Reign of the Supermen animated movie, your thoughts (Spoilers welcome)

[Kon93]

I don't like the idea of Darkseid creating Doomsday. I would like to think that Doomsday's origin is the same but Darkseid was the one sending ships to pick him up and send him to other planets. Superboy and Lex were my favourite characters in this movie.

Yeah like he saw a opportunity and he took it. Probably saving himself a future headache also.

Yeah lex and SB were great in this, can't wait til the next movie

[bat39]

I loved it! This, along with The Death of Superman, has got to be one of the best animated adaptations of Superman IMO. Certainly in the last decade or so.

The four new Supermen were great - Superboy in particular. I loved how Lois was, in a sense, the true protagonist of the film, and in a very convincing way. They managed to make the movie a stealth sequel to Justice League War as well without making the story too bloated.

The only real weakness was Hank Henshaw's motivation for hating Superman, which didn't really seem well-developed. If his motivation was simply being driven insane by an obsessive dependence on Superman, then there could have been an interesting story to tell about the dangers of humans relying on Superman too much. The subplot around the human volunteers signing up to be turned into cyborgs could have tied into that as well. As it stands, they didn't really explore that aspect at all. Which is fine, given the time constraints, but then at least Hank's motivations should have come across better.

I'm really digging how, as predicted by many including myself, this movie marked not only the literal rebirth of Superman, but also this animated universe moving in a more 'Rebirth'-y direction. Between Superman's Reborn suit and the classic Justice League Watchtower from the JLU cartoon, not to mention Lex Luthor's Superfriends outfit, it does seem that much like in the comics, the shackles of the New 52 have been lifted and the entire history and legacy of the DC brand is ready to soar once again!

[qwertyuiop1998]

i personally think it's less impressive than the death of superman,but still good,i think it's problem mostly is at cyborg superman,they simplified his origin and his motivation hatre toward to superman.and i still can't understand why cyborg superman want bring superman to a place that could receive immense sunlight,i mean he can just bring superman to basement,and i can't understand why he didn't do anything to defense himself when against a superman who just receiving a lot of sunlight.
but despite cyborg problem.i still enjoy this movie,superman is awesome,and eradicator is cool,superboy funny and charming,steel's armor also impressive,

[SuperiorIronman]

I thought it was a pretty solid movie but it definitely had some issues.

I thought all the Supermen had a good showing. Steel was awesome (though they never mentioned his also being inspired by John Henry the steel driving man), Superboy was funny and charming, Eradicator was an emotionless force of destruction, and Cyborg Superman was a pretty intimidating villain.

They had to crame two worlds together and it hurts the movie a bit. The filmmakers not only had to tell the story of Reign but they had to include the Justice League animated world that they have already created. I liked how they took the League off the table but I found the sequence a little silly as the team just happen to assemble in a clump for no reason.

I loved seeing Lois and Diana form a bond. Superman using the Seinfeld worlds colliding reference was funny. Lots a nice little references and winks to the audience. Superboy using 90s slang from watching too many old sitcoms. Rain Wilson’s Lex has become one of my favorite interpretations of the character. A perfect mix of arrogant nerd, brilliant super villain, and all around jerk. His “Make Metropolis Safe Again” slogan made me laugh.

One of my biggest complaints was that they used that god awful Darkseid design again. Easily the ugliest version of Darkseid ever. It’s like Thanos’ costume vomited all over him.

I don't hate that I've seen it but I do think it could've been better. Granted I didn't watch Death of Superman and knew it was a sequel going in, but I just don't feel like it can easily stand on its own. I don't mean like it has to tell a story disjointed from the prior, I mean that it gives all the relevant information in this entry. Outside of a couple of lines (and I do mean two) that's all I get on Hank Henshaw. Maybe there was more in Death of Superman but outside of a motivation we don't really get anything here. Maybe I just missed it in the prior entry but it would've been helpful for a recap here.

Also the Super-minions had no business being here and are pretty much there to keep the other supers from facing the Cyborg. The supers could pretty much be replaced with members of the Justice League and you'd pretty much miss nothing. I'm sure that if a cut of this didn't include them it wouldn't be that bad. Basically Darkseid kind of derails the film when the main conflict should be around Hank Henshaw and Superman. Hank even just goes rogue as soon as he gets the chance and we don't see Darkseid again so other than an explanation for his powers what was the point? It could've been Lexcorp making a cyborg Superman for all the good it did. The needlessly mean-spirited Lex scene where he has the Doctor killed by the failed Supers could've been replaced with Superboy discovering Lex's role to play in all this. Also wasted opportunity for a Bizzaro cameo.

Other than that it's fine but with a few animation flaws. I don't hate that I've seen it or paying the money to do so if it means DC does better than anything like Justice League War and the like because this is pretty good. It's just that this is a frustratingly flawed picture.
I give it B-

[Soldy]

I enjoyed it. A solid follow up, but i liked Death of Superman more. This one felt a bit rushed. Lois was the star for me in this movie. I'm glad they paired her with Supes, cause Sup x Diana always felt bland and boring to me. And Lois has great personality. We finally got a new suit for big man and it's time to redesign Wonder Woman and Darkseid. Darky looks especially awful, too 90s. All in all, good movie, here's hoping this shared animated universe will be more like these 2 last movies and never will spawn again an abomination like JL vs TT.

[DochaDocha]

First, I'm going to give some retroactive praise to Death of Superman in its feat of capturing the main elements of the comic story within the constraints of DTV. Sure, it changes certain details, but some of the changes (e.g. using the relevant JL team that people actually care about) are for the better. I'm pretty loathe to the repetitive use of this particular story in other media, especially since the whole DTV line was kicked off by 2007's Superman: Doomsday (more on that in a bit), but give credit where it's due.

Speaking of Superman: Doomsday, Reign has a certain thematic comp to the 2007 flick in that it's mostly entertaining, but also it feels like a movie that only captures some of the essence of the source material and goes off on its own path. There are pros and cons to that, and I leave it up to the viewer to decide if and when that's the right move.

Certainly, the task of trying to tell the story of four Superman wannabes/frauds/what have you was really ambitious, and it wasn't realistic to think the movie was going to reframe each of those character's story in depth. I feel the movie does best with Conner (do they call him something other than "Superboy" in this movie?), and it does try to condense years of his comic development into something like 15 minutes. In the end, though, my attachment to any of those characters (positive or negative) is pretty low. It's just too much to ask to put that much story into that little amount of runtime.

Back when MoS was being reviewed, a common complaint was that Lois was being injected into the action pieces. I didn't think it was particularly bad; in fact, I felt as long as you assumed that Zod and the Phantom Zoners could analyze Earth press releases concerning Kal-El, then they'd see that most of the accessible data about the guy came from her expose. Furthermore, when it was time to counterattack the terraforming, your best bet is to recruit the only person who got instructions from Jor-freakin-El on what to do and how to do it. In this movie, though? I could've done less with her. I think the narrative sets her presence in the action sets properly, but I don't think the utilization was all that great. Going back to the 2007 film, Lois was, in my estimation, also the main protagonist, and it largely worked for me. However, in this movie, I don't think it was the right decision, largely because how underdeveloped the Supermen are. I think a counterargument for that would be that because there was no way you could sufficiently develop the Supermen, then run with a character who can assume the camera time and get the story going. I think that's fair, but I still feel like the movie was hurt.

As for the climactic action sequence, it was largely a miss for me. I've been harping on DC animation for years that they always dumb down the power set of the metahumans and amp up the regular humans, and sadly this movie kind of fails for me in this regard. Look, every DC animation has some nitpickable details that should largely be ignored, but for some reason they were just jumping out at me. Like, when the gun gets flung Lois', way, I thought it was goofy AF that when the breach in the Watchtower started sweeping Lois off her feet, the gun waited like 2 minutes to be moved, and moved just conveniently enough to land in her hands. I also thought it was incredibly stupid that the gun, while fired in Zero G, would send her recoiling, and yet she seemed to be able to aim it better than Cyborg Superman. Look, I've shot many guns before, and my aim sucks, but I shot them with feet firmly planted on terra firma. Recoil makes those things hard to aim, and if your entire body recoils and goes drifting off on firing, and you seemingly hit your target better than the guy who can defy gravity, eh. Chalk it up as another lackluster animated action sequence... it happens.

But action wise, the biggest nitpick I had was that Superman recovered his power after like four seconds of direct sunlight. How utterly underwhelming. It's like, why didn't they just rocket him into space to get a little more sun exposure before sending him to battle? They took the climax of Return of Superman and completely watered it down.

Now, as far as the timeline goes, I thought there's some sensibility in making the movie take place six months after Death of Superman compared to something like the four weeks of comic time (and one year of real time) for Superman to die and come back. As far as logistics of plotting goes, six months is a bit more reasonable to introduce four different Supermen, but of course then it makes the sudden "discovery" of Clark Kent being trapped in the rubble even sillier, as the four weeks in the comics seemed ridiculous as it was. More relevant to the movie, it didn't feel like six months had passed. The way people talked and acted, Superman could've died five days ago.

Random thought on Superboy: I felt that made him kind of young. Maybe my memory of Superboy from 1993 is a little off and he really was closer to 13 than 15, but he seemed so young, and small. I think he's even kind of petite in Young Justice, FWIW, but here he looks a bit too young.

Okay, enough rambling. It's an entertaining film, but it's essentially to the comic source material as the 2007 animated film was to Death of Superman in the comics. Just don't get your hopes up for a faithful adaptation and you'll be okay.

[Kon93]

First, I'm going to give some retroactive praise to Death of Superman in its feat of capturing the main elements of the comic story within the constraints of DTV. Sure, it changes certain details, but some of the changes (e.g. using the relevant JL team that people actually care about) are for the better. I'm pretty loathe to the repetitive use of this particular story in other media, especially since the whole DTV line was kicked off by 2007's Superman: Doomsday (more on that in a bit), but give credit where it's due.

Speaking of Superman: Doomsday, Reign has a certain thematic comp to the 2007 flick in that it's mostly entertaining, but also it feels like a movie that only captures some of the essence of the source material and goes off on its own path. There are pros and cons to that, and I leave it up to the viewer to decide if and when that's the right move.

Certainly, the task of trying to tell the story of four Superman wannabes/frauds/what have you was really ambitious, and it wasn't realistic to think the movie was going to reframe each of those character's story in depth. I feel the movie does best with Conner (do they call him something other than "Superboy" in this movie?), and it does try to condense years of his comic development into something like 15 minutes. In the end, though, my attachment to any of those characters (positive or negative) is pretty low. It's just too much to ask to put that much story into that little amount of runtime.

Back when MoS was being reviewed, a common complaint was that Lois was being injected into the action pieces. I didn't think it was particularly bad; in fact, I felt as long as you assumed that Zod and the Phantom Zoners could analyze Earth press releases concerning Kal-El, then they'd see that most of the accessible data about the guy came from her expose. Furthermore, when it was time to counterattack the terraforming, your best bet is to recruit the only person who got instructions from Jor-freakin-El on what to do and how to do it. In this movie, though? I could've done less with her. I think the narrative sets her presence in the action sets properly, but I don't think the utilization was all that great. Going back to the 2007 film, Lois was, in my estimation, also the main protagonist, and it largely worked for me. However, in this movie, I don't think it was the right decision, largely because how underdeveloped the Supermen are. I think a counterargument for that would be that because there was no way you could sufficiently develop the Supermen, then run with a character who can assume the camera time and get the story going. I think that's fair, but I still feel like the movie was hurt.

As for the climactic action sequence, it was largely a miss for me. I've been harping on DC animation for years that they always dumb down the power set of the metahumans and amp up the regular humans, and sadly this movie kind of fails for me in this regard. Look, every DC animation has some nitpickable details that should largely be ignored, but for some reason they were just jumping out at me. Like, when the gun gets flung Lois', way, I thought it was goofy AF that when the breach in the Watchtower started sweeping Lois off her feet, the gun waited like 2 minutes to be moved, and moved just conveniently enough to land in her hands. I also thought it was incredibly stupid that the gun, while fired in Zero G, would send her recoiling, and yet she seemed to be able to aim it better than Cyborg Superman. Look, I've shot many guns before, and my aim sucks, but I shot them with feet firmly planted on terra firma. Recoil makes those things hard to aim, and if your entire body recoils and goes drifting off on firing, and you seemingly hit your target better than the guy who can defy gravity, eh. Chalk it up as another lackluster animated action sequence... it happens.

But action wise, the biggest nitpick I had was that Superman recovered his power after like four seconds of direct sunlight. How utterly underwhelming. It's like, why didn't they just rocket him into space to get a little more sun exposure before sending him to battle? They took the climax of Return of Superman and completely watered it down.

Now, as far as the timeline goes, I thought there's some sensibility in making the movie take place six months after Death of Superman compared to something like the four weeks of comic time (and one year of real time) for Superman to die and come back. As far as logistics of plotting goes, six months is a bit more reasonable to introduce four different Supermen, but of course then it makes the sudden "discovery" of Clark Kent being trapped in the rubble even sillier, as the four weeks in the comics seemed ridiculous as it was. More relevant to the movie, it didn't feel like six months had passed. The way people talked and acted, Superman could've died five days ago.

Random thought on Superboy: I felt that made him kind of young. Maybe my memory of Superboy from 1993 is a little off and he really was closer to 13 than 15, but he seemed so young, and small. I think he's even kind of petite in Young Justice, FWIW, but here he looks a bit too young.

Okay, enough rambling. It's an entertaining film, but it's essentially to the comic source material as the 2007 animated film was to Death of Superman in the comics. Just don't get your hopes up for a faithful adaptation and you'll be okay.

Yes SB is way to small,he was small compared to the other Supers, but not to other kids around his age

[OpaqueGiraffe17]

Finally saw it and really liked it, a worthy follow up to Death of Superman. Superman and his world translated a lot better into this animated movie universe than it’s lackluster take on Batman and his family. Lois, Lex and Conner were the highlights. Darkseid and the Justice League were pulled the movie down though, so it’s not as good as the first one.

[stargazer01]

I'll buy it this week. I need to lower my expectations it seems. I just hope Reign is solid and not disappointing as a follow up to DoS.

DoS was simply amazing to me story and action wise. Better than BvS/JL.

[Castiel]

I truly hope we get Superman: Doomsday next with both Cyborg Superman and Doomsday back and running amuck on Apokolips. My only probably is Doomsday being reduced to Darkseid's servant. I hope they make Superman: Doomsday and retcon that.

[Jackalope89]

I'll buy it this week. I need to lower my expectations it seems. I just hope Reign is solid and not disappointing as a follow up to DoS.

DoS was simply amazing to me story and action wise. Better than BvS/JL.

Considering it basically jams several things into one film, its pretty solid for a movie.

Though I can't help but feel they may try to make Connor the "Jon" of this universe, so to speak.

[JAK]

Finally had a chance to watch the movie today... and you know what? I loved it!

I do still wish I'd gotten the "accurate" version DC promised us when they first launched the animated movie line, but this was very good.

There's A LOT that I miss from the books, but (much like DoS) it was a solid enough effort that what I wanted to see (and didn't) didn't take me out of the story.

I'm also kind of amazed at how much I liked the Cyborg Superman look. It looks absolutely horrible in stills (imo), but animated it works.


In the future, these will be my "Exhibit A" and "B" when someone says that pre-conceived notions are why people do/don't like "X" movie (not saying them because I don't want to derail the discussion). By all rights, I should have hated these two animated films, but they were delivered in a solid enough way that I didn't - in fact I very much enjoyed myself. That's some solid work, right there!

And maybe, just maybe... we can get the accurate version in 20 years or so. lol

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

It was a very good film, enjoyable action and great voice acting. However, that being said...I thought that the whole point of these two films was to make something closer to the original comic than the first time they tried adapting it in 2007. So, why then would they make such huge changes to Hank Henshaw's character and the storyline in general? I love Darkseid and all, but if I remember correctly, he played no part in the original story. Also, Hank Henshaw was so much more diabolical and manipulating and an all-around complex and layered villain. So, why belittle him as a minion following orders? He was the one giving orders in the actual comic. And, on that note, why not even include Mongul or the destruction of Coast City? Those were both huge parts of the story.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

Finally got this, with the weather in the Midwest, didn't get delivered until last night. Really enjoyed it, maybe moreso than Death. It was certainly more family friendly than Death was. They certainly compacted and adapted a lot of material into a 80 or so minute movie. I had to expalin parts of the "original" story to my daughter as we watched because she asked a lot of questions.

Conner was the higlight for me, I was instantly thinking "they need to do a Young Justice follow up with him, Tim, Bart and Cassie." Granted this is still New 52ish and those characters have never been mentioned yet.

[Frontier]

I feel like this film probably did a good job as you would expect of condensing both Reign and the Return into one film. It wasn't a 1-to-1 adaption of the story like I'm sure some were hoping, but I thought they captured the important beats from the story quite well and focused on what they should have.

I thought it was awesome that Lois was pretty much the main character in this, even moreso then Superman himself was. I know one of the complaints about the Wonder Woman romance, both in comics and out-of-it, is how it marginalizes Lois and her importance in the mythos, so I thought it was great to see the in-continuity movies re-emphasize how awesome Lois Lane is. Watching her use her ace reporter skills to figure out the mystery of the Supermen and then ultimately proving the key to Superman defeating Henshaw was great.

I really wasn't sure about him at first but Rainn Wilson has really impressed me as Lex Luthor. He does a great job capturing how much of an egotistical, elitist, selfish, and condescending tool Luthor is. I love how he acted annoyed by basically everything he dealt with in that movie, especially Superboy. His reaction to Superman being alive was priceless.

We only had Perry for, like, 3-4 minutes but I thought he was great. They even managed to fit in a "Great Ceasar's Ghost" and "Don't call me chief!" And was that "Sullivan" supposed to be Chloe Sullivan? I wonder if they would've based it more off of Allison Mack if it wasn't for the controversy surrounding her.

I loved this movie's take on Superboy, especially since it was so much closer to what he was like from his inception compared to, say, Young Justice. They did a really good job of adapting his 90's personality but with his later Post-Crisis character development, and he was probably the funniest character in the movie. I hope we get to see this take on Conner again in a future movie.

I thought the movie had a solid take on Steel. He maybe didn't standout as much as the other Supermen did, and he got beat up a lot, but he looked cool and John Henry's characterization was on-point.

Eradicator really was the MVP of this movie. None of the other Superman could actually beat him, he gave Superman his Fortress of Solitude and robots, helped resurrect him, and then proved the key element in Superman defeating Henshaw. Not bad for a an AI Nanny, huh?

I thought they did Cyborg-Superman/Henshaw justice. There's still the element of tragedy in his origin and how he lost so much dear to him, and how he then channels that loss into an absolute anger and hatred of Superman. Sure he started off as Darkseid's pawn, but then he screws Darkseid over and pretty much cements himself as the true villain of the feature. And Patrick Fabian did a great job conveying Henshaw's insanity and villainy as Cyborg-Superman. I love how they did the shift in the voice from O'Connel to Fabian once Lois revealed she knew who he really was.

I didn't mind the Darkseid element since it made Doomsday's arrival and Henshaw's transformation a little more organic and cohesive, as well as tieing in to the overall continuity of the Animated Feature films.

I was disappointed that Jimmy really didn't get to do anything in these movies. If there's one thing I would say Superman: Doomsday did a little better was in making Jimmy feel more integral and more of an actual character. Here he just stands around pointing his camera, which feels a lot like what he's usually reduced to in the comics, unfortunately. Felt like a big waste of Max Mittelman.

Conversely, Bibbo's role in this movie was all kinds of awesome.

Did anyone else think they could've used the League in space to fit in a Mongul cameo? I feel like that would have been a good way to work him in.

It's kind of funny that they ended up using the original ending for Superman: Doomsday in the climax, where Superman was supposed to get close to the sun and then get re-energized to beat the evil Superman.