DVD Review: ALL-STAR SUPERMAN
[Releases on Feb. 22nd on Warner home Video]
I'll admit it: I usually
put up with Superman, but that's about it. Granted, his portrayal
in the "DC Universe" animated series of recent years has been consistently
interesting--but even there I've enjoyed Supes mostly when juxtaposed
with other "mythic" characters such as Batman and Captain Marvel.
Still, I should have known a radically different approach to the Man
of Steel lay in store when I heard that DCU was adapting Grant Morrison's
Eisner-winning "All-Star Superman" maxi-series... which just so
happens to address, head-on, some issues that non-fans such as myself
have had with the character--his remoteness, his idealism, and, most
of all, his air of invulnerability.
The nice surprise is that all
of the comic's themes translate wonderfully via Dwayne McDuffie's
script and Andrea Romano's voice direction. Sure, these two are always
reliable, but here they've clearly outdone themselves--the story
is complex and multilayered, and embraces a wide range of tones, but
this production never comes across as reductive. Just the opposite,
in fact. The pacing and structure feels episodic, but each new chapter
seems to build on the others as this somber tale of mortality moves
toward its memorable conclusion.
Of course director Sam Liu
deserves a good portion of the credit as well--it just didn't immediately
occur to me because chief among his storytelling virtues is remaining
invisible, letting the story and the cast do their jobs without the
kind of self-conscious "coolness" that can mar such animated efforts.
Similarly, lead James Denton provides a quiet performance that's deceptively
powerful, its feeling of understatement perfectly matching the character
yet suggesting depths that I don't often perceive from more square-jawed
interpretations.
Denton's reserve also comes
across as slightly pensive, which is appropriate because here we're
treated to a Superman who's actually smart. That's always
been one of my biggest problems with the franchise--it features a hero
with a super-brain, and yet his arch-nemesis is just a particularly
clever human being with no other powers. What's that all about? Well,
the nice thing about All-Star Superman is that it establishes
Lex Luthor (an effective Anthony LaPaglia) as, yes, a genius, but also
possessing a different, more cunning, kind of intelligence than the
title character's. In this way a distinction that's probably been
obvious to Superman fans for decades suddenly became clear to me. And
what's most fascinating about this Luthor is that although he embodies
an ultra-independent, I'll-bow-to-no-idols concept of the will-to-power,
he delivers memorable monologues (to Clark Kent no less!) that savage
the quasi-Nietzschean aspects of the "Super-Man" archetype. Talk
about narrative substance, psychological conflict, and the hidden kinship
of opposing values--yikes!
