Superman: Unbound Reviews

A ton of fun is packed into this 75 minutes, but do you get the vague sense that it looks and feels like a movie and more like the series/season premiere/finale of a never-made Superman show? I do, but it would have been on hell of a Superman show. The angular look is pleasing, the voice cast is solid, the pacing is tight, and the action scenes are uniformly solid.

Superman: Unbound is just another example of the pendulum swinging back after going hard the other way. What do I mean by that? Well, every few years there’s a pervading sense that DC wants to make Superman the last son of Krypton, and then they want to bring back Supergirl, Kandor, Krypto, and the like. Unbound is clearly swinging it back towards populating Superman’s supporting cast with fellow remnants and survivors of Krypton and its neighboring planets.

This is not a bad thing since it’s always a chance to explore the duality of the character as someone who is both an alien (quite literally) and a symbol of Americana. Throw in the ever encroaching threat from Brainiac and his hellbent sense of petty destruction, and you’ve got a greatly enjoyable little piece of action-adventure entertainment. But if you’re looking for something that explores the nuances of the characters as well as several episodes of Superman: The Animated Series or Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Superman For All Seasons, then you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Superman: Unbound is heavy on that sub-title. Granted, one doesn’t exactly come to a Superman property looking entirely for existentialism and deeper questions. You do want to see him throw his might around, and beating down on Brainiac challenges not only his super-strength but his mind and the lengths he would go to do the right thing. For all of those purposes, Unbound is a towering success, hell, it even throws in plenty of jokes and light moments that keep the hopefulness alive in the character.

But, like so many of the other films that DC has released, the limited running time doesn’t leave a ton of time leftover to really dive into the meat of the story. There are great, quiet moments between the characters where they express their fears and hopes, where the stakes are clearly laid out. Then we’re swiftly thrown back into exaggerated fight scenes. A little bit more time for the reflective moments would go a long way with a lot of these films, and maybe DC should invest in making a few that expand beyond the persistent 75 minutes. Sometimes the hardness of that allotted time leaves things feeling rushed or breathless.

Still, there’s a lot to like here, and even more that just feels right. Maybe the live-action franchise could take a look at films like this and steal a few ideas from them. I mean, Superman and actually inspire hope, smile, crack jokes, and level wave after wave of robotic enemies here. Oh, who am I kidding? Snyder and company would only borrow the weird, kinda ugly overly stylized visuals that are more distracting and a nuisance than anything else.