Movie Review: Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020 WB Animation)

If I'd known Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020 WB Animation) was essentially a Superman origin story I would probably have skipped it. I'm sure anyone who reads comics would've known that but I make no secret of not reading comics.

I used to read them as a kid and, even in my early teens, however, the comics I read were all given to me, and not that many were superhero comics. The only 'comic' I bought regularly was 'Heavy Metal' because it had grown up stories, and such a wide and varied range of artists.

My fandom of superheros came through Saturday morning cartoons and the Batman, and Superman 60's TV shows. At that time I was too young to know there were comic books of these characters, and I didn't have any money to buy them with anyway.

When my Dad did buy me a comic book of Batman, it was all in black and white, with a story that was completely inaccessible to me as a 7 year old. Not to mention that Batman looked nothing like the TV show and didn't even drive the same car!

All this to say, the only reason I watch WB Animation is because so much of its Superhero content is adaptations of comic books. Even though I know these films aren't faithful reproductions of the comic pages I kind of view them as catching up on comic book lore up to a point. I know I could just read the comic books but I find the medium tiresome. It's not the same as the dynamism of watching animation or live action.

Unfortunately I'm almost always let down by WB Animation and their DC Superhero movies. Man of Tomorrow is no exception. I had to watch it in two parts because I fell asleep 25 minutes in.

I could attribute that to just me being tired but, after I woke myself up, and switched the movie off, I skipped over to watching a documentary series about Australia's Robodebt scandal. About people on government welfare getting slapped with huge debt by a machine. The first episode was an hour and I had no problem staying awake for it.

Back to the movie...

Superman: Man of Tomorrow tells the story of Clark Kent's (Darren Criss) transition from Kansas farm boy to coming out as Superman. Drawn out by an alien bounty hunter known as Lobo (Ryan Hurst), and an alien Kaiju, who comes to be known as Parasite (Brett Dalton). 

The first thing I couldn't help but notice is Superman wearing the Red trunks. Where was the outcry for this film about him 'wearing diapers'? That's right, there wasn't any outcry.

This movie could've been the starting framework for James Gunn's Superman movie. It has quite a number of similarities despite starting a little earlier in Clark's journey to becoming Superman.

For example, Lex Luthor (Zachary Quinto) is in the film, and his characterization and story arc is very much in line with Nicolas Holt's Lex from Gunn's movie. It could even be the same Lex.

Lois Lane (Alexandra Daddario) is also not too far from Rachel Brosnahan's Lois either. Alexandra's Lois is a little more abrasive and cocky but she hasn't yet won a Pultzer Prize. I could see her mellowing into Rachael's more experienced, but personable version.

For me the movie suffers where all WB Animation DC movies suffer. While the cast is always great, and the art style, even the animation is well done, they just don't know how to animate action so that it looks cool and interesting.

It's a bit like watching the action week to week in a CW DC Superhero show. You know it's coming, it pretty much looks like similar fight choreography each week, so you never really get invested in the stakes.

Except, the CW only has about 50 minutes to tell its weekly story so, while they have action sequences that you've probably seen before, they keep them short and to the point, so you can get back to the strength of those shows, character dialogue and interaction.

WB Animation, tends to draw out their fight action sequences, trying to make them look epic but only succeed in dragging them out. The fights never look real. Superheroes take punches that cause major damages to their surroundings but barely slow the hero down. It's just all very low stakes and cartoony.

Even when the hero does get defeated in the second act it was probably at the end of some long drawn out action sequence with no interesting camera angles, or innovative fight sequences at all.

I didn't really find much of of the film interesting. Parasite wasn't a compelling adversary, and I hope to god this isn't any kind of glimpse into how Jason Momoa is going to play Lobo in the upcoming Supergirl film.

I'm sure there's every chance you'll like this. After all there are plenty of DC fans who think DC animation has been crushing it for years with top quality films. I'm not one of them.

If you're a Superman fan, who isn't tired of seeing his origin story yet again, this is worth checking out to see if it resonates with you. However you're not missing much if it doesn't. Even the twists at the end don't really save it from being just okay.