Plot summary: The arrival of Clark’s cousin, Supergirl, causes a major rift between him and Batman, unaware Darkseid has ominous ideas of his own for Kara…
Why This?!?
As I explained an hour ago, I don’t like splitting seasons across weekends, so if a season review falls on a Saturday then I try to fill the Sunday with something else rather than diving straight into the next season. I really struggled to think what to throw in here compared to BTAS, and ultimately landed on this imperfect solution of running TWO movie reviews in one day. Yes, I hate that my brain works this way.
Similar to Public Enemies, I thought this made for a fitting companion piece with STAS Season 2, given the DCAU debuts Supergirl, Granny Goodness and the Female Furies and Superman’s first trip to Apokalips at the end of the season. Given Supergirl’s depiction here directly contradicts events of the DCAU, fans don’t extend the same semi-canonicity to this as they do for the first film (even though that’s clearly not canon either in my opinion!)
Notes and Trivia
Release Date: September 28th, 2010
Directed: Lauren Montgomery
Written: Tab Murphy
Animation: MOI Animation
Music: John Paesano
After Public Enemies did decently they opted to keep their direct adaptations of Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman comic going, this time with issues 8-13 aka ‘The Supergirl from Krypton’ illustrated by the late Michael Turner, with the art style of this film trying to emulate his work as tribute.
The two stories were explicitly linked in the comics, as Supergirl’s pod was inside the Kryptonian meteor that they blew apart at the end of the story. While the events of the first film are mentioned in the opening, it’s instead set weeks later. I guess you could head-canon it that she was adrift for a bit before getting caught in Earth’s orbit.
Apparently a whole lot of people were mad at this film on release because they felt misled by the title, as it’s a Supergirl story. I get that ‘Apocalypse’ doesn’t scream Supergirl, but they do spend a big chunk of the film on Apokalips or fighting Darkseid’s forces, so it’s not really a lie. Plus she’s on the DVD cover, albeit with a look some wouldn’t immediately recognise.
When our heroes visit Barda to recruit her you can briefly see the costume of her husband, Mister Miracle (MY MAN) hanging next to her equipment. Unfortunately Scott doesn’t appear though.
The ‘Kryptonian language’ spoken in the film is actually Esperanto.
Recap
When a spaceship lands in Gotham harbour Batman encounters a confused Kara Zor-El struggling to control her powers.
Determining she is Superman’s cousin, The World’s Finest argue, as Clark does his best to help her assimilate to earth culture, while Batman remains suspicious of her arrival.
Darkseid kidnaps Kara, brainwashing her to become the new captain of his Female Furies, with the heroes mounting a rescue mission to Apokalips with the help of Big Barda.
Following them back to earth, Darkseid lays waste to Kent Farm, but Superman is able to defeat him, and Kara settles into Smallville, adopting the identity Supergirl.
Review
(Just as with Public Enemies I’m going to treat all creative decisions as those of the movie despite them originating from Loeb’s comics. You choose what you keep, lose or change when you make an adaptation, so if I think something is dumb I’m putting it on Murphy whether it was his idea or not.)
I’m not going to sit here and tell you this is an amazing film or anything, but I am utterly incredulous that Public Enemies is considered the better of the two films. I have rarely felt so far apart from common consensus.
I would go as far as to say the opening 10 minutes are better than the entirety of Public Enemies. The surveillance blimps evoking BTAS. The news broadcasters providing exposition of the previous film. The ‘camera’ slowly panning around a perfectly dark and moody Gotham. Batman’s scuba mission, emerging from the harbour looking insanely fucking cool (I always appreciate alternate Batsuits.) A naked Kara doing a meta Terminator homage and beating up some creeps for their clothes. Her confused rampage and Batman being unafraid to tangle with her anyway, even being the one to take her down while Clark is busy. Establishing a good tone early is monumentally important in my book.
While I generally praise the DCAU/Conroy incarnation of Batman for its warmth compared to the harder edged version that has become default in most continuities, Batman being kind of a dickhead to Kara is actually pretty compelling. There ARE holes in her story due to her inconsistent amnesia, and Krypto doesn’t like her, which is a great detail because it shows Batman canonically puts stock into dogs’ judgement. Likewise they make sure you know he’s not just a prick for no reason and that it’s all founded in his love for for Superman, to the point he’s able to convince Clark to allow Wonder Woman to take Kara away. They also obviously form a little bond by the end, with the proud nod and smile when Superman ‘introduces’ her to the world as Supergirl, and him risking everything to save her a few minutes before. While Batman threatening to murder untold numbers of people on Apokolips definitely violates his no kill rule, it is metal when Darkseid backs down and claims that Superman or Wonder Woman wouldn’t have been able to convince him they’d go to such extremes.
Offsetting Batman’s scepticism with Clark’s enormously trusting heart was a good choice. The shopping montage, their bonding over hot dogs, and her being confronted with the literal monolith of how people see Superman endeared me to Kara beyond the base level ‘Batman bullies a frightened young girl’ thing. How can your heart not break for her when Clark just silently looks at the floor as she pleads to not be taken away by the Amazons?
I’m a little torn on the Themyscira portion that follows though. The Amazons make their point about her need for training nicely, as she creates carnage in the empty park during their faux attack, and I’m a big Artemis fan so will always enjoy when she pops up, not to mention that it’s obviously great to see The Trinity together to break up the boys club a little. However it also feels like it doesn’t have quite enough room to breathe, especially the whole Lyla/Harbinger subplot. A lot of telling instead of showing with her and Kara’s friendship. I also dislike the idea of an army of Doomsday clones given his whole deal is he’s singularly powerful, even if it’s dope to see the Amazons and The Trinity lining up together, with Batman being tossed an axe. It’s one of those ‘do more with it or don’t do it at all’ things for me. An extra 10 minutes of run time likely would have fixed this.
I really appreciate Barda’s little corner of the story. The recruitment scene with her suburban neighbours’ minds being blown by the arrival of Superman and Wonder Woman on her front law is fun, as is Batman having snuck in the back. Barda quietly expressing her admiration of Diana when the boys aren’t around is a lovely character moment, and her shoving a tank into a ravine fucking rules. Likewise the lengthy 2 vs 4 fight scene. They didn’t need to do any of this and could have just sent The Trinity and had Wonder Woman solo The Furies, but I’m really glad they did it as Barda is another favourite, and I will never not be pissed off that she and Scott aren’t permanent Justice League members.
The Apokalips sequence contains sufficient action, and there’s enough emotional denouement that if you don’t know it’s coming the final Darkseid fight would be a bit of a shock. It fully feels like we’re heading into the end credits any moment and then BOOM there’s Big D, wrecking fools. There’s something inherently ‘wrong’ (in a good way) about seeing Darkseid on a sunny Kent farm rather than the hellscape of his native world. Even when he invades Earth in other stories it’s almost always night time in a partially destroyed city. So before he even actually does anything you know it’s deeply bad for him to be there. Like when a villain is in the Batcave. If you’re an awful person you probably object to Kara having more success against Darkseid (at first), but it’s a solid fight overall in my opinion. Clark believing Kara is dead and going absolutely apeshit to the point he causes a tornado kinda rules. Chucking him through a Boom Tube that just leads to deep space isn’t a bad resolution either. I hugely prefer this to the Kara death fake-out from the comic (including teleporting her out and swapping some ashes in at the exact second Darkseid’s Omega Beams hit, which is just total bullshit).
The art style is still worse than the DCAU but is an improvement on Public Enemies, particuarly the models for Superman and Supergirl who at least look like humans now instead of dolls. They kind of blow their dope Batman visuals on the opening stretch, but my word what a stretch. The music is also way better, particularly in the battle scenes.
To me this is better than virtually every animated DC movie that’s released since (I enjoyed Batman: Year One (also written by Tab Murphy!) and The Long Halloween). With a better Darkseid performance and a few more minutes to flesh out the Amazon stuff I think this would be one of the best pieces of superhero animation to date. Even with those little faults it scores high for me, which I’m sure is baffling to those who think it’s ‘Very Okay’ at best. Fundamentally it’s a much cleaner and better paced script, dividing the story neatly into distinct sections, each containing both quiet character moments and a big action sequence. It’s a real shame Murphy only did a couple of these films after his excellent stretch at Disney.
Best Performance
Holy fuck was Andre Braugher not remotely engaged with the material as Darkseid. I’ve heard some non-voice actors sleepwalk through animation in my time, but this is notable even by those standards. And it’s a shame because if I hadn’t heard the performance with my own two ears I’d think it was a really good casting. I think some of it is the Fourth World corner of DC is fundamentally kind of silly. Like personally I love it but objectively “You disappoint me, Granny Goodness. You led me to believe Tresha could replace Big Barda as captain of my guard” is a bonkers line of dialogue. He’s fine enough at the most generic lines (“Don’t fail me.” and “You dare? YOU DARE?!?” etc.) but while his voice should fit the character his choices of tone aren’t quite right to me.
The dynamic between Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy is much different than the previous film as the characters are far more at odds. You still get fun little moments like their banter about Clark’s ability to pay for a replacement Batcomputer on a reporter’s salary. But there’s far less emphasis on them as partners, with Conroy separating himself as the ‘bad cop’, at which he’s so adept at that he rises above Daly, who struggles to thread the needle on Clark getting grumpy on Themyscira.
Summer Glau is pretty great as Kara, much better than Nicholle Tom. I especially liked her reading of “Perfect, I’ll take it.” when Clark disapproves of her slutty dress. It can be a fine line between earnest youthful exuberance and brattiness, and Glau walks it perfectly. Big fan of her quietly wondering what hot dogs are made from too. I generally think it’s difficult to play an evil version of a character, but she is solid in her few minutes as a Fury, thanks to them establishing the idea that Clark doesn’t listen to her throughout the film, so Glau is able to harness that effectively rather than doing a total 180 on per personality. Above all else, she’s just an extremely solid actor, making all the emotional material work in the closing stretch. So I’m giving her the slight edge over Conroy.
Rogues Roundup
Darkseid (Andre Braugher)
I talked about the late, great Andre Braugher’s voice work above and while I generally prefer to focus on other aspects of villains in this section, it does undoubtedly detract from his aura, especially given this is as physical as he gets in any DC show or movie, with only Justice League: War rivalling it.
I do like the idea of him brainwashing Kara both because she’s objectively powerful and to fuck with Superman. He also remains unbothered in the face of being surrounded by the quartet of heroes, calmly telling them to leave. Like he’s lost, but he still comes across as the baddest dude in the room.
Speaking of which, after spending the film mostly sitting back and scheming (aside from quickly slapping Batman around), he unleashes the fury in that final fight in a major way. More so than he has in STAS so far (if you’re reading this out of sequence I’ve reviewed up to the end of season 2). The combination of having a very wide open space, no bystanders, and two extremely powerful opponents, he’s able to dish out and receive a monumental ass kicking.
It’s really funny how iconic the cape tug moment from the final fight has become as a meme over the years for a couple of reasons. Firstly I doubt many users of it would even know where it’s actually from, and secondly it’s almost always used in a contextually wrong fashion, as seconds after Darkseid does it he gets absolutely clocked by Superman. I get it though, as a still image it goes incredibly hard.
Granny Goodness (Ed Ansner)
While functionally she just does Darkseid’s bidding and auditions new captains of The Furies, I like how overjoyed she is at the prospect of recapturing Barda to save fruitlessly trying to find a replacement. It demonstrates a degree of freethinking and ambition in what’s otherwise a flunkie character. Ditto her softspoken defiance to the end, taunting Barda about being programmed to kill, trying to go down swinging with psychological torment.
The Female Furies (Andrea Romano, Salli Saffioti and Tara Strong)
They’re still just henchwomen, and you get no personality from any of them beyond ‘they’re mean and love fighting’, but they’re also deployed wisely. By giving them a full showcase scene early in the film before they even meet our heroes you give more weight to the inevitable fight scene near the end and take them seriously as a threat. They each get a little ‘moment’ and work smoothly as a team when murdering their would-be new leader.
Then when that fight scene does arrive it delivers far more than the bloated ones from the middle of Public Enemies. Even without distinct identities their visual designs are strong and they sure do fight good. Something simple like Wonder Woman praising how good they are is a great shortcut.
The Matt Signal 
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