Superman: The Man Of Tomorrow Animated Feature (2020)

[PApagreg]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

While “Rise...” was still doing something different than the more detailed, yet still luscious animation I want, I’d still take that animation style over what these DC animated films are doing. Definitely impressive in its own right.

That's one of my biggest problems with the DC movies is that the animation while not bad is kinda bland for a DTV movie. I don't know why would I spend 15$ on a movie when I can buy memberships to a bunch of streaming platforms. This is what a TV show for children can get away with

[ZariusTwo]

At the end of the new Justice League Dark movie

Spoiler:

A flashpoint is pulled to reset the entirety of the N52 DCAU continuity, I'm assuming this universe is what emerges from it

[MsMarvelDuckie]

This is why I can't take DC seriously. They can't even go 5 years anymore without resetting the continuity. It's like they have no idea what to do with their heroes anymore, and just keep rehashing the same old stories over and over, and rebooting the universe as if none of it ever happened. So annoying and confusing.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

This is why I can't take DC seriously. They can't even go 5 years anymore without resetting the continuity. It's like they have no idea what to do with their heroes anymore, and just keep rehashing the same old stories over and over, and rebooting the universe as if none of it ever happened. So annoying and confusing.

I mean these movies have all just been loose comic adaptions jumping all over the DC timeline. They're not intended to all be one long continuity besides the ones that are connected. They don't have to "reboot" anything because each new DC movie just adapts something different.

[Leo656]

Trying to force these animated films into a "universe" is the worst thing about half of them. Most of them pre-New 52 were all fine, but ever since "Justice League: WAR" and having them all share the same art style and storylines, most of them are terrible.

The entire point was to bring iconic stories like Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Dark Knight Returns to life for the benefit of people who maybe don't read comics, or people who do and simply wanted to see them faithfully adapted into another medium, and that's when they were great. The "reimagined" stories that have to mesh with their pseudo-New 52 deal have been mixed-to-lousy, and it really ruined a few that would have been excellent stand-alones, like the Death & Return of Superman ones. "Reboots" aren't the problem. They never should have tried making a series of disconnect one-shot films into a "universe" in the first place, that completely undermined the entire exercise.

Also, Marvel fans lost the high ground to ever complain about continuity woes when things like "Heroes Reborn" and "the entire X-Men line since forever" happened. C'mon.

[neatoman]

[CyberCubed]

Just watched this, way too bloody and dark for my tastes. Also hilarious how it ends the whole New 52 animated movie line in the dumbest way possible, making all the development over the last 15 movies kinda pointless.

Hopefully all movies going forward are standalone.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Just watched this, way too bloody and dark for my tastes. Also hilarious how it ends the whole New 52 animated movie line in the dumbest way possible, making all the development over the last 15 movies kinda pointless.

Hopefully all movies going forward are standalone.

To be fair... that's exactly how the New52 Animated Verse started, after Flashpoint created it.

[Leo656]

In giving it a lot of thought, I suppose I'd be fine with some sort of compromise; like, a "universe" of interconnected films always makes sense, so pursuing that in the animated arena is a no-brainer. But it's really ruined or at least damaged a lot of the animated films that SHOULD have been 100% stand-alone, stuff like Judas Contract and the Death/Return of Superman ones.

So I guess what I would be alright with, is if there is a "main" series of animated features that all connect to each other, BUT there would also need to be a firm, hard line drawn regarding some films being completely separate and stand-alone adaptations that are faithful to the original books, which was the entire point of these things in the first place. I know that's technically what they have already been doing since "Justice League: War" but they've been very wishy-washy with it; stuff like Killing Joke was stand-alone (although still kinda lousy), while stuff that SHOULD have been stand-alone like Judas Contract was butchered to fit into their faux-New 52 universe.

Basically, if they're gonna try and have it both ways, then go ahead and do that, but do it in a way that isn't so sloppy. Clearly delineate the Series films from the Stand-Alone ones via a labeling system or something; "DC Animated Universe" or something for the series films and "DC Classics Animated" or something like that for the stuff like Killing Joke or Dark Knight Returns that wouldn't and shouldn't be forced to fit into a larger storyline. That way, they get to have their cake and eat it too, and everybody wins from every angle; all the silly nonsense that they make up that contradicts the comic book stories can go into their animated Universe films, and the "adaptations" like Hush can go back to actually BEING proper adaptations rather than in-name-only bastardizations that entirely miss the point of the original material.

I think that would be a really good way to do it. Like I said, they kinda do it that way already, but they definitely could tighten up the execution across the board, and it wouldn't necessarily take much. I'unno, just something that came to mind while I was ruminating on what I do and don't like out of DC's animated offerings of the last 10 years, and how I'd improve it.

[CyberCubed]

This DC animated movie line started in 2007 with Superman Doomsday, of course they made animated films prior like Mask of the Phantasm and such but those were all for the DCAU cartoons.

Here's the list of all DC animated movies they made, I would start in 2007 when Superman Doomsday came out as that kicked off this movie line that's going to this day. As I said all the previous animated moves like Mr. Freeze: Sub-zero, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, etc. were all in continuity with the DCAU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...Animated_films

Scroll down the list, it's actually insane how many movies they've made. Of course I don't count the Lego movies of DC characters, but everything else there I've seen pretty much all of it.

[Leo656]

Man, I gotta watch New Frontier again. Been a while for that one. I remember liking it despite the fact that they trimmed a bit much.

That's another thing that absolutely infuriates me, is the insistence that most of these things be around 70 minutes, when even 90 would be a bit short for most of 'em in order to properly tell the story. I feel like WB not-so-secretly has doubts about their audiences' ability to sit still and pay attention for long periods of time, and their insistence on these things being so short (along with the executive mandate that the live-action Justice League film be no more than 119 minutes, thus clipping two of the better Superman scenes from the film because it would've pushed it to 121 ) speaks to that theory.

[snake]

I don't know why DC didn't just keep the animated adaptations in-line with the DCAU. There would be no new shows going on, so it's not like it would get confusing or anything.

[Leo656]

Probably lots of factors. Being locked in to only one art style would be incredibly limiting, and full-stop, as iconic and functional as it was, the art style was never, ever my favorite. Although it's miles ahead of the New 52-inspired stuff. Also, probably lots of voice actor issues, although that's likely a much lesser problem.

The greatest one would probably be that the JLU cartoons had already contradicted comic book canon so often, to such a degree, that keeping the animated films in line with that would mean at least half of them couldn't happen. Can't have a "Dark Knight Returns" movie in the same universe as Batman Beyond, the canons are entirely contradictory. And like, Doomsday already appeared in the Justice League cartoons, and was done away with without much fuss, SO that means you can't do the Death of Superman arc if it's within the same "universe". And so on and so forth. So if there's ONE reason why that idea wouldn't work, it's probably that.

I get it, the JLU era was by far the strongest and most overall pleasing DC animated stuff, so at a glance, "Just make it all fit in with that" sounds like a solution, but in reality that would just be a completely different kind of clusterf*ck.

[CyberCubed]

Bruce Timm was interviewed about that around 2007-2008 when they started, he was flat out told by the higher up execs at DC to "let the DCAU die." Remember at that point the DCAU had been running continuously from 1992 when B:TAS started all the way till 2006 when JLU ended, which was 14 years. A decade and a half is an insanely long run for one continuity.

They also wanted to do loose adaptions of comic book storylines, and of course there would be no way to fit most of those in with the DCAU.

As with all things that end, give it enough time and people get really nostalgic and want to see revivals. It's the same reason Kevin Conroy stayed on to voice Batman on and off in so many movies and the Arkham videogames since then, they know how much impact nostalgia has. But now its almost 15 years later, so now we're in a weird state where the DCAU is now insanely old and younger fans/kids don't care about it much, and all older fans are in their 30's.

[Leo656]

I mean I, personally, saw great potential in getting away from the DCAU so that other, better art styles could be showcased, but they've been hit-or-miss at best with that. Sometimes you get something good and/or unique and memorable like Public Enemies or New Frontier but a lot of it's been merely serviceable on the art side. But I mean, at least it's mostly different. DCAU is certainly memorable but the Popeye Arms & Chicken Legs thing definitely earned itself a rest a long, long time ago.

I still like it better than some of the newer ones' art style, but that's because a lot of these newer ones seem to misunderstand basic proportional anatomy to the point where it's annoying. Way too much "dudes have chins that are wider than their skulls" stuff. That's not how human heads work, you dumbass.

[TommyT]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I don't know what it is about the Harley Quinn show but I'm not feeling it. I've only seen clips but it's not...

*It sucks. Let me save you a few syllables. It’s try-hard, like Rise was Tryhard, like Nick is Tryhard. Like the marks here, Tryhard.

Like when you tuck and wear a wig to scream about women’s issues, Tryhard. When you applaud middling talent because it makes you look better, Tryhard. Like banning people for a month because a stock is in the toilet, and you don’t want it mentioned, Tryhard.

[TommyT]

Originally Posted by PApagreg

That's one of my biggest problems with the DC movies is that the animation while not bad is kinda bland for a DTV movie. I don't know why would I spend 15$ on a movie when I can buy memberships to a bunch of streaming platforms. This is what a TV show for children can get away with

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PerkyPaleC...restricted.gif

Always reference failed or cancelled shows in an argument. It really strengthens your position.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I mean these movies have all just been loose comic adaptions jumping all over the DC timeline. They're not intended to all be one long continuity besides the ones that are connected. They don't have to "reboot" anything because each new DC movie just adapts something different.

Actually, I was referring more to the comics these movies were based on, but no, they can't really keep continuity in the movies, either.

[Leo656]

In the last decade of their comics I'd pretty much agree since they've had, like, three reboots when not even one was necessary. New 52 never should have happened; remove that one, you remove the successive ones. The later ones were only done to fix what that one broke; if they hadn't done that mess, then everything would be fine.

Pre-2011, though, DC only really had one "hard reboot" (Crisis on Infinite Earths) and two "soft" ones: Zero Hour (not even really a reboot at all, so much as "Tying up loose ends from Crisis") and Infinite Crisis (which again, didn't "reboot" anything so much as "retcon" and clean up more past continuity issues). That's really not too bad at all, considering.

If New 52 had never happened, we'd still only have one "real" DC reboot in 80 years. And any sane person will agree that New 52 was horrible, so it's kinda "preaching to the choir" on that one. Yeah, "Convergence" and "Rebirth" and whatever's coming later this year is all pretty excessive and ridiculous, but if you remove New 52 from the equation entirely and just leave well enough alone, then none of the other crap happens, either.

It's just that implying DC's continuity is and forever has been a mess is false and an over-simplification. They've generally been very good about continuity and keeping it straight, or at least explaining inconsistencies in a creative way. It's not entirely fair to make blanket statements based on the past 10 years of mismanagement. Everyone pretty much agrees by now that New 52 was a mistake, and that their attempts to sop up the sh*t has instead just smeared it even more, but before that they were fine.

[sdp]

I pretty much stopped caring after New 52, what reboots have they done since then?

I never understood New 52 since it was only another "somethings from the past are canon but not all", especially when it came to Batman being young but still having like 10 different robins, it was bound to be a mess. I remember reading that Classic Wally would be coming back and there was the whole watchmen being in DC comics now but never dwelled much into what happened.