Superman: Doomsday : 3 of 5

I've missed so many animated superhero DVD releases, so I finally decided to go back and rent Superman: Doomsday, which is the first of the DC Universe series of movies (designed to take animated superheroes in a new adult direction). Of course, Bruce Timm was involved with the story and directing, although the basic plot comes from the classic Death of Superman story arc from recent years. The animation quality is definitely nice (which looks especially good in 16x9), but I was a bit surprised by all the character design changes. Later I realized this was intentional (as well as recasting all the voice actors) to separate this film from the Superman animated series, but I wasn't thrilled with the bizarre cheekbones they decided to draw on Clark/Superman (how could they think those looked good?). This story contains Superman's epic battle with Doomsday, ultimately ending in the "death" of the Man of Steel, which has a huge emotional impact since Lois and Superman are an intimate couple at this time. Lex Luthor creates a Superman clone who goes a little overboard with his sense of justice (even killing the Toyman, who looks pretty cool in his realistic redesign, by the way), and eventually the real Superman and the clone Superman have to battle. There's a lot of blood and violence that you would never see on TV (Lex even shoots his assistant Mercy, which is a total shocker!), but all of the action is definitely exciting and shot with interesting angles. The DVD also includes a nice documentary about the writing of the Death of Superman story in the comic books, which was fascinating to me since I haven't read them (yet!). Even though I wasn't totally blown away, I still thought Superman: Doomsday was pretty cool, and I definitely recommend it for Superman or Warner Bros. animation fans.