Thanks to the Cardinals laying a superheroesque beat down on the Cowboys tonight, I found myself exploring various streaming platforms looking for a DC Animated Movie to entertain myself. Quickly, I stumbled upon Superman: Red Son which I didn’t even know existed until today. 90 minutes later, I find myself asking, “what was that”, “was it good”, and “why does that exist?” After contemplating it for a little while, my answers are “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, and “I don’t know.”
The concept of the movie is simple: What if Superman had crash landed in communist Russia at the height of the Cold War instead of the United States? I assumed this movie would have heavy political undertones, but I didn’t expect the political pendulum to be swinging all over the place. Here’s the issue: the movie is extremely political, until it isn’t. That’s right, for 95% of the entire movie you are almost overwhelmed by the politics; then it’s as if the movie wakes up and remembers to end in a very classic comic book fashion. If you don’t understand what I mean, you’ll have to watch it. And if you’re anything like me, once it is over, you’ll literally be asking yourself “What the hell did I just watch?”
Here’s the crazy part, even though I was asking myself “What the hell did I just watch”, it doesn’t mean the movie was bad; honestly it was really good. It was interesting to see a movie that includes Superman, Lex Luther, Lois Lane, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Brainiac; yet we’ve never seen the characters like this. And I don’t mean “we’ve never seen them like this” as in Batman has a different butler, or Lois Lane writes for a magazine instead of a newspaper; the characters were completely redefined. Without revealing any spoilers, I’ll just say that Batman was closer to V for Vendetta than he was The Dark Knight.
In the end, this is just another example of what makes the DC Animated Movies so much fun to watch. While the live action MCU is all tied together, the DC Animated movies can live on their own, independent from any other films. This allows the writers to push the characters in new directions….such as communist Russia.
And if this didn’t get you interested in seeing the movie, let me leave you with one other character they introduced….Superior Man. That’s right, Superman fights Superior Man, and what’s even more crazy, during their battle you aren’t even sure who you want to win.
