by Kroze Kresky and Matt Sernaker, Editors

The neverending line of DC Animated Universe Original Movies coming out of Warner Premiere continues chugging away with the release of Superman: Unbound, now available for you to own on Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand, and for Digital Download.

Fresh off of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns duology, DC has decided to adapt a comic that is less a drastic undertaking by using Geoff Johns’s “Superman: Brainiac” storyline as its base. Brainiac has come a-knockin to Earth to catalog the human population of the planet into his collection, and the only one who can stop it is Superman. What good ol’ Supes isn’t aware of is that his own homeworld was once a stop on Brainiac’s great galactic road trip of city solvenieres. Can he stop a force that not even his own kind could resist against?

The story begins with Supergirl (voiced by Molly Quinn of Castle fame) coming to terms with being on Earth, going through a very teenage rebellious stage in her life (haven’t we all been there before?). She almost ends up killing someone when the Man of Steel steps in and tells her off. Superman (Chuck’s Bryce Larkin, Matt Bomer himself) is having a few life problems of his own with Lois (being voiced by another Castle cast member, Stana Katic) both unsure of how they want their relationship to be portrayed as. Clark is scared to commit since if anyone were to find out her relation to superman then they could possibly use it against her. Everything comes tumbling down when Brainiac’s pod hits earth with a scouting drone meant to collect information on humans. After a short battle to disable the droid, Kara finds out about the scout and warns Kal-El of the oncoming storm known only as Brainiac and what havoc it unleashed upon Krypton (including shrinking the entire capital city of Kandor and locking it away in a bottle). When Superman hears of this injustice, he sets out to find this being and bring it down and prevent what it has done to other species and planets from being done to Earth.

Right off the bat, the highly stylized feel will catch the attention of most viewers who are familiar with the normal DC Animated Universe renditions of our favorite characters. The character designs feel very slick and thin with their angled flat edged shapes. This is most noticeable on Clark out of everyone in the cast. Yet none of this feels out of place and you will quickly adjust to it. The voice cast of stars Andrea Romano keeps putting together for these films continues to amaze and shine. Putting Matt Bomer as Clark/Superman was a very inspired choice. The same goes for Fringe alumni John Noble as the cybernetic and race enslaving Brainiac. Molly Quinn while decent continues to suffer the same fate as previous Supergirl voice actor Summer Glau where in trying to make Kara sound like a bitter teenager, it doesn’t convey the same way the original source material did for the character.

While Superman: Unbound uses a storyline right from the comics, it was less adapted panel by panel and more so embellished upon and expanded in order to fill an entire run time for a movie release. The problem with this is that the original comic was straight to the point and concise, adding the extra storylines into it all takes away some of the focus from the main story. It definitely feels artificially extended and the parts that are not part of the main storyline feel a bit too slow and unneeded.

Special Features:

• “Brainiac: Technology and Terror “- This feature goes behind the scenes and takes a deeper look at Superman’s nemesis Brainiac. What makes this character so different than the rest of the Man of Steel’s rogues? Check it out for more!

• Preview of DC Universe’s Next Animated Movie: Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox – DC sure does love Geoff Johns, and now they have decided to adapt another one of his more recent hits: Flashpoint! There has been a lot of speculation as to what the implications of this film might have on the rest of the DC Universe Animated Films, as this specific story was used to relaunch the entire DC Universe into the “New 52”. This film will focus primarily on The Flash, but will also feature a very different Batman than we have ever seen before. Stay tuned for more developments on this upcoming project.

• From the DC Comics Vault: 4 Bonus Cartoons

• A Digital Comics Excerpt from the Graphic Novel “Superman: Brainiac”

• Kandor: History of the Bottle City

• Superman: Unbound Audio Commentary

• 1080p Video

• 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio

Overall

Superman: Unbound is an interesting film. It is in no way the weakest entry in the DC Universe Animated lineup, but falls very short from being up there with Batman: Under the Red Hood and the recent Batman: The Dark Knight Returns releases. I do want to again mention how great Matt Bomer did as the Man of Steel, and I do hope that they continue to use him for future DC Universe Animated releases. I just hope that future adaptations are not loaded down with as much “fluff” in order to fill time.

Rating:

ComicsOnline gives Superman: Unbound on Blu-ray 3 out of 5 fingers up to Brainiac.

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