Superman Unbound- The Animated Movie

Brainiac: To think that two Kryptonians chose to call this planet home, sickens me. What could Earth have possible offered you?

Superman: Something you wouldn't know anything about. It's my home. My heart. It gives me strength.

I really enjoyed the Superman Unbound movie. For me, this movie did allot right that The Man of Steel did so very, very wrong. This movie portrayed Superman as a hero against a worthy foe and had a great cast of supporting characters. As always, this review will contain spoilers.

Superman Unbound is the story of Brainiac finding Earth. Brainiac is robotic-type creature who is obsessed with cataloguing all life forms by getting a miniaturised city of that species. However, he also cannot deal with change and therefore destroys the planet after he takes the city. He did this to Krypton where Supergirl was there to witness it and he then discovers Earth partly through his interactions with Superman.

Superman is represented in this story as a hero. He is shown as strong, but apart from this Superman Unbound shows why he is more than just his strength. It shows his moral character in guiding Supergirl as well as him using his mind to think his way out of situations as often as he just punches his way out of situations. It also shows his struggles with living a normal life through his interactions with the supporting characters, particularly Lois.

The supporting characters are also good. Lois Lane, apart from the opening scene, is shown as a strong and capable woman without being shoehorned into everything. One of my favourite parts of the movie is a certain hand gesture Miss Lane gives to Brainiac while miniaturised. Supergirl is represented as, despite having all the power, being immature and lacking the willpower of Superman. This is particularly evident when she starts avoiding Metropolis out of fear of Brainiac.

Brainiac as a villain was also well handled. They didn’t hold him back as some big reveal but it still felt like an event when he and Superman finally came face-to-face. Brainiac always had that aura of menace about him. The introduction of his first minion-robot and its fight with Superman I felt was done well.

All the major characters throughout this movie undergo growth. The motivations of each of the characters is made clear. They all have a character arc, from Superman’s fear for Lois to Supergirl learning to be a hero. I felt that the decisions that they made towards the end of the movie came from characters who showed growth during the movie. Although this sounds simple, allot of major movies, although fun, don't really do this (The Wolverine and Fast and Furious 6 are the most recent examples for me).

My only criticism is the inconsistency of the Brainiac robot-minions power. At the start they were shown to be able to hang with Superman in a fight and shrug off the Krypton army. By the end, they suffer from the minions curse with them being easily taken down by things such as Lois running a chair into them.

Overall, I recommend Superman Unbound as a very good Superman story. It manages to do Superman as a hero very well as being an intelligent hero with a infallible moral compass and willpower, as well as being able to punch stuff and burn things with heat vision. All the characters show growth and it is a very satisfying movie.