Superman: Brainiac Attacks

I love Superman but you definitely shouldn't watch this after Superman: The Animated Series. It's got a lame plot, childish dialogue, and doesn't have anything new to offer.

It's Baby's First Superman.

So, when this came out in 2006, 6 years after Superman TAS has ended, I was excited by the trailer. The classic character designs all over again, well animated! Tim Daly and Dana Delaney reprising their roles and others too! Unlike Batman TAS which got 3 movies, Superman TAS never had one, so I was excited. I was young, and did not check who the director and writer was. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

So for those who are as unaware as I was in 2006 -this movie LOOKS like Superman TAS, uses the same character models, even some of the same voice actors... but is NOT in continuity, and it is an abysmally written boring story that feels like it was lifted from some Golden Age comic.

You learn this quickly when the movie starts with Brainiac landing on Earth and starting to absorb knowledge from computers, then confronting Superman for the first time. Wait a minute, I said, but they already met several times in the show! Well... these may look like the same characters, but aren't. In general, they feel like alternate universe versions of characters you love, who look the same, but are far, far more dumb.

Take Superman - throughout the movie, he keeps thinking that he needs to retire the Clark Kent personality and just tell Lois who he is. Anyone who seen "The Late Mr. Kent" knows that Clark IS the real personality of Kal-El, he doesn't want to be Superman all the time. He is a mild mannered reporter from Smallville at heart. But here, he wants to retire because he thinks he gets Lois Lane into trouble... not realizing this Lois is simply, too stupid to live. Several times in the movie, Lois almost tries to get herself killed in incredibly convoluted ways.

But that's not the worst part, wait until you see Lex Luthor. Remember how threatening and powerful Lex felt, despite not having superpowers? Well, not only his voice changed -Powers Boothe instead of Clancy Brown - but he degraded back to some comical small minded villain from the Golden Age. When he muses that he doesn't know whether to feel sad that Brainiac is destroying his base, or happy that Superman is trashed, I wanted to slap him. He is also incredibly stupid (see a pattern there?), thinking he can partner with Brainiac to have him kill Superman for him, then take a fall and pretend that Lex beat him. To nobody's surprise, Brainiac betrays him.

Speaking of Brainy, Lance Henrikssen replaces Corey Burton, but he cannot save the character from turning into a boring, generic megalomaniac. Gone is the inhuman, cold logic that made Brainiac so scary. Unfortunately he also spends half the movie in a new body made out of a satellite that looks like a badly mistransformed Transformer.

The worst part though, was reserved for poor Jimmy Olsen. His plot for the movie? Well, for some inexplicable reason, he has a huge crush on Mercy. To the point of creepiness, where he takes photos of her and has a shrine. Needless to say, people's warnings to Jimmy that a woman who would rather kill him than look at him and who does Luthor's dirty work is not someone you would date, fall on deaf ears.

The movie has some OK action scenes, and is well animated - same studio who did Superman TAS. The voice actors all do their work well. But the writing and asinine dialogue just ruins it all. It is still, something I recommend to DCAU fans - it is an eerie, strange experience, seeing these beloved characters in identical animation to the show's, yet acting in strange and silly ways. It almost feels like this movie is from a parallel universe, where Paul Dini was never born, and Superman TAS was based on dumb Golden Age comics.

The previews for this movie made it seem to be good, but the one thing I saw that was lacking, was how they portrayed Luthor. They made him out to be some kind of wuss. They had him making lame jokes, and scared how his image would be if his satellite destroyed Superman. This only gets a 5 because Superman was again voiced by Tim Daly and The rest of the original cast had returned. With the exception of Luthor and the voice of Brainiac. Who was making cheap cracks and smirking which I found a bit odd. I was going to buy this on DVD but I'll stick with the cartoon network airing.

That is all

Paul Dini and Bruce Timm had nothing to do with this...thing. And it shows. Filled with clichés and trite plot devices that even a one year old would be bored with. This is nothing like the animated series that was clever on so many levels.

They couldn't even grab Clancy Brown or Lisa Edelstein to reprise their roles as Lex Luthor and Mercy Graves. The new voices were more than a little off putting. As was the entire story in general. It should be a crime to mar a project that had such a good run years earlier.

If you want your animated Superman fix, for yourselves or, better yet, for your kids, don't invest any money in this DVD. Reach back a few years and grab the proper animated series.

"Superman: Braniac Attacks" is an interesting effort from the DCU, and without a doubt a tie-in with the upcoming "Superman Returns" even featuring interesting foreshadowing that's meant for fun. But, the true glory of this film is that Tim Daly returns! Out of all the animated voices for Superman, Daly is my favorite mainly because he provides a humility that a god-like individual like Superman needs to have. While I thought George Newbern was great, Daly is the man I grew to enjoy, and he's back yet again, and this time Clark is re-considering confessing his secret to Lois. But when Lex and Braniac team up to create the ultimate weapon to defeat Superman, he must save Metropolis once more and discover a cure for Lois who is infected by Braniac.

Gladly, the welcome refreshing course is also aided by the talents of Dana Delany, the definitive voice of Lois Lane as the spunky and brave reporter. "Braniac Attacks" has the same wide-eyed enthusiasm as the series, the wide-eyed enthusiasm Timm couldn't grasp, and evidently, the writers were approaching the same fantastic experience to make way for the upcoming film, and I didn't mind it. The script dares to have more fun with Superman and his powers, and the audience gets to watch him make use of his abilities with a wider spectrum. One highlight of which is seeing Superman enter the Phantom Zone, Superman struggling to leave the Phantom Zone, and we even get to witness an effect we never saw in the animated series. Superman uses his x-ray vision to see Lois' beating heart, and the infection coursing through her blood stream. A wonderful use of x-ray vision, and his redundant microscopic vision. Superman is superman here. Powerful, determined, and center square.

Sadly, though, as much as I didn't want to admit it, this felt awfully empty, and not because Timm was gone, but because there was really nothing to it. Superman is Superman, and Lex and Braniac team up. It's the same themes we saw throughout the end of the "Justice League" Series, and we see it here, too. Though the film takes place before "Justice League" continuity, and this is intended as foreshadowing to future team-ups we'd see in the former series, it's really nothing but more of the same plot we saw in the last seasons of the "Justice League" series involving cadmus and whatnot. So, with this alliance, we have the awkward, and I do mean awkward, alliance of Lex and Braniac that I've seen played with much more grace. And that's due primarily to the wholly inconsistent characterization presented without much shame.

One of the many inconsistencies is that Lex is a sniveling, spineless, comedic presence, a complete departure from any of the variations on the character and a most unwelcome change. Lex is a man among a god challenging him, not some worm. Also Mercy is annoying and becomes nothing but a Harley Quinn clone who sits around waxing sarcastic to Lex, and has a ridiculously forgettable sub-plot where she trades flirts with Jimmy Olsen. In the series, Mercy was a hard-boiled, street tough, vicious body guard who must have been in the mid-thirties, but oddly the writers feel compelled to make her in her mid-twenties, and not very useful to her employer. And, you expect me to believe Jimmy could sneak into Lex's labs without being spotted? Give me a break. Worst of all, Lois is reduced to nothing but a lovelorn teenager who sighs and gazes wide-eyed at Superman's presence and gets herself into trouble. I'm aware this film disconnects from continuity, but did they really have to back step character progress? So, Superman is back in animated form, and I couldn't be happier. True, there are many bumps along the road in terms of characterization, and some of it feels empty, but I had fun, and it was great to see the actors voicing these great characters once again. Would I buy it? No, but as a passing experience I'd definitely recommend it. Bring on "Superman Returns"!