The Machine Is Coming In Superman Unbound

Supes is not my favorite superhero, but he isn't half bad.

We are thrown right into this one with a number of things not being explained to us. It makes me wonder if this slots into a timeline of some show. Supergirl is here, Kal's cousin, but none of her backstory is given up front. It could be that they just expect us to know, which I did, but I find it hard to believe that most casual viewers would have much knowledge of Kara's origins.

Brainiac is coming to Earth. He is powerful. He has on his ship a miniaturized Kryptonian city complete with tiny Kryptonians, and Superman wants to free them. After Superman's first encounter with one of Brainiac's robot minions, Kara tells of her encounter with Brainiac. Why has she not told her cousin of this before? I'm sure he had lots of questions when she showed up.

The design of Brainiac's ship I felt lacked imagination. It was basically a giant Terminator skull. His design, too, I thought was kind of lame. He basically looks like the Martian Manhunter without the lame outfit, and with pieces of round purple glass on his head and some of his joints. The one upside to Brainiac was his lines. John Noble's (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0633604/?ref_=tt_cl_t3) voice acting was pretty impressive. "I am flesh and machine. I am becoming everything," was one of my favorites. I'm just sad there wasn't a character named Astrid in this that Brainiac had to pronounce.

Spoiler alert I guess. Superman wins. What causes the downfall of Brainiac was pretty lame, or at least how they played it out and explained it. Still, the movie as a whole wasn't bad. It just had a bit of an anti-climactic ending. *** 3 stars.

There was a funny bit of innuendo in the movie. One of the other employees at the Daily Planet hits on Lois and suggested that Clark Kent might be gay. He also pretty plainly asked her if she wanted to have sex with him at one point where they thought the world might be coming to an end.

If you want to check out some other good DC or Marvel animated films check these out:

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm *****
Batman: Under the Red Hood ***(*)
Superman Vs. The Elite ***(*)
Justice League: Doom ****
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker ****
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths ****

Okay, so I looked up the Marvel ones to refresh my memory, and they are all honestly pretty lame. I would have sworn there were more Marvel animated features, but I checked several sites and got the same info from all of them. So what you should do is go watch the 90's X-Men animated series. And, of course, watch Batman: The Animated Series!