Superman: Unbound (2013) – Blu-ray + DVD + Ultraviolet

***/****
Image B-
Sound B+
Extras C+

screenplay
by Bob Goodman, based on the graphic novel Superman: Braniac
by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank

directed
by James Tucker

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any image to enlarge

by
Jefferson Robbins
With Superman: Unbound,
DC
Universe's appropriation of anime elements for its superhero cartoons
reaches
its logical endpoint: tentacle rape. Our first glimpse of longstanding
Superman
nemesis Brainiac, a semi-organic humanoid computer, features his
natural eye
getting plucked out by a pincered appendage to be replaced with an
upgraded
model. Later, a bound and helpless Superman will have terabytes of
deadly
information pumped straight into his cortex by other such squidlike
injectors.
The last five years of direct-to-video DC Comics adaptations, many
engineered
by Korean production house MOI Animation, have all gone East for key
sequences–the lonely drift of a Gotham cityscape, robot foes ripped
from the
comics to be redesigned as mechas. So I guess it was only a matter of
time
before weird snaky appendages tried to skull-fuck the Man of Steel.

RUNNING TIME
75 minutes
MPAA
Not Rated
ASPECT
RATIO(S)

1.78:1 (1080p/MPEG-4)
LANGUAGES
English 5.1 DTS-HD MA
French DD 5.1
Spanish (Castilian) DD 2.0 (Stereo)
Spanish (Latin) DD 5.1
SUBTITLES 
English SDH
French
Spanish
REGION
All
DISC
TYPE

BD-25
STUDIO
Warner

This is not a dealbreaker. Once I vault
past my core complaint (that DC really doesn't give a shit
anymore about
kids who love their characters, or parents who might want less chien
andalou
in their Smallville), Superman:
Unbound
impresses
to a degree that none of Warner's recent dtv cartoon output has. (Put
aside any
questions about that title, though: it's meaningless.) It's the first
entry
without pioneering producer Bruce Timm, who stepped aside after last
year's The Dark Knight Returns two-part
video release in
favour of James Tucker, director of this offering. Coincidentally or
not, it
has vast advantages over Man of Steel, the
theatrical
blockbuster it was timed to support. For one, it can launch in
medias
res
, with Superman/Clark Kent (voiced by Matt Bomer) and wisecracking
Liz Taylor-eyed
reporter Lois Lane (Stana Katic, just great) a fully-fledged journalist
power
couple, she fully aware that she's dating an earthbound god. We don't
need
Russell Crowe monologuing over Socialist-Realist nanotech dioramas to
know what
this hero is all about. Superman's ultimate mission is a defense of
life,
else why spend so much energy catching people plummeting from great
heights? It's
an impossible job, of course, because everybody falls eventually–and a
remarkable thing about Superman: Unbound is
how many people
die because he's not around.

Hence Superman's anxiety over protecting
Lois, who has no problem letting her man pluck her from a terrorist's
fleeing
helicopter but chafes at Clark heat-visioning the Daily Planet's
resident
sexist boor (Diedrich Bader) into humiliation. The weight of
responsibility on Supes's shoulders is
doubled by Clark's guardianship of hot-headed young cousin Kara Zor-El,
a.k.a.
Supergirl (Molly C. Quinn), who survived the destruction of Krypton as
a young
adult and so lacks the upbringing that shaped Clark's character. Enter
Brainiac
(John Noble), a compulsive collector of civilizations who destroys
inhabited
planets once he's abducted, shrunk, and bottled one representative
city, including the Kryptonian city of Kandor–still frozen in time on
his big
ugly flying-head starship–and Metropolis, too, should he get his way. If
Superman
stands for life, Brainiac is an avatar of nullity, sterility, stasis:
death by other
names and means. That he's brought low by life in its simplest forms
both
solidifies this point and gives a sideways nod to H.G. Wells.

Brainiac is the only strong visual
carryover from the source material, a 2008 Action Comics arc written by
Geoff
Johns and illustrated by Gary Frank. As animated from Frank's design,
he's a
creature out of Ninja Scroll,
discomfitingly alien and unknowable.
Noble's voice is perfect for this, the ghost in a scary well, although
the
dialogue screenwriter Bob Goodman ascribes him too often defaults
to
"haughty" rather than the merely "cold" we'd expect from a
computer intelligence. By contrast, Lois and Clark's romantic sparring
is spot-on, the interactions of two strong, devoted people who each have good
points
about how to carry their relationship forward. I can't say enough about
Bomer
and Katic, who lend warmth and energy to their roles, or Quinn, who
plays
Supergirl as an idealistic but traumatized teen. DCU voice acting, with
its
deference to Comic-Con-friendly celebs, has fallen far lately, but this
casting
really polishes the chrome. (See also the great Stephen Root as
Supergirl's
father Zor-El, imbuing an alien super-scientist with folksiness and
somehow
making it work.)

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THE
BLU-RAY DISC

If there are visual haemorrhages in
Warner's 1080p, 1.78:1 Blu-ray presentation of Superman: Unbound, they're not fatal. Colours are
pristine
and never murky, yet the whole is afflicted with slight banding
and–rather
shockingly, at this late stage of the digital-cartoon game–aliasing.
These defects
fly by, however, mostly occurring in the big action segments and so not
sticking
around long enough to annoy. If the image softens when Superman punches
through
a battalion of robots, I just took that as motion blur. Soundwise, the
disc's
5.1 DTS-HD MA track performs better. The mix itself is thin on quiet ambience (where are the crickets on Ma and Pa Kent's farm?) but strong in the superfights–the
subwoofer and back speakers wake up for the whomps, thwacks, and
blammos and
suitably highlight Kevin Kliesch's grandeur-heavy score, though I miss
Christopher Drake, whose music has long been the best part of even
DCU's least
admirable flicks.

Tucker, Goodman, and DC Entertainment exec
Mike Carlin unite for an audio commentary that could easily be
dismissible but
winds up a fun, raconteurish, occasionally snarky take on superhero
media.
Carlin, a comics grandmaster in his former life, deftly addresses the
comics-to-film overlap and the nerd culture that accretes around, and
at times
impairs, this marriage. The film projects need to appeal to non-fans, he
says,
which risks alienating a fanbase so touchy it used to write angry letters
if
Superman's cape got torn. Brainiac, in Carlin's view, is the
ultimate
comics collector, "Taking all these cities, putting them in his plastic
bag, and then never looking at 'em." The trio spends a bit of time
dissing
the Richard Donner Superman movies (up to and
including Superman
Returns
) for their lack of Big Punching. Although Tucker cops to an
attempt to
reproduce Frank's style in early character designs, Frank's
Superman is
basically a facial study of Christopher Reeve, so that would've been
silly. Elsewhere, the documentary "Brainiac: Technology and Terror" (25 mins., HD)
lets human ballcap Geoff Johns wank out over his revivification of the
classic
character, while senior comics scribe Marv Wolfman (who with artist Ed
Hannigan
gave the pink-and-green cyborg a more aggro Terminator body in the
1980s) casts
an eye back on Brainiac's genesis and implications. "Kandor: History of
the Bottle City" (17 mins., HD) explores how Superman came to possess a
preserved piece of his homeworld, and the ridiculous stories that spun
from
that. "It did bother me, in a sense, that he didn't just open the
bottle," says Wolfman, appearing alongside Bob Goodman, Mike Carlin,
and
DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio.

"A Sneak Peek at DCU: Justice
League: The Flashpoint Paradox
" (11 mins., HD)–a title so
colon-happy it
needs a proctologist–surveys the upcoming dtv release that equips
happy-go-lucky superhero the Flash with the mandatory Dark Wound In His
Past.
Apparently there's a memo at DC that says something like, "Everybody
loves
Batman; therefore, all our characters are now Batman." Naturally, Johns
wrote this source comic as well. The quick talking-head featurette reveals
the voice
cast–Kevin McKidd as Batman! Cary Elwes as Aquaman! Michael B. Jordan
as the
guy saddled with the continuing effort to make Cyborg happen!–and lets
Johns
and the production staff try to justify their actions. When Flash/Barry
Allen
speeds back in time to prevent his mother's murder, the DC Universe
becomes
"a very dark place," says director Jay Oliva, like that's a new
thing. Nathan Fillion is back in a cameo as Green Lantern, a sign of
the DCU's
love for our Captain Reynolds, and I'm willing to bet that relationship
helped
his "Castle" co-stars Katic and Quinn land
their Unbound voice roles. I'm grateful if so.

Four episodes of the '90s "Superman: The
Animated Series" are on board, each a lo-def 22 minutes–part of that
infuriating value-added tactic that DC employs when it should be
remastering these great old TV properties for new Blu-ray box sets. But
no, that
would undermine whatever version of Superman/Batman/what-have-you
they're
selling this week. The transfers here serve only to show up the
softness and
pixellated resolution of the originals, now with bonus upscaling artifacts. A Man of Steel trailer autoplays on
startup along
with one for LEGO Batman: The Movie, probably the only current
DC
iteration I can comfortably show my kids. The DVD platter in this
package
contains the main feature, the Flashpoint preview, and
nothing else
save the UltraViolet digital download option. Follow
Jefferson Robbins
on Twitter


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