's like, can you at least give me a riddle or something?

26:28
Case
Here's a riddle.

26:28
Jmike
Die, Batman. How fucked are you today? Very.

26:35
Case
Yeah. But then. But then Superman actually arrives, and it makes sense. The news all of a sudden is picking it up. It's like, okay, cool. All right, duty calls. Let's go deal with this thing. And, man, it takes a lot to really establish how powerful Superman is in one of these fights, because when you're fighting two comparable beings, some of those feats don't really show up. And so in both cases, they're moving so fast, and they are doing such interesting things with their powers. And interesting doesn't have to be, like, deeply complex stuff. But Doomsday is very calculated in what he hits and how he hits it and what things he's using as weapons at any given time. And it really shows just how fucking terrifying this thing would be in a way that isn't just like the Hulk with spikes.

27:21
Case
And I actually kind of like the way they designed doomsday in this to be more a tall. Like, he has more realistic human proportions than he's often drawn. He often is drawn with really broad shoulders and really hulk like. And in this case, he's more just huge. And I feel like that kind of works with how they show him being so fucking fast.

27:43
Jmike
I will say that I did like that they carried over the costume, that he first appears in the suit, that he's in the containment suit when he first lands. Yes. The same suit from the other materials. And did they establish that he was kryptonian. Here.

28:00
Duke
It's implied because he just comes out laser.

28:04
Case
Oh, wait, that surprised me when that showed up.

28:08
Duke
It's also because it surprised me. And then my head cannon, I'm like, well, when Jimmy Olsen became doomsday and all star Superman, Jimmy Olsen developed heat vision too. I don't know why you went to Jimmy Olsen and all star Superman, but I guess technically, since the canon origin for Doomsday is clone kryptonian, baby, you might as well have heat vision.

28:31
Jmike
Yeah, but it just came out of nowhere.

28:37
Duke
To me, it works because he saw Superman use it and said, oh, wait.

28:42
Jmike
Yeah, that was, can he just copy abilities at this point, or is like that?

28:47
Case
I was wondering if that's what they were going with. But he doesn't copy any other abilities at any point. So I think it is just he manifested it, and now it could be that he evolved it in the battle because he clearly is evolving the spikes and things. Yeah, the spikes are getting bigger, and he's getting bigger. Like, he starts off smaller, and by the end of the fight, he is much taller than he was.

29:11
Duke
Doomsday's evolution is whatever it needs to be, right? I mean, if someone were to throw him so many, just, you should just grow wings. But he won't.

29:20
Jmike
I mean, we can't have him turn to Dr. Ivo's Android out here. That'd be too broken.

29:26
Duke
Then Amazo would sue him, and then.

29:29
Case
He would countersue and be like, I'm not ripping off you. I'm ripping off the super adaptoid.

29:34
Duke
Now. It's got to be a DC Marvel case. Great, right?

29:38
Case
Yeah. But Doomsday is so interesting in this movie, just from the way they animate him, from the way he fights. I just did not expect any animated version to have as good choreography as this fight ultimately has. And then it's so well set up beforehand where you really care about this fight because we had great scenes with the Justice League, because we had great scenes with Superman and Lois and with the time where they're over at Mon pa Kent's, or rather at Clark's with Monpa Kent there. And first off, they're just, like, teasing Clark in ways that parents do. And it's just, like, kind of perfect. And I especially love all of the puns when they get to Lori Lamaris. Yeah, they just start doing fish puns like crazy.

30:25
Case
And if you don't know what they're talking about, you won't really pay attention to it. Like, they said she was on the swim team. But she was quite a catch. She was quite a catch. And then it was something like, and I'm making halibut tonight.

30:39
Duke
Eventually, Rose is like, did you fuck a fish or something?

30:45
Jmike
Clark's just like, please, God, make it stop.

30:49
Duke
I can't a ticket anymore.

30:51
Case
It broke out because she lay a clutch and asked him to spray over them. That got real gross right there.

30:58
Duke
Anyway, moving on, he visited along John Silvers, never came back.

31:04
Case
But it was such a delightful scene, and it really felt like were building out this universe of what Superman has gone through. These moments of like, oh, man, was he actually Superboy in Smallville? Even if it wasn't, like a public thing, maybe people didn't know about it at all. But you feel like you have that world of Superman. In fact, the only thing that they are fairly explicit, he doesn't have of his traditional Superman stuff is that at the end of the movie, the fortress of solitude is created. And so it's like, oh, well, I guess he didn't have that part already.

31:35
Duke
Yeah, that's something where it's like you want to attach these movies to the new 52 comics because they're so derived from it. But at the same time, they don't really match up a lot because these just league films, initially, just league films were just kind of like, we're doing the Jeff John stories. Which ones? Justice League war, Throne of Atlantis. And then they teased another movie at the end of Throne of Atlantis. They never continued that thread. They never continued that threat, even though it was clearly going to be, like, forever evil or of these characters were a bit.

32:19
Duke
So with this movie, not only the advantage of fleshing out this Superman, but also getting to really play with, hey, we can do anything with this guy's universe now we can just incorporate Laurie Lamara's even as a background joke, or we can have him have the rocket and so Lois Lane can meet the eradicator system, which I thought was very clever because that's a very important thing that they didn't establish before these films. And we know how big a player eradicator is later on, especially in the whole reign of the Superman stuff. And I just loved it. I honestly think one of my favorite things about this movie is that, yeah, I jokingly said this is a movie where they wrote a story and then attached death to Superman. But the story itself and death of Superman are thematically on the right level.

33:20
Duke
It's the same level. It's a story of Superman's vulnerability and how far is this guy going to be vulnerable. And he starts off as very guarded, and he has to slowly kind of uncouple these force fields he's built around himself. And how vulnerable is he willing to go? He's willing to die for the woman he loves. That's his. Like, he's so vulnerable. He's mortal at the end.

33:46
Case
Yeah. With wonderful illusions. In his last time talking to Lois before he goes into the fight, he gives a, like, you've got me, who's got you? Line in there. And it's like, oh, man, they love every aspect of Superman in this movie.

34:02
Jmike
I'm glad someone.

34:05
Case
Well, like, so when were talking about the comic, I was discussing how it felt to a certain degree, like a victory lap of just being like, look at all the stuff we've done with Superman since Man of Steel, since Cris on infinite Earth rebooted everything. Look at this celebration of all the weird shit that we've done in the books since that point. We get moments with Supergirl. We get moments with Maxima. Sure, it's because the Justice League, but Maxima had been a big plot point in the post crisis era of Superman. We get all the stuff with know we're dealing with Lex Luthor, Jr. And this movie has to deal with the fact that it doesn't have that, like, lore to build on.

34:45
Case
And the reign of Superman goes even further with it because we get all the stuff connected to Mongol and we get stuff connected to the eradicator and Hank Henshaw, and it gets even crazier. So the fact that this movie sets up pretty well all four of the Superman imposters in a way that doesn't feel like either shoehorned or awkward or anything weird. It does a better job with Hank Henshaw by virtue of him being like a reverse flash style. Like, oh, man, my great.

35:15
Duke
Think. I know I'm not covering the next thing with you. I like the fact that it was like, what if we explored harder the idea of Hank Henshaw's cyborg Superman being kind of like a religious cult leader. And they bring it up like, there's this guy that just gave way to reason because he believes Superman's going to save him, and he died for it. And that's the shocking thing about how this improves a lot of what I didn't like. I do like Death of Superman a little, but it does improve a lot of what I had problems with this and reign of Superman, that entire story, into kind of the bare essential ideas. You need to be a very strong connective narrative. And speaking of Lex Luthor Jr.

36:10
Case
Yes. I wanted to work.

36:11
Duke
Can we go into the fact that fuck you joke was really good?

36:15
Case
It's really good. When he shows up, when he rolls up to his house arrest building, I'm like, wait, are we getting it? And then he takes off the wig and the fake beard, and I'm like, oh, perfect. Okay, cool. That is such a tight way to explain it. For anyone who just, like, peruses the comics, it's like, oh, he was wearing a beard and a wig, which is basically true.

36:35
Duke
Like, he might as well do the australian accent know. Good day.

36:40
Case
Yeah.

36:41
Duke
Okay. Speaking of Lex Luthor, can you guys tell how much the animators love Lex Luthor in this movie and how animated that dude's face is? Because that dude is super emotive in these films. Like, the animators had so much fun with Lex because he doesn't do just angry. He does pithy. He does sarcastic. You can see it on how they animated space. He's incredibly expressive, more so than everybody else because they have so much fun with this guy. And Ray Wilson as Lex Luthor is really good.

37:16
Jmike
He did a great job. Yeah.

37:18
Case
The only real scene that I had a problem with from a Lex Luthor standpoint, I know what they were doing is when he walks into all the scientists researching stuff, and he just starts pointing out their mistakes. And the reason why I have issues with it is that the things that he's saying are unprompted and don't necessarily make sense based on him. Just, like, walking past a guy studying a sample. But aside from that, and it's really just like, these felt, like placeholder lines that needed to be buffed up by the time it got out. And they just never did. Aside from that, I really liked it all. I really liked that he was part of the final stand against doomsday.

37:53
Case
I was surprised that it was a suit when Doomsday starts ripping into it because he had a computer monitor on, and I was thinking, like, yeah, he'll send a drone because he's under house arrest, technically, and he's operating in public. He'll just be in a drone, and he'll still get the accolades because he was controlling this drone and making a big speech in front of everyone. It's like, oh, no, he's actually inside of it.

38:15
Duke
Yeah.

38:16
Case
Why?

38:17
Duke
I was shocked. It wasn't the traditional war suit. It was a very kind of artem Zola kind of suit where he's just a big old head and a machine gun.

38:28
Jmike
They teased it like, oh, is it what you think it is when it comes out of the ground?

38:32
Case
You're like, well, that warsuit is so close to what we got at the. Yeah, like, it's so close. Like, if you had just told me that was like, the Lex Luthor Warsuit, I would have been like, yeah, no, that makes sense. It's just like a little bit yellower instead of green, but it was still, like a greenish yellow. Yeah, it was just weird. Weirdly, it made me think of, do you guys remember the anime Cyberman? It was like early ninety s. The big thing was it was basically like a Henshin style transforming superhero thing where this one guy could transform into this armored mech form of himself. And it turned out that normally would corrupt him and he would become part of this evil matrix of advancing sentient machines.

39:17
Case
And so he could only do it for limited periods of time without getting transformed permanently. Stuck in this form anyway, in it, humans study that tech and create their own human tech version of these cyber forms to fight with. And they are more reliant on guns and human weapons as opposed to these energy swords and shit. And it felt like kind of that where it's like, okay, here's the human response to this advanced tech. And it's not going to measure up to this alien doomsday creature or this machine of destruction that he is. But it felt like, okay, this is humanity's last stand right here. Superman is its own thing, but this is like mankind trying to show off that they can do anything and they'll do enough. They get the one good shot where they fire him into the hall of, like, that's.

40:06
Case
That's good. Good on you for sort of establishing where the peak of humanity is in this scale. He can show up like Krillin and do one good.

40:20
Duke
Yes, he's solar flared and it's like, good on you, Krillin.

40:25
Case
Yeah, no, it's actually, yeah, it's a really Tian Shenhan with the.

40:30
Duke
Yeah, where he turns the triangle into a.

40:36
Case
Man.

40:37
Duke
It's like, it's like Vegeta, like shooting cell in the back as Gohan does the Kamehameha that kills cell. Like, good job, Vegeta. You did something, budy.

40:47
Jmike
You did it. You get a cookie. Here you go, buddy. You helped.

40:52
Case
And I feel like it is apt to make a Dragon Ball z comparison when we're talking about a doomsday fight specifically because so much of Superman power.

41:00
Duke
Levels back are dead.

41:01
Case
Yeah, power levels that we're talking about when we're talking about the fact that it is a prolonged fight that is part of the story. Whereas a lot of times with Superman media, there's a story and then there's a fight, and then there's more story or however you kind of structure it, but you don't have the huge fight with people subbing in and out. And that kind of structure feels much more like a shonen book.

41:23
Duke
It's funny you bring that up because when Doomsday punched Wonder Woman to a crater, I had a flash of Yamcha on the crater and it couldn't stop laughing.

41:34
Jmike
You don't have to compare them to her. To Yamcha.

41:37
Duke
I know. Hawkman's right there. He should be in the crater.

41:41
Case
Yeah, no, Hawkman is definitely the yamcha of the circumstance as evidenced by him being taken out immediately.

41:48
Duke
Hey, guys, I'm ready to help. Yamcha is Hawkman, Chetsu is Barry Allen, and Tien is Hal Jordan. Because I think Hal Jordan would also make a triangle into a rectangle.

41:58
Case
Yeah, this is all fair. And then obviously, Piccolo is martian. Always. Yeah.

42:05
Duke
So it's Batman.

42:06
Jmike
Yeah.

42:07
Case
What I am surprised is they didn't have Batman. Weirdly, in the circumstances. Krillin.

42:13
Duke
No, Lex Luthor's krillin.

42:16
Case
Okay.

42:17
Duke
Faircule.

42:19
Case
Oh, I was about to say yajirobi.

42:25
Duke
Oh, man. Yadjirobi peaked once. I swear he did.

42:30
Case
I mean, he did a very important cutting off of vegeta's tail.

42:33
Duke
There it is. He showed up. Beget the chug. Done.

42:37
Case
Okay. We are way too far going to reel this one back in. I am surprised that we don't have Supergirl. It would be very easy to have carazorel operate as she does and not have to explain matrix, but just have her show up and I guess maybe, I'm not sure. So the DC animated movies are a big blind spot for me. I kind of just didn't pay attention as evidenced by the fact that I'm just watching this now for the first time. So I don't know if they did a story where they introduced her in this setting's. It's also she's the most iconic super family member outside of. Oh, they had an established.

43:20
Duke
They haven't established her. But in Justice League, throne of Atlantis, John Henry Irons makes a cameo. So when John Henry Irons shows up, that's actually a carryover from throne of Atlantis because during the big, the atlantean fight, the Atlanteans attacking construction site, John Henry Irons is there. He tries to take a sledgehammer to one of the Atlanteans, Superman saves him and he's like, that's my guy. So that's actually a carryover from that movie.

43:51
Case
Okay, that's, yeah, I really liked how, yeah, this is a good segue back to the other super beings. They did a great job setting up Pan Kenshaw. But, yeah, having John Henry Irons there and working on armor tech. Yes, I did have a note where it's like, is all fucking armor based on apocalypse tech in this setting? That I think is a little bit lame. But you know what it makes enough sense for? How could Henry irons, like, make that armor so quickly? So it makes enough sense? And him being tied to Lex Luthor makes enough sense, or the tech, I mean, that's all fine. And I loved that we had Dabney Donovan as our segue into getting like, that was so fucking perfect.

44:37
Case
It's like, thank fucking Christ we've got Daphne Donovan on this movie and the stuff with the eradicator robot, or rather with Superman's ship and sort of setting up that side for the eradicator. Pretty solid introductions for these things without it necessarily being too much of a, like, this will be important later. Aside from with Superboy, where it's just like, oh, no, he's still growing. And you're, we know, we all know what this is.

45:01
Duke
And again, it's one of the benefits of this movie is that this is just a natural part of his world. And so you get the top down view of the working class scientist guy, like John Henry Irons being inspired by Superman. And you also get which, you know, such a huge, like, you don't think about it, but he is such a huge part of the death of Reign of Superman story, because in a lot of ways, he's the most every man reacting to this horrible way. I think we brought this up in a previous podcast, but one of the most bold things this movie has done is end it with Bibba Babaski in the rain crying, talking about how of all the people that they could have taken, why did it have to be Superman?

45:54
Jmike
Yeah, the whole monologue he gives at the end, I was like, wow, this is Chef's kiss.

45:59
Duke
Yeah, very well done. This usually upbeat, larger than life guy is completely broken down by what's happened. And that's the perfect noobsetter for this kind of film.

46:10
Case
Yeah. Because this movie did exactly what the Snyder universe, which is established that the world really needs Superman, one that he is actually a huge part of why they haven't been destroyed yet at this point. But two, it's a world that really appreciates, and, like, they could have taken it interesting directions beyond that. But the fact that they nailed that aspect so hard is crazy because I feel like everyone forgets to do that in Superman adaptations nowadays. And this is exactly what we needed without us having a full series to establish that. It's one thing if a fight occurs in the season finale or series finale for the animated Superman or animated series Superman, where he's been brainwashed and by dark side, and there's a lot of shit that happens as a result, and people feel betrayed by Superman.

47:01
Case
That requires a show normally to establish how much they had looked up to and respected Superman in that space. This does a really good job of getting all the cliff notes of it, and Bibbo is a big part of that, Jimmy's a big part of that. All the people on the ground are a part of that. And also the fact that they all kind of feel like they have started to know each other and be, like, almost friends because of the existence of Superman. Jimmy Olsen and Babowski, like, being able to email pictures to each other is not a thing that would have happened in a world without Superman.

47:33
Duke
Yeah, or just random civilian just talking to the guy because he's our guy. That's the thing.

47:40
Case
I like my guy.

47:41
Duke
Exactly. Superman is our guy where you talk to him, and if he's not busy punching a giant robot or destroying asteroids over space, he's just our guy. He's just your friend that you can talk to if it's over, like, hey, dude, you look great. Using new aftershave or random menial shit. He's our guy. And that's what the movie nails perfectly, is, that he's this very approachable dude that you could see why everybody likes this guy and everybody looks up to him, even though deep down he is the biggest neurotic mess of all time. Again, that's why I love Superman. He's really great at being Superman, but when it comes to being a dude, kind of sucks at it. And that's where the story is. That's the meat and potatoes.

48:32
Duke
And again, that's what works about this love story, because he has to deal with that, deal with the fact that he's a bit self centered and he feels, know, I can't let Lois into this life because I'm all the world needs. And if I were know, look away from it, even for a single know, I would never be able to forgive myself if something bad happens. And I don't want to lose like, he's kind of dramatic, especially when you go to the Silver Age guy where he's just all of that and then some, and then it becomes freudian.

49:05
Case
Yeah, I mean, they definitely lay it on thick how much he appreciates Lois, but how uncomfortable he is about opening up and being vulnerable. It's really well done, though. They thread this needle remarkably well, even to the point where you see why he cares so much about Lois. She's the last person standing against doomsday in it all, Superman's about to be killed by doomsday, and she throws a rock at him and stands there and is ready to die. And Superman gets up for one last push. And this also is one thing I really like about this, where the way they kill each other makes so much more sense than the way in the comic where they just kind of both successfully hit each other at the same time. In this case, it's like definitely a killing blow.

49:51
Case
And also definitely Superman stabbed through his entire body by that giant fucking spike that doomsday produces at the end. And you're like, oh, yeah, no, I see why he goes down after the end of this fight.

50:03
Duke
Yeah, in the comics, it looks like, oh, I guess they forgot to ring the bell. The fight's over, guys. Hello.

50:11
Case
Yeah, well, it's like, in the comics, it's like their life meters both hit zero. Whereas in this case, like Doomsday, very clearly, his neck is snapped by this incredible charge punch thing.

50:24
Jmike
I thought that was hilarious. I was like, of course, the way they kill him is with breaking his neck.

50:31
Duke
That's Superman.

50:32
Case
I mean, he has a skeleton. They do establish that he has bones and that they hurt, so it makes as much sense as anything. And also, Doomsday isn't really dead. He's just incapacitated until he gets back up. Know, when he gets knocked down, he gets up again. You ain't ever going to keep him down.

50:53
Duke
I could have stopped that. I chose not to.

51:00
Case
Superman, doomsday. Chumbowumba.

51:04
Jmike
I did kind of chuckle to myself. I was like, oh, he's like, powering up to do something big. He's going to punch him. That's going to be the moment.

51:11
Duke
They said he gets knocked down. I'm like, chumawambo.

51:15
Jmike
He's charging up to do something. Is he going to punch him? And now he's going to fly straight to him to break his neck. Gotcha.

51:22
Case
And then let the beat drop.

51:25
Duke
What really should have happened was Superman should have take a sword, made a kryptonite, and should have repeated slab doomsday in the heart and then the brain and then in these. And his ultimate weak point, an elbow.

51:38
Case
But, yeah, and then we get the fallout from the fight. We set up all the Superman imposters, but we get some good scenes of characters really mourning the loss of Superman. The fact that Ma and Pa Kent are in Metropolis at the time allows us to do some of the scenes a little bit more economically than it would take if they were like, oh, we traveled out to Kansas to hug and are, they're all just there and they do a good. One of the things I really liked in Superman Doomsday was the repartee after Superman dies where Lois and Martha figure out that they know each, like, they both know, and this is a more efficient version of that. And also the fact that Pa Kent is here is part of that because that's part of the comic story.

52:29
Jmike
Had everyone's dad is alive this time. Yeah. Martha isn't Martian Manhunter.

52:35
Duke
Yeah.

52:35
Jmike
What a world.

52:39
Duke
Which is like, it's interesting that they didn't go into the whole podcast has a heart attack in the field bit from the comics.

52:47
Case
Yeah, I did have notes that. Okay, so I still have not watched the return of Superman animated. We are going to watch that for this retrospective on the material, but I am trying not to get too far ahead of myself, especially because it allows for really great moments of being just very excited about this particular movie. I can't get over how much I liked it, considering that still on paper, not that much happens, but it's done really well.

53:11
Duke
Yeah, it knew. Exactly. If we're going to tell this story as its own movie. Yes. We got to make sure the Death of Superman is a third act thing, but we also got to make sure a we set up for the encompassing story as well as gives Superman an actual character arc, something that he's been lacking in these films. Because in these Justice League films, he is just, I can't even say the tough guy. He's wharf like. He's the guy that's supposed to be tough, but somebody comes along and back handsome, and he flies through a wall.

53:45
Case
Yeah.

53:46
Duke
It's like, look out, captain. This tiny little child, she's invading our ship. I must stop her.

53:54
Jmike
We.

53:54
Duke
And he flies away. That was Superman in the new 52 Justice League, where he was just wharf.

54:01
Case
Yeah, prior to that, he was tng wharf. And in this movie, he gets to be deep space nine.

54:05
Duke
Warf.

54:06
Case
Yes.

54:08
Duke
Exactly.

54:09
Case
He is getting back up against those Jeb Hadar.

54:12
Duke
I'm surprised Jeff Johns didn't write a story where an empty barrel didn't fall on Superman's back and disabled him for life. Because he might as well have done that, right?

54:21
Case
Only for him to realize that he had a second spinal cord.

54:25
Duke
That cyborg created because of a box. Because, sure, why not?

54:30
Case
Yeah, but Batman.

54:34
Duke
Batman would have to lecture him to do it because that's Batman's role in his comics, was to lecture people.

54:40
Case
Sure is a good thing we figured out how to create artificial spines. It won't ever need to come up again, will it?

54:45
Duke
Batgirl actually, technically did, because she did get not.

54:52
Jmike
Yes, I will say that on the fight scene on the bridge where he has him chained up by the suspension wires and the kids running towards his little game. And then Superman stops the rocks from falling on, like, the kid hugs him, and he looks at him, and the kid looks at him. I was fully expecting Doomsday's hand to come through the rock and grab him right there.

55:15
Duke
Who was a kid.

55:16
Jmike
No, they grabbed Superman. Well, he's like. The kid's like. He's like, oh, the kid likes thankful. He's so thankful. He comes out and he hugs Superman. And they're staring at each other, and the kid runs off while he's staring at Superman. I was fully expecting Doomsday's hand to come through the rocks and then grab Superman, because that's how bad the fight was going so far.

55:33
Duke
I love that moment because that moment is such a distillation of Superman where he's getting his ass kicked. He saves his kid. He's bleeding. You can see the blood. The kid sees the blood. He grabs the kid's game Boy micro or whatever handheld system.

55:50
Case
It felt like a switch light.

55:53
Duke
Was the switch made by that point?

55:54
Case
This was 2018. The switch was out.

55:57
Duke
Okay.

55:57
Jmike
Yeah.

55:57
Case
The question was the switch light, and I think that was the year. It doesn't matter. It is a generic video game system.

56:02
Duke
He gave him his handheld game. He gave him his PSP Vita. But again, Superman redirects it from. Here you go, kiddo. And the kid hugs him, and that's. He's. He's a giving person, even to the detriment of himself, where he's dying. But know you forgot this, kiddo.

56:23
Case
He saw it like, oh, shit, that's a nomad. Where'd you get one of these? No, you better hold on to this, kid. It's going to be valuable.

56:28
Duke
Is this a zoom? What the heck is this? He's like, wait, stop. Doomsday. Hold on. Who gave this to you?

56:35
Case
Is this a neogeocolor?

56:37
Jmike
Why did you find this thing?

56:39
Duke
I need to have a talk with your parents, young man. Doomsday. You sit right there. Hang on.

56:44
Case
I need to get to the heart of this turbo express. Why did your parents even get you a lynx?

56:50
Duke
Is this a shiny Porygon? You got a shiny porygon.

56:55
Case
Oh, man, the rails. We have gone so far past before we go, because we've kind of covered all the big beats, and honestly, we've covered most of the things that happen in this movie. I do want to focus on the cast again for a moment, because we mentioned it at the top, but we've got Jerry O'Connell in this as Superman and Rebecca Romaine as Lois, and then all these other great actors. Rain Wilson is a great lex Luthor. Yada, yada. I do want to take a moment just to talk about Jerry O'Connell as it, because I think it does a really good job here. And I don't know why, but I just like Jerry O'Connell a lot.

57:35
Case
I think it's because I grew up watching my secret identity and sliders, and I was so happy when he played Captain Marvel on the Justice League unlimited, and I was like, no, this is perfect. This is great. And now I kind of feel like he's just living his best life. He is married to one of the most famous supermodels of all time. He is doing Star Trek, and he's doing animated DC stuff and, like, having fun just being a nerd. And then they go home and they watch Real Housewives, and then he shows up on Bravo just to talk about real housewives shit all the time. And it's like, oh, yeah, no, this is someone who is kind of doing best life, even if he might be, like, too much of a superfan sometimes.

58:12
Jmike
He's having a fun case. The man is having fun.

58:14
Case
Exactly.

58:15
Duke
I remember having this conversation with my friend, who's a huge Captain Marvel fan. He's like, you can't do that. He voiced Captain Marvel, and I'm like, history repeats itself yet again. Superman for the win. That's a mean wiz comics joke.

58:33
Case
I mean, if it was Captain Marvel instead of Superman, maybe he would be throwing those cars at Doomsday instead of just, like, hitting him with staying at.

58:40
Duke
My guy throws his cars, he doesn't smash it against the rock, and he flies. He's got a talking tiger. Yeah, well, my guy dresses. He has a friend that dresses like that tiger.

58:50
Case
But, yeah, I like that element. I do think that there's a good dynamic between him and Rebecca Romaine for their relationship. But I just liked him as Superman. I thought that this did a really good job on that front. The performance was really solid in terms of selling this character. Who could put on the big, blustery, brave voice, but had these moments of introspection and nervousness. Like him asking flash, like, oh, wait, does iris know about your. Like, I didn't even feel like we could let people know. Outside of our co workers here in this boardroom of the Justice League, who we all know each other's secret identity, all of our dating histories.

59:28
Duke
I thought Batman said that was a no. Listen, you can't date anybody, especially if they're cat thieves or international terrorists or wherever Silversey Steel is.

59:39
Case
Know, it makes me think of the invincible, where it's like you said not to tell my girlfriend my secret identity. Yeah, when you first started dating, I figured you'd figure it out by now. But like I said, I just keep coming back to being very impressed by this movie. It does such a great job of having the force of nature that is doomsday. And as disruptive as he is, show up in this moment and really break the flow of everything. Like, it does a great job of setting up. This is the status quo for Metropolis. This is the status quo for the Justice League. This is the status quo for the relationship of Superman and Lois and how it's all progressing in ways that you expect one thing, and then doomsday drops out of the sky and breaks it all.

01:00:23
Case
Like, the Justice League is trashed. This relationship that was about to be full on engagement. They're dating. They just met the parents, and she just found out his secret identity. This is supposed to be the triumph of Superman in his personal life. And it is completely disrupted by this calamity, effectively at work. And I think that's such a great dynamic that they really establish here. Like I said, I'm just floored at how much I ended up really liking this movie and really liking the fight itself, which I didn't expect to have strong, visceral thoughts about. But, like, oh, man, the hits are great. The fight is great. The only thing I am missing at this point is that I really want to see a Fleischer Superman versus a doomsday. Like, specifically a leaping tall buildings Superman.

01:01:08
Case
Because, God, would that be such an intense fight? And Metropolis would be destroyed. But I think it would be, like, really interesting. Rocky.

01:01:16
Duke
The buildings will topple over, but I'll pick them up and put them back down. So it's, like, okay. Honestly? Yeah, just do that. But Doomsday's face turns into a laser.

01:01:28
Jmike
I will say that I am happy that they broke this into two movies and didn't try to force everything into an hour and 20 minutes.

01:01:37
Duke
That would be a nightmare if you try to do both movie.

01:01:42
Jmike
I'm glad that they gave it time to breathe because trying to cram death of Superman, Return of Superman, Rise of Superman, all into an hour and 20 minutes would have been what they never learned from their mistakes, ever.

01:01:55
Duke
Right. And even then, it's like, kind of the edge of, like, if you see the death, return and Easter of Superman as, like, a three act structure, people assume, like, oh, that's just a trilogy. Not necessarily, because that's the assumption that the second act is made equal to the first two. When any other writer can say, every other writer would say, no, the second act is longer than that because there's more meat and potatoes in the second act. And with this one, I feel like we did such a great job with the first act of the story that anything else is only going to be just as good because we put in the effort and really took our time with this. And again, I appreciate the fact that it felt a little bit more grounded as a character story.

01:02:43
Case
Yeah, I mean, I realize we're going to compare it to Superman Doomsday a lot just by virtue of it being a thing that we discussed recently on the show and being, like, literally DC's immediate prior attempt at doing the same story. Know, while. While that movie was not a failure, I still put it around like a c. Overall, I think there's some things that it does right, but it's just not as interesting as it should be, and we're not really attached to the characters. This does a remarkably good job of setting up all the things that are going to happen in the following point in a way that movie couldn't even do within its own movie.

01:03:19
Case
The fact that story has, like, yeah, we're going to do clone Superman, and we don't really hammer home that either this fight or some other thing, it just doesn't do enough to explain the second half of the movie. It feels like its own separate thing that just happens to because of circumstances. From the first half, we're in this point, but they don't feel connected in any way, thematically or in any other regard. Kind of like the opening 30 minutes of killing joke. Gosh, do not remind me of that.

01:03:53
Duke
Terrible movie with the beloved character Paris Fran.

01:03:59
Case
Oh, God.

01:04:01
Jmike
Someone took me to see that movie on my birthday, it was terrible.

01:04:05
Duke
I watched that movie going, I wonder if Alan Moore would like this one, because it's just weird enough. I mean, not the actual killing joke part, just the opening stuff where it's, like, completely nonsense. Ecuador doesn't make any sense and is completely irrelevant to the actual story. That's not bad, honestly. I like pirates runs.

01:04:24
Case
People want Batman to explain or to mansplain what gaslighting is to Batgirl.

01:04:31
Duke
As you know, Barbara, when I was pretending I wasn't Bruce Wayne around you, that's what I was doing. It was called gaslighting.

01:04:39
Case
Yeah. So all of these movies are better than that.

01:04:42
Jmike
Yes.

01:04:42
Case
Let's just say that right off the bat. And this is shockingly good. The fight is really good. The story is really good. The character performances are really good. The only thing that I really walk away from this being, like, is the character designs and that they're stuck with these new 52 era designs that just don't work as well. Like, Superman's head is so big, and then his neck looks so weird with the way they do the collar and then his giant neck muscles. It feels like he's being choked because it indents and then pops back out for just how big his head is. There are just design elements that I'm like, this is just not as. It just doesn't look good.

01:05:21
Duke
His face looked bloated and just like war.

01:05:23
Case
Yeah, but once you actually get into the fight, especially once the costume starts getting torn up, it's fine. Whatever. Doomsday is so fucking perfect at every moment. How he functions when they're like, oh, he's going for population centers. Like, yeah. Saying that. As opposed to. He's attracted to Metropolis because it has, like, a kryptonian kind of smell. Works so much better.

01:05:48
Duke
I prefer Doomsday's sing of wrestling match.

01:05:52
Case
Yes. Metropolis. Metropolis.

01:05:54
Duke
Who's ready to throw down? Doomsday is ready. Like that would have. If you ripped off his mask and he spoke like that, I would have loved the character bone saw. He's like, how do you top a strong man superhero with a wrestling supervillain? It sounds crazy, but it's true.

01:06:21
Case
Like, he just starts doing leg drops and then say it from the top rope. He's got a hold of Superman. It's a pile driver. Pile driver.

01:06:33
Duke
Jimmy, what the hell.

01:06:37
Case
Man? Superman really didn't sell that punch. Oh, he did that one.

01:06:42
Duke
Oh, look out. Doomsday's got a chair. A giant chair billboard.

01:06:50
Case
But yes. So the fight that we got is really good. The doomsday that we got is sufficiently scary. He makes scary growl noises as opposed to feeling like he doesn't feel like a bizarro, which is the other part. And he has a lot of space where he could feel like a bizarro that I'm glad that they don't lean into. This feels like its own type of physical powerhouse that isn't just a kryptonian type power set. Even though he has objectively close powers, like he's invulnerable, super strong, and has heat vision in this, the way he handles himself is so brutal and so grounded. He always wants to run at the thing that he's trying to kill, unless he can't, in which case he jumps. There's no reason to think he can fly, but there are certainly ways that they could present him.

01:07:40
Case
It has this feral quality to the way he attacks, and that's so good. And the fact that he's smart about how he fights is really nice. The fact that he's so fast, I can't emphasize this part enough. The speed of this monster is really important because you need to really be scared because it doesn't matter if you can take a hit, you're going to get hit a bunch of times before you can even respond. And it was good to set up. Like, oh, yeah, the Flash can try to fight him, but he'll hit you. And then what, Flash? Then what?

01:08:15
Duke
Vibrate that Barry, right?

01:08:18
Case
Yeah. And like, Marshman is able to give a full attempt at fighting Doomsday. I thought that was really good. It's a big fight that takes up a big chunk of this movie, and it's still really good.

01:08:34
Duke
The advantage is they know how to, it's not too much. It's not like, to me, like just league war. Last 40 minutes is just them punching dark side. It's so tedious with here. They know exactly how you need to frame this fight in terms of. They've had a lot pacing it because pacing is so important. Because if this fight was just like the last half of the film, I probably wouldn't like it because it's like, okay, we're just getting to see everybody get thrown around like rag dolls. And who knows, maybe because we don't have Matrix Supergirl here, Doomsday is going to punch Martian Manor really hard and he's going to go splat. But, yeah, here. It's a very efficiently, nicely paced fight.

01:09:19
Case
Yeah.

01:09:20
Duke
And I like that, especially once you get to the Superman stuff and that he's trying to be clever. And we bring up how he's wrapping up doomsday and the suspension wires. That was a cool moment because we don't really get to see Superman. Be a little bit more lateral thinking with his fighting lately.

01:09:43
Jmike
Oh, no, he's a punchy. Punchy.

01:09:45
Duke
Yeah, he's just a blood instrument lately. And here he's trying to stop this guy by any means necessary before he has to get to that point where it's like, shit, I have to kill him.

01:09:55
Case
Yeah.

01:09:55
Jmike
Because here he tries at least to eliminate a lot of the collateral damage and give people time to get away sometimes. Other times, he's getting thrown around himself.

01:10:08
Case
Yeah.

01:10:09
Jmike
It's still kind of good to see.

01:10:11
Case
Yeah. He loses the ability to stop it. There's a really good spot where he punches doomsday up into the clouds and then doomsday takes control of it. And it works both because Doomsday shows why he is dangerous up close. You can't let yourself get too close to him because he'll take advantage of it. And then it doesn't let up even once he, like, when he grabs Superman's cape, I expected, like, oh, he's going, toss him. Oh, no, he's just swinging him so that he can get on top and just punch him all the way down to the. That again, the choreography is just remarkably good.

01:10:46
Duke
Once they break through the clouds, the animation just goes up really smooth. And that's where the real money is at right there, where it's like just that last chunk of the fight after. And you could tell animated clouds is kind of difficult. Once they break through the clouds, it becomes so good looking, just how the animation flows. And then you get all the good stuff. You get him saving kids. You get him being very clever with his powers. This is Superman operating at his best against the.

01:11:24
Case
Yeah, yeah.

01:11:25
Duke
And that's exactly what you need.

01:11:27
Jmike
We don't get to see that very often.

01:11:29
Case
Really not handled, unfortunately, because the comic sold so well at the time and was in the news and was just very popular, at least as far as the zeitgeist understanding of Superman. This was the next big actual moment for the character, for people who probably wouldn't have even noticed man of Steel or the reboots or anything like that it is a thing that people are going to try to adapt a lot. Like it's a story that's really associated with the character. And that's why we've seen now two animated movies in this millennium.

01:12:05
Duke
Doesn't sound like one live action movie.

01:12:09
Case
Yeah, exactly. And a desire to keep showing the character in every adaptation of Superman despite me. Yes. Or they'll tease it in things like Superman and Lois.

01:12:20
Duke
Right.

01:12:22
Case
So I'm glad that they did such a good version here because I was starting to get depressed thinking that the only good version that they were going to do that was actually this story as opposed to the subversion that JLU did, where it's not really doing that story. It just happens to have, like, I thought, oh, I guess the comic is going to be the high watermark, and the comic has some interesting stuff going on with it again. Yeah, we can make jokes about like, oh, it's not that sophisticated, that it's just going down in panel count as we count down to the end of the fight. But that actually is a cool thing that they're doing and is an artistic challenge for them.

01:12:59
Case
And we get to see the weird shit that's going on in the DCU at the time that this fight occurred, because the fight is such a popular thing. It's like, oh, here's a snapshot of, like, no. Remember when Guy Gardner had a sinestro core ring? Oh, remember when. Remember who Bloodwind is? I guarantee the only reason anyone will ever use the like reference the character bloodwind, is they remember him from Death of Superman.

01:13:20
Duke
Remember when Guy Gardner had to stop to defeat the ghost of Sinestra to get that right? Yes, that was.

01:13:30
Case
But. But who is going to remember that? Normally, it's just not part of what the status quo is, but it was that little snapshot. So that story is always going to be remembered. It's kind of the way, like, Dazzler on X Men is always going to be remembered because she showed up first in that character, can't go away because it's just too popular as a result. But this actually really surprised me. I did not think that they would do as good a job. I didn't think that I was going to care as much about this Superman once we actually got into the fight. And the fact that he goes down was really going to matter in a way that it fucking doesn't in Superman Doomsday, and it definitely doesn't in Batman v Superman.

01:14:08
Jmike
No.

01:14:09
Case
And I'm just blown away by how good this project was. And again, it's still like a really simple story of Superman's life gets disrupted by monster, who ultimately kills him. But it's done so well. So I'm really glad that were able to talk about it. I'm really glad that us wanting to look back on this era of Superman stuff prompted us to watch this movie because I hadn't seen it and I probably wasn't going to, not because I wouldn't want to, just because there's so much to watch and it didn't feel important enough. It felt like just like part of a slew of DC animated movies that they put out that were generally not that well reviewed. So it wasn't like a thing that I was racing to go watch. And then I see this one and I'm like, oh, this is actually fucking.

01:14:58
Jmike
Great because we got that whole line of movies that were very mediocre or meh. And then the new 52 stuff happened. You're like, yeah, whenever I need to.

01:15:12
Case
It was always on the list, but it was never on the list of a thing that I would watch with my wife. So it was definitely on the list of things for me to put on when I have enough time to watch a full movie by myself.

01:15:20
Jmike
Yeah. While I'm doing something else. And that's just in the background kind of thing, right? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, this was surprisingly good.

01:15:28
Duke
Yeah, it's good. It's really good.

01:15:32
Jmike
It kind of caught me off guard.

01:15:34
Duke
It's understandable because we've been burned before. I mean, I'm not. I'm the death of Superman hater.

01:15:44
Jmike
Because I grew up in the early 90s, when I was getting ready to go to high school is when the JLU and all that stuff was on tv. So that was like my go to thing to watch. It was so good that even me and my parents was down and watched those shows at night because everyone loved them. And to go from that to the new 52 stuff when everyone's like, I don't care to come back to this to be like, oh, this is good. Oh, my God, this is actually really good. I really enjoyed this movie. It was quite a shock for me.

01:16:18
Case
Yeah, I'm really excited to watch the return because I wasn't before.

01:16:25
Duke
I'm interested to see your reaction to return.

01:16:27
Case
Yeah.

01:16:28
Jmike
Have you seen it already, Duke?

01:16:30
Duke
Yeah.

01:16:32
Case
No, I'm excited. There's room for. I'm not going to try to put too much hope on it, but I am excited because this took me from a tepid approach to then being really satisfied with this. All I would say, if someone wants to experience doomsday, for what it's worth, like, if someone wants to consume that battle, this is probably the best version to observe.

01:16:59
Duke
At the very least, it's a good pitch to people. Why should I like this character? How do you tell a Superman story? And it's like, as much as I don't want to say a death of Superman adaptation, I would say the Superman Lois stuff is the story of.

01:17:17
Jmike
Yeah, yeah.

01:17:18
Duke
The big monster at the end isn't the story itself. It's basically a guy who is trying to represent the best of us and best of himself and learning what that means. And this movie conveys it perfectly.

01:17:32
Case
Yeah. Like, this is the dragon that the knight has to go fight, and it's appropriately scary and dangerous and not sympathetic in any way. And you don't know if they can win because it just doesn't look like it. So it does a really good job there, and it does a good job of setting up the status quo for Superman at the top. It does a good job of making us think that this is the Superman that pop culture has always had but has had a hard time of reupping in more recent years. So I'm just really glad to finally watch it. I am happy to say that I was completely wrong going into this one.

01:18:12
Jmike
We don't get to say that often.

01:18:15
Case
I'm just thrilled. Yeah. I'm just shocked at how solid of a production it was and in all areas, animation, performance, choreography, pacing. Just great. So, Duke, thank you for coming on to chat with us about this movie.

01:18:32
Duke
Thank you for having me.

01:18:33
Case
Yeah, man. If people want to find you or follow you, give your plugs.

01:18:37
Duke
I am on Twitter, and I am Duke of Doom at Prof. Of evil. I was on another social media site, and unfortunately, hive kind of, like, went down or something, so I got out of that quickly. So just find me on Twitter while it lives. Yes.

01:19:00
Case
I have not looked. We were talking about this on a call I was on yesterday where it was like, oh, yeah, hive went down. And I hadn't heard that. But then it sounds like it might be back. It doesn't matter. We're waiting for the dust to settle to be like, okay, where's the party at? All right, we'll find out. But, yeah, everyone should follow Duke on Twitter. If Twitter is still around when this episode comes out in a couple of know who can say. Meanwhile, well, they can find me on Twitter at case Aiken. They can find me on Hive. If Hive is the place where the party is at case Aiken, they can find me on Instagram, mastodon or whatever.

01:19:35
Case
Yeah, I have a mastodon, but I don't even know how to say you can find me at this thing because I'm like, I think I might, only it's a server thing, which is like our discord server where you can find me on the cpov discord. There is a link on our website. There's links all over. It's on all my bios. Come join us on certain pov. It's a great time. We like to talk about comics, movies, music, books. It's just a great place. So check that out. J Mike is on there sometimes, too, but that's one place you can find him. Where else can they find you, j Mike?

01:20:08
Jmike
You can also find me on Twitter at jmike 101 for however long Twitter.

01:20:13
Case
Decides it's going to be around.

01:20:14
Jmike
Because I'm like, man, I might have to take a social media break for a while.

01:20:19
Case
Yeah, it might be just like a good time for us all to reset and then focus on other things like this podcast, which you can find@certainpov.com. Or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find lots of great shows@certainpov.com.

01:20:31
Duke
Can I plug something?

01:20:32
Case
Yeah, by all means.

01:20:34
Duke
I am working with my friends on a fan comic called Superman Triumphant Delight. It is the story of Superman during the Great Depression as this young farm kid goes to the big city for the first time. It is written by my budy elk and my best friend and brother in arms, jazz. And it is incredibly gorgeous to look at because jazz is a hell of an artist and it's incredibly sentimental and it represents, basically this guy represents the champion of the downtrodden during one of the most grueling, oppressive days in American history. So, yeah, I'd love to plug that.

01:21:12
Case
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes, everyone should be following this project because love to hear about fan stuff for Superman. That really gets it. So yes, everyone should check that out and we should have you back on to talk about that. It's still in progress, right?

01:21:28
Duke
We have two issues done. They are online and we are working on a third one right now. And I'm editor.

01:21:37
Case
When the third one drops, we should probably try to get y'all on and.

01:21:41
Duke
Just to chat about. That'd be. That'd be great.

01:21:44
Case
Yeah. So people should check that out. They should check out the certain point of view YouTube channel, which is certain pov media. We've got clips of this show. We've got clips of some of our other shows like Sidequest and another pass up there. We've got my Superman analog videos. Those are all fun ones to check out. So if you're looking for video content that's there otherwise, certainpov.com. So many great podcasts. Check all those out. But until next time, when we will be talking about world without a superman, the interark between the death and the return of Superman. I hope you all just have a great week and stay super man.

01:22:23
Jmike
Men of Steel is a certain pov production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo is by Chris Batista. Episode art is by case Aiken, and our theme is by Jeff Moon.

01:22:42
Case
I regret that we did Superman Doomsday in the summer. I wish that we had done it closer together. And my original thought was that was going to be a post all star Superman episode. But then we didn't get the science of Superman one or science sort of Superman one in the can in time. So we had to run it because it was the only thing we had that could go that week. But it would have been really nice to do these closer together so it was fresher because I rewatched this one. Like, I watched this last week and then I watched it again last night. I wasn't going to do that for Superman, dude.

01:23:20
Duke
Yeah, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. I think I've seen that movie, like, once, and I'm like, all right.

01:23:27
Jmike
You're like, yeah, I'm dead.

01:23:31
Case
Video games are a unique medium.

01:23:33
Duke
They can tell stories, immerse us in.

01:23:36
Case
Strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun. Whatever fun is to you.

01:23:45
Duke
I'm Jeff Moonan.

01:23:46
Case
And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon.

01:23:48
Duke
And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games.

01:23:53
Case
It's a celebration of all the games.

01:23:55
Duke
We play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us.

01:24:02
Case
Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming CPOV certainpov combined.

AI meeting summary:

●      The Men of Steel podcast team discuss the animated "Death of Superman" movie, analyzing Superman's character evolution and emotional depth. **Case Aiken**, **J. Mike Falson**, and guest Duke explore themes such as Superman's vulnerability, relationships, and emotional struggles. They appreciate the film's portrayal of Superman's heroism, insecurities, and human connections, injecting humor and references to popular culture like Dragon Ball Z characters.

●      In the context of a Justice League film, they emphasize developing **Superman's** character with a meaningful arc and showcasing his complex and heroic nature. The conversation reflects on the evolution from previous portrayals to a more intricate characterization. They highlight notable moments like Superman saving a child during a battle, demonstrating his selflessness and compassion in dire situations, emphasizing impactful storytelling choices.

●      The discussion delves into the pacing and storytelling of adapting iconic comic book storylines, particularly "The Death of Superman." Participants appreciate how the project effectively handles the source material, comparing it to previous adaptations within the same storyline. They express surprise at the engaging and well-executed nature of this particular adaptation, praising its fidelity to the comic book narrative while delivering quality storytelling.

●      Excitement surrounds future projects like fan comics exploring unique aspects of **Superman**, such as "Superman Triumphant Delight" set in the Great Depression era. The meeting participants convey genuine enthusiasm for exploring quality storytelling, character development, and honoring beloved comic book narratives. They plan to discuss further chapters in **Superman's** journey post-"Death" storyline, reflecting on past episodes that provided insights beyond action sequences, into characters' motivations and growth.

Notes:

●      🎬 **Discussion on Adapting Story Formats**

●      **Rebecca** addresses concerns about adapting to another format

●      Positive feedback on how concerns were addressed

●      📚 **Exploring Rising Stakes**

●      Focus on rising stakes and maintaining interest

●      Splitting time effectively to focus on key elements

●      💥 **Establishing Power Curve**

●      Observations on establishing power dynamics

●      Discussion on the intensity of certain characters

●      🦸‍♂️ **Superhero Narrative**

●      Setting up the narrative for superheroes

●      Acknowledgment of story's structure and development

●      🎮 **Video Game Community**

●      Delving into video game history, trends, and community

●      Engaging in discussions about video games

●      📺 **Promotion of Podcast and Media**

●      Encouragement to check out the podcast and social media links

●      Invitation for future collaborations and discussions

●      📚 **Editorial Work**

●      Completion of two issues

●      Future plans for collaboration and content creation

Action items:

●      **Aiken**

●      Plan to discuss the animated Death of Superman movie (00:59)

●      Discuss material about the death of Superman and the return of Superman (01:08)

●      Excited to have Duke join for the conversation (01:23)

●      **Duke**

●      Participate in conversation about the animated Death of Superman movie (01:23)

●      Continue working on the fan comic "Superman Triumphant Delight" (1:20:00)

●      Coordinate with team to complete the third issue of the comic project (1:21:28)

Outline:

●      Chapter 1: Initial Impressions and Adaptation Concerns (02:03 - 10:41)

●      02:03: Initial discussion on the adaptation of content to another format.

●      06:55: Addressing concerns about adapting content to a different format.

●      Chapter 2: Character Development and Narrative Structure (12:09 - 35:15)

●      12:09: Discussion on maintaining interest and spacing out content effectively.

●      33:27: Character development and the gradual unraveling of barriers.

●      Chapter 3: Pacing and Power Dynamics (40:47 - 55:57)

●      40:47: Exploration of power levels and the structure of prolonged fights in the story.

●      55:57: Appreciation for the valuable aspects of the content.

●      Chapter 4: Efficient Storytelling and Pacing in Action Sequences (1:08:12 - 1:10:11)

●      1:08:12: Evaluation of the effectiveness of the big fight scene and pacing.

●      1:10:08: Acknowledgment of the well-paced and engaging action sequences.

●      Chapter 5: Reflections on Storytelling and Character Impact (1:12:20 - 1:16:30)

●      1:12:20: Reflecting on the association of the story with the character.

●      1:16:27: Anticipation for future developments and the impact on characters.

●      Chapter 6: Promoting Engagement and Future Discussions (1:19:48 - 1:23:48)

●      1:19:48: Encouragement to explore further discussions and engagement with the content.

●      1:23:31: Highlighting the unique storytelling potential of video games and the podcast's focus on related topics.