Superman: The Animated Series – Brainiacattacks

Fans on the message boards around the internet couldn’t be more happy. A new Superman DTV? It was a dream come true; STAS was always suffering from “middle child” syndrome and was never given as much attention as its other DCAU siblings. With a DTV finally under his belt, he would be able to stand tall in the line up. At least that’s what I, and many others, thought.

Word of the voice recasting came down. Powers Boothe as Lex Luthor,
Lance Henrikson as Brainiac and the return of Tim Daly as Superman. As disappointed as we were about Lex and Brainiac being recast, Daly’s returned was hailed by many. Many hadn’t heard Daly voicing the Man of
Steel since the STAS days (unless they picked up the video game for Playstation 2 and GameCube), so this would be a welcome return. I’m not going to deny Daly wasn’t great to hear again, but the characters of
Luthor, Brainiac and Mercy (now voiced by…wait for it…Tara Strong!) were completely and utterly ruined by these voice actors. That is not an exaggeration of any kind; anyone who finds a positive thing about any one of these performances in terms of what the characters once were…well, you’re simply trying too hard to like the movie.

The plot of the film is simple. Luthor creates an orbiting satellite (the Lex 9000) to protect Earth from alien invaders, but when Brainiac comes by, the satellite fails to blast Brainiac down. A few minutes later, Brainiac, laughing and smiling, begins destroying the control station for the Lex 9000 and takes control of the satellite right as
Superman shows up. This is also the point in time when we first hear Tim
Daly’s voice as Superman once again in animation and what is it we hear?
“Time to log off!”

Brainiac continues to emote quite well for a heartless killing machine and begins to give Superman the beating of his life with the Lex 9000
laser beam (think Return of the Joker in terms of what this orbiting beam is doing). Lex and Mercy drive up and Luthor is grinning from ear to ear and sports some very rubbery, Looney Tunes animation. Enjoying seeing Superman getting beaten up so much, Luthor tells Mercy to make some popcorn; at this point in the film, I honestly expected the popcorn to show up, but it never does.

Superman eventually destroys Brainiac by using his ice breath (“Oooooo…Brain
Freeze!” quips Luthor) and then rushes off to save a distressed Lois who is falling off of a radio tower she climbed to get a better look at
Superman in action. More bad dialogue pops up (“You always catch me when
I fall, Superman.”) and we cut over to Luthor taking a remaining piece of Brainiac that will become a major part of the story later on.

Back at the Daily Planet, Lois is daydreaming about Superman and Jimmy
Olson (sporting a hot, new haircut) is oogling the hundreds of images he took of Mercy Graves. Yes…in this film, Jimmy is infatuated with Mercy.
At this point in the film I actually got up and shut it off. I was so utterly disgusted with it at this point I didn’t want to watch anymore, but I knew I had to. I also knew I had to take images from the episode for the media page, so I decided to venture into the film once again in an attempt to get everything done at once so I didn’t have to watch this ever again.

Lex reconstitutes Brainiac and allows him to take over the Lex 9000 in exchange for a deal. Brainiac destroys Superman and then leaves Earth; knowing that Brainiac is a tricky one, Luthor implants a self-destruct device in Brainiac (like that will work anyway) in case he goes back on the plan. Lex gives Brainiac some of Superman’s DNA (which apparently came from Superman punching Brainiac so hard [Superman doesn’t bleed, so where the hell it came from, I don’t know]) and a piece of kryptonite to use when his new body is finished building itself. With these two items,
Brainiac is able to track and hurt Superman like never before.

Back at the Kent farm in Smallville, Clark is moaning to his parents like a teenager about how much he loves Lois. Nearly quoting Peter
Parker’s entire pay phone conversation in Spider-Man 2, Clark talks about how he can’t let Lois know his secret because his enemies might hurt her. For Spider-Man this made sense, but for Superman and
Lois, it is quite possibly the stupidest reason. Lois has been getting herself nearly killed since before Superman showed up anyway.

Deciding to tell her at the urging of his parents (“We know your secret and we’re all right!” Great reasoning, Ma), Clark sets out in a dialogue-less montage of clips of trying to tell Lois his secret and being interrupted by something (cell phone, Perry, explosion in the background). Eventually Lois and Clark are sent to dinner by Perry to critique a new restaurant and this is where Clark nearly tells her. We get a typical “Oh I think I know!” moment from Lois as Clark is silhouetted so his glasses are covered and only his jaw and frame remain lit. Clark attempts to tell her, but wusses out and then Brainiac, now in a new robo-body, comes in begins ripping the restaurant apart looking for Superman. Superman shows up and the fight begins; Lois runs to find
Jimmy, but then realizes her cell phone can take images, so screw Jimmy, she’ll just take the photos herself.

After being blasted by the Kryptonite-ray, Superman’s eyes get all dark circled, so that means he’s not feeling well now. Punching and fighting and…punching and fighting, the two battle through Metropolis until Lois gets hit by a stray Kryptonite ray, giving her dark circles under her eyes. Superman sees this, and admittedly in the only cool moment in the entire film, his eyes glow red and he gets the superpissed look about him. He tears Brainiac apart and then goes back to take Lois to the hospital, where it’s revealed she’s dying from the kryptonite poisoning.

Brainiac goes to repair himself and Superman runs to the Fortress of
Solitude. This fortress is completely different looking from the one in the animated series and is more akin to the one seen in the Reeves films and Smallville. Superman sits in his high chair and consults his
Kryptonian database for knowledge on how to cure Lois. The Kryptonian computer then reveals to Superman that the only cure is in the center of the Phantom Zone (what the—?!) and that it is full of danger that
Clark can and can’t see.

Cut out to the exterior of the Fortress and we see Brainiac is back and ready to kill Superman again. After a scuffle that destroys the
Fortress, Superman jumps into the Phantom Zone which tricks Brainiac into thinking that he killed the Man of Steel.

Superman travels through what can only be described as some kind of acid trip. There is nothing in this Phantom Zone that looks a thing like other Phantom Zones (either animated or in film), although we do see a
familiar
Zone creature from “Blasts from the Past, Part 1.” This creature is slightly remodeled and a different color, but shares most of the same characteristics as the red one we see in “Blasts.”

Defeating this creature, Superman travels to the center of the Phantom
Zone to a magical, golden fountain of this weird ass cure that’s going to heal him and Lois. Immediately, Superman looks better and he gets a vial of this stuff for Lois to take back.

Back in the real world, Lex is celebrating the death of Superman with a
Tiki Torch Luau. Brainiac comes to terrorize Metropolis once again and
Lex takes this opportunity to become the new Man of Steel with a new Lex-o-suit he has created. While Lex thinks this is still part of their plan,
Brainiac soon gives Lex the beating of his life and here we find out that the self-destruct button no longer works, as Brainiac found it and deactivated it.

Cut to the hospital where Superman is giving Lois her treatment, Lois wakes up and feels great. Opening her groggy eyes, she sees Superman weakly moans “…Clark?” to which Superman replies “Yes. Yes, Lois.” We get more ushy-gushy crap from the two and then they move outside of the hospital to take Lois home so that she and Clark can start their new life together. Clark sees that Brainiac is attacking Metropolis again and knows he must go stop him, but Lois balks and says that if Brainiac doesn’t know that he is still alive, he can’t hurt them. After recommending letting the “Green Lantern guy” to handle the situation,
Clark smells something fishy about this scenario. Oh wait, we’re not out of the Phantom Zone yet! Clark’s been tricked by the phantoms in the
Phantom Zone (…seriously?) and after a Constantine rip-off of the phantoms climbing up his body, Superman returns to earth with the real antidote.

As soon as he arrives back, he sees Brainiac attacking and decides to go stop him before giving Lois the cure (despite being right next to the damn hospital, it would have taken him about five seconds). This is where we enter the incredibly annoying and long final fight, which seemed to go on forever. If you thought the previous fight between the two was long, this one was about eight times the length. After Lex in his Lex-o-suit has been stopped from exploding by Superman, Lex and
Superman are on top of each other (how and why are they on top of each other?). At this moment, Lex says the stupidest damn thing I’ve heard out of this entire film: "Rootin’ for ya, my maaan!"

At this point I nearly started crying, but the fight continued on so I had to keep watching. I started to get glossy eyed towards the end, but a giant, resonating boom snapped me out of it. Brainiac was finally dead!

Superman runs back to the hospital to cure Lois and right as he’s about to give her the antidote, Brainiac comes back and crushes the anti-dote, spilling it all over the floor. Superman gets angry again and beats
Braianiac to death with a car. Running back to the hospital room, the doctor declares that Lois is dying (though technically dead, they couldn’t say she was dead I don’t think). Superman begins to cry and then kisses Lois on the lips. While this is going on, Superman starts glowing orange (the color of that antidote) and Lois gets all better. At this point in time, I was laughing hysterically. Soon, this film would be over.

Deciding to quit the Daily Planet so he wouldn’t put Lois in harms way anymore, Clark is about to tell Perry of his resignation right as Perry gets a phone call. Mr. Mxyzptlk is causing chaos at the docks. Lois jumps out of her wheel chair, throws off her hospital gown (underneath she’s wearing her blue jacket, skirt and high heels already, which really didn’t bother me, since at this point I long since stopped caring about this stupid movie) and gets in a taxi to go cover it. Clark has an epiphany that as long as Lois lives, she’ll be in danger anyway, so it’s
A-OK for him to stick around! He runs off to the docks to stop Mxy and the film fades out.

What a pile of horse crap that was.

I wish I could say all of what you just read was fiction. It honest to
God wasn’t. It really is as bad as I make it out to be…hell probably worse. At this point I just want to stop thinking about it. The once cold Brainiac is now expressing his emotions like Data in Star Trek,
Lex is flailing his arms around like a six year old and Mercy is now a blonde who giggles like Marilyn Monroe.

The only positive was the sometimes enjoyable animation. The first fight between Superman and Brainiac was actually pretty enjoyable to watch with the excessive explosions and Superman getting thrown all around the place. The Looney Tunes expressions on the characters faces really killed a lot of the film though. That and Mercy’s blonde hair would randomly become brown in scenes; at first I thought it was the lighting, but there were times it clearly was brown.

For anyone reading this and thinking I was too hard on the film, keep in mind I have nothing but respect for the team who worked on this. Curt
Geda is an excellent director and Duane Capizzi is a great writer; this film was just an unfortunate incident that had to happen due to the
Superman maelstrom that we’re going to experience this summer. It is completely clear this film wasn’t made for anyone but children and for a quick buck to hype Superman Returns.

Between the rubbery animation, shoddy voice recasting and horrible, horrible, horrible story, I am warning all fans of Superman: The
Animated Series to stay far away from this film. I realize I say the same about Mystery of the Batwoman, but in retrospect…Batwoman
was about nine thousand times better than Brainiac Attacks.