Movies / Animé and Toons

Batman/Superman: Apocalypse

By Patrick Bérubé
November 6, 2010 - 22:12

When a mysterious meteorite crashes in the middle of Gotham's harbour, Batman is the first to investigate the situation. only to discover that is not a mere meteorite but a spaceship from Krypton containing nothing less than... Superman's cousin. But is she really who she claims to be? As Batman's suspicion grow, Superman is already welcoming his new-found family member into his life. Unfortunately for both of them, many others have an eye this naive and super-powered girl, including Wonder Woman who believes she should receive an Amazonian training on Paradise Island, and Darkseid.who is seeking to add a new member to his gang of female assassins, the Fury.

Closely adapted from the Batman/Superman: Supergirl story arc (Batman/Superman #7-10) the story of this original DC Comics movie sometime feels like it has only taken the more superficial elements from it's source material. This is not necessarily a bad thing since movies and comics are different mediums and a too close adaptation might have slow down the movie rhythm to a crawl. However, some fundamental aspects of the characters are merely touched like Batman's paranoia, Superman's overprotective attitude and Wonder Woman's independent attitude. If we look at the bigger picture, the story is interesting, epic and has the merit of introducing a new character. I felt the few added scenes and the new ending were particularly nice touches and helped to make this movie its own beast.

Visually, the animation fit the story well in term of quality. It is not perfect and the movements sometime feel clunky but it is good enough so you don't constantly think about those small details and you can focus on enjoying the whole thing. Some battle scene are well rendered and goes beyond what a comic book sometime can't do by giving us fast-paced action and a sense of powerful beings clashing together. I was also glad they preserved some of the original comic book series' artist’s (Michael Turner) design and overall feeling for this adaptation. It helped it stand apart from other recent DC Comics adaptations that I just recently watched. There are some other aspects of this movie such as the voice acting and the musical score that I honestly did not notice on my first viewing. Maybe successive viewings will help those elements stand out but I take it that if I did not notice them at first they were good enough.

As for which format you should watch this movie, based only on picture quality, I would say save yourself some money and buy the DVD instead of Blu-Ray. In my mind traditional 2D animation does not benefit greatly from the Blu-Ray treatment. However, the extras are very interesting and can only be found on the Blu-Ray version.

Definitely not the best movie of the series but still a good entertainment

Rating: 7.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12