Q: What do you get when you take the animation style and (some) voice actors of--and characters unique to--Bruce Timm's "Superman: The Animated Series," and tack them onto characterizations and continuity from the over-twenty-five-year-old Richard Donner "Superman" movie? A: An unbelievably awful film; confused and angry fans.
I'm not sure why Bryan Singer wanted to continue from the first two "Superman" movies of the late '70s: they aren't nearly as great as one's memory may deceive one into thinking. But I DO know why "Brainiac Attacks" was squeezed out: for no other reason than to make a quick buck off the buzz around Singer's upcoming film. It shows in every frame of animation and every line of dialog.
Unconnected to Timm's prior series ("Superman: TAS," "Justice League," and so on)--in spite of the characters and designs drawn directly from them--"Brainiac Attacks" instead feeds us the campy junk that littered Christopher Reeve's movies: the clownish Lex Luthor, assorted foolishness (like Lois Lane wearing her regular clothes under her hospital robe), magic kisses, magic talking crystals, and a Phantom Zone that is unusually easy to break into and out of (for an "inescapable prison").
Worst of these is Lex Luthor; after seeing Clancy Brown turn Lex back into a genuine supervillain (even in the worst moments of the subpar "Justice League Unlimited," Lex was pretty scary), Powers Boothe comes along to play him up as a continuation of Gene Hackman's foolish nerd, whose greatest danger is his thoughtless abuse of the big toys at his command.
The plotting--I'm using that word loosely--is excremental. By the time we hit the halfway mark, it's an overextended series of punch-fights, interrupted by overextended scenes of a dying Lois Lane imitating Ali McGraw in "Love Story" meeting Christopher Reeve in "Superman IV," and yet another overextended bit of Jimmy Olsen channeling Ron Stoppable (which, in the end, adds absolutely nothing to the story or anyone's character). What we have here is a one- (possibly two-) episode story dragged out to "movie" length for the sake of DVD sales.
The Kryptonite poisoning that Lois Lane is suffering from looks painful--but it couldn't possibly hurt her worse than watching "Brainiac Attacks."
I'm not sure why Bryan Singer wanted to continue from the first two "Superman" movies of the late '70s: they aren't nearly as great as one's memory may deceive one into thinking. But I DO know why "Brainiac Attacks" was squeezed out: for no other reason than to make a quick buck off the buzz around Singer's upcoming film. It shows in every frame of animation and every line of dialog.
Unconnected to Timm's prior series ("Superman: TAS," "Justice League," and so on)--in spite of the characters and designs drawn directly from them--"Brainiac Attacks" instead feeds us the campy junk that littered Christopher Reeve's movies: the clownish Lex Luthor, assorted foolishness (like Lois Lane wearing her regular clothes under her hospital robe), magic kisses, magic talking crystals, and a Phantom Zone that is unusually easy to break into and out of (for an "inescapable prison").
Worst of these is Lex Luthor; after seeing Clancy Brown turn Lex back into a genuine supervillain (even in the worst moments of the subpar "Justice League Unlimited," Lex was pretty scary), Powers Boothe comes along to play him up as a continuation of Gene Hackman's foolish nerd, whose greatest danger is his thoughtless abuse of the big toys at his command.
The plotting--I'm using that word loosely--is excremental. By the time we hit the halfway mark, it's an overextended series of punch-fights, interrupted by overextended scenes of a dying Lois Lane imitating Ali McGraw in "Love Story" meeting Christopher Reeve in "Superman IV," and yet another overextended bit of Jimmy Olsen channeling Ron Stoppable (which, in the end, adds absolutely nothing to the story or anyone's character). What we have here is a one- (possibly two-) episode story dragged out to "movie" length for the sake of DVD sales.
The Kryptonite poisoning that Lois Lane is suffering from looks painful--but it couldn't possibly hurt her worse than watching "Brainiac Attacks."