Year:  2011 Country:  United States Studio:  DC Entertainment Runtime:  1 hr. 15 min. Rated:  PG Directed by:  Sam Liu Written by:  Grant Morrison (source story) Written by:  Dwayne McDuffie Written by:  Frank Quitely (source story) Starring:  James Denton Starring:  Christina Hendricks Starring:  Anthony LaPaglia Starring:  Edward Asner Similar Films: 

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse

Superman: The Movie

Not bad, but stick with the comic.

From 2006 to 2008, Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely collaborated on a Superman comic that became a fast classic: All-Star Superman. Three years later, during a push from DC Comics to release frequent direct-to-home video animated films, it’s no surprise that the publisher would release an adaptation of that work. It is, after all, based on the most iconic superhero ever and has a damn good story at that. The resulting film is not a bad one; however, it is forced to cut so much substance to fit a seventy-five-minute runtime that there is virtually no reason to watch it over reading the comic.

Smartly avoiding the often-tempting notion that it’s necessary to retell Superman’s origin story, Morrison wrote All-Star Superman not as an analysis of the title character but as a sort of wish that everyone who wields great power would be so benevolent as the Man of Steel. This film portrays most of the original comic’s major scenarios — including run-ins with other Kryptonians, a star computer, and that chief Superman villain Lex Luthor himself — which center around the story of Superman learning that he is dying as the result of an encounter with the sun. If you know anything about Superman, you’ll probably guess that Luthor has orchestrated this sequence of events. Throughout all of this, Superman isn’t as interested in trying to find a cure for his slow death as he is in living his final days as meaningfully as he can. The way things go, this mostly turns out to mean that he has to save the Earth from various threats that want to fill the power void he will leave behind.

Writer Dwayne McDuffie, adapting the work, focuses as closely as he can on only those aspects of the source that relate directly to the idea of power, which is best embodied by the foes Superman faces throughout the story. This naturally leads the film to place a heavy emphasis on action. There is a run-in with Parasite, a being that literally absorbs power from those around him. There’s a battle with two Kryptonian astronauts who have discovered Earth, deemed humanity unworthy of holding its dominion, and set out to rule it in the name and manner of Krypton. And in the end, Superman faces a superpowered version of the most power-hungry individual of them all: Luthor. At no point does the movie become boring.

But All-Star Superman isn’t a simple warning or moral about the abuse of power. Rather, it’s an observation of the subjective qualities of such abuse. There’s Parasite’s power hunger, which literally causes him to grow into an enormous, disgusting mass, unable to sustain his own weight. There’s Luthor’s elitism, which becomes saddening when he suddenly realizes what he could have done with his genius. And there’s the Kryptonians’ tyranny, which is downright angering until it becomes pathetic, lost in a humanitarian epiphany. In the end, the use of power to impose one’s will on others is not shown to be only wrong; more importantly, it is shown to be ridiculous.

Lois Lane, who is gifted with twenty-four-hour superpowers at one point, is an exception to the power pattern. Whereas other characters’ uses of power are morally reprehensible, Lane’s use of power leads to moments of wonder. Not only does she visit the underwater city of Atlantis with Superman, but she ends the day stargazing from the moon. The point is that power can lead to beautiful outcomes, too. It’s just that most of those who have power have sought it out for a specific, selfish purpose.

It’s not McDuffie’s fault that this work is categorically inferior to its predecessor, which consistently reaches greater emotional heights. McDuffie had the task of condensing a great twelve-issue series into the short runtime allotted him by DC. For the most part, he cuts it down as well as anyone likely could have done. There is a misstep or two, however, mostly concerning his mix of inclusions/exclusions. Some of what did make the cut — namely, a brief subplot involving superpowered time travelers Samson and Atlas — has no meaningful place in the story with the absence of later subplots that, in the comic, added both meaning and emotion to them. In such instances, these elements have been downgraded to “minor obstacle” status and do little to advance the themes of power, evil, and rare benevolence.

If you haven’t read All-Star Superman, you should do so. If you’ve read All-Star Superman and want more, you’re best off reading it again or, if you have some cash to burn, upgrading to the Absolute edition of the comic (affiliate link). This is but a diluted version of the original. There are legitimate reasons to adapt a comic or other work to the screen. Doing so can allow the story to be viewed in a different way. This adaptation, though not bad in an absolute sense, offers nothing that the source work doesn’t do much, much better.

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