Superman: Red Son Film SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Review

DC fans the company has a history of turning out solid direct to DVD movies and well a new one has been released. So since we have a tradition going on here that means I have to take a look at it and I have to say that this is a film that i've honestly been looking forward just due to the idea of Superman being raised by the Russians and so then DC Comics fans here is my spoiler filled review of the companies latest direct to DVD film "Superman: Red Son" enjoy.

The plot of this movie is instead of being born in America and having the ideals of fighting for what is what is right Superman is born in Russia and fights for the ideals of Communist Party meanwhile Lex will do anything to destroy Russia's greatest protector no matter what the cost may be. Yeah what I just described is more of a premise then anything else but it's as close to an actual story that your going to get with this film since there really isn't a story to speak of.

Starring in this film are Lucius Malfoy himself Jason Isaacs as Kal-El/Clark Kent / Superman , Roger Craig Smith as Bruce Wayne / Batman , Travis Willingham as Superior Man , Diedrich Bader as Lex Luthor , Amy Acker as Lois Lane , Vanessa Marshall as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman , Phil Morris as James Olsen , Paul Williams as Brainiac , Sasha Roiz as Hal Jordan , Phil LaMarr as John Stewart , Jim Meskimen as John F. Kennedy , William Salyers as Joseph Stalin , Winter Ave Zoli as Svetlana and Tara Strong as Young Superman.

The casting for these films is usually really strong and the same thing is true for this film since alot of the actors do give a really solid performance. However I got the feeling that alot of the actors in this film just weren't giving it there best shot since alot of the line deliveries just sounded rather odd to me and i'm honestly not sure why that is since all of these actors have proven that they can do good voice acting and so it really was weird for me to hear these weird line deliveries from these really talented actors and actresses.

The animation for the film was handled by Digital eMation and if you've seen any of their work then you know what they can do. That being said the animation for this film might be the best thing about it which really shouldn't surprise anyone since the animation in direct to DVD DC animated movies is always really good even in their bad movies the animation looks good and so to see some really stunning animation as well as stunning backgrounds shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone whatsoever.

SPOILERS START!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I want it known that I had every intention of making this review as spoiler free as possible however I quickly released that since I was going to start talking about the comic that it would be impossible not to spoil things that happen in the film. So if your expecting this to be a straight forward adaptation of the book which I haven't seen by the way then get ready to be let down alot since from what I can gather just from reading the synopsis of the book of Wikipedia alot of changes were made in this film.

For starters there's no weird as hell time travel story the film ends with Lois seeing Clark / Superman in the crown in Washington D.C and that's it. To be honest there's alot of changes that they make for the film and also there's no Superman Robots in this film , to put it bluntly this is Red Son in name only however they do keep the core concept and Lex and Lois being a couple as well as few other things.

Another of the changes that they made is that they robbed Lex of his motivation for hating Superman which in the comic book was because Superman beat Bizarro. Here tho even tho Bizarro does die it's not at Superman's hands it due to how badly he was created and Lex just shrugs it of and yet he somehow still hates Superman which doesn't really make any kind of sense because he has no reason to hate him what so ever and thus the key conflict of the story is now gone , I honestly feel that they should have kept that part of the story the same since it's there conflict that drives the movies forward and so robbing them of that conflict changes the whole film.

SPOILERS END HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now then since this is an action film that does mean that we have to talk about the action within the film. Yeah for me the action just wasn't as interesting as it perhaps could have been and that's a shame because they do some interesting things with the heroes and what they do with them lends themselves to some good action but what they do with the action is just the type of thing that they would do if the heroes were who we knew them to be while it's not bad action it's not as good as it perhaps could have been in my opinion.

Overall to me this felt like such a wasted opportunity since they could have used this film to really delve deep into what makes Superman tick and what separates this Russian Superman from the regular Superman. I can't say that it's the worst direct to DVD DC animated movie but it's clearly not the best which is a shame because I was looking forward to this film and so it gets a 5 out of 10 from me and that's really the highest score I can give it it's not the best but also not the worst and I feel that alot of people who've read the comic are going to be comparing the two and you can't really do that they have to be treated separately which you really can't do but either way this film doesn't come of that good and this film is out now on Digital release and is due for  DVD /Blu-ray release on March 17th 2020. 

Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay Review

DC fans Birds Of Prey is out this week and well I thought that in honour of that film being released I would take a look at another film to feature Harley Quinn. Well I thought that this one would do the trick because not only does it feature Harley who is a main character in both the Birds Of Prey movie and the upcoming Suicide Squad sequel / reboot but it also has the Suicide Squad and so here is my review of Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay.

The plot of this movie is Task Force X is tasked with finding out a special card for Amanda Waller but she's not the only one that wants the card and so a race to find the card to stop something truly evil is on. This right here is what the plot of the live action Suicide Squad movie should have been it's fun as hell and all of the characters get a chance to shine and it has plenty of twists and turns to keep people interested.

Starring in this film is Christian Slater as Floyd Lawton / Deadshot , Vanessa Williams asAmanda Waller , Billy Brown as Ben Turner / Bronze Tiger , Liam McIntyre as George Harkness / Captain Boomerang , Tara Strong as Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn , Kristin Bauer van Straten as Crystal Frost / Killer Frost , Gideon Emery as Sameer Park / Copperhead , C. Thomas Howell as Eobard Thawne / Professor Zoom / Reverse-Flash , Jim Pirri as Vandal Savage and Werner Zytle / Count Vertigo , Dania Ramirez as Scandal Savage , Dave Fennoy as Blockbuster and Tobias Whale amd Black Manta and lastly Greg Grunberg as Steel Maxum / Doctor Fate.

In my opinion the acting in the film is alot better then what it really had any right to be and there's alot of fairly big names for a straight to DVD animated movie which is pretty shocking. Like I said the acting is alot better than it had any right to be simply because even tho the Suicide Squad movie had been released they still weren't mainstream popular and so it would have been understandable if the actors chose to turn in a bad performance but to their credit they didn't.

The animation for the film was done by DR Movie whose name you might not reconise but whose work you've seen since they have worked on Avatar: The Last Airbender , The Batman and Batman And Harley Quinn among many others. With that kind of pedigree behind them it won't shock you to learn that I liked the animation in this film it was very energised and extremely detailed like alot more then what I remember it being to out it simply it looked like the kind of animation that you would see in a theatrically released movie.

I have to give this film some credit for using lesser known members of the team and to some degree lesser known villains and while yes Vandal Savage was used quite a bit in the Arrowverse in my eyes he's still not mainstream. There are even characters that I haven't heard of before this film like for example Vandal's daughter Scandal and her lover Knockout as well as Copperhead to name but a few examples.

As i've said this film is everything that the 2016 live action film should have been simply because they got everything right about the team where as the live action movie tried but it was let down by studio interference. This film however doesn't have any of that and because of it the team come across alot better and more importantly the film is alot better because of the fact there's no interference from the studio.

In one of maybe a few negative things I have to say about the film the story even tho it's a fun story and one that works for the team. It's not really a story that fit s a feature length movie and because of that we get alot of scenes that don't go anywhere , the 2016 film had a bad story for the team but the story it had was at least feature length and so there wasn't that much padding out I honestly feel that that this film should have been around an hour and fifteen minuets long just because if you remove the padding in the film that's sort of the running time you'd end up with.

Another negative I have about the film is that it doesn't take full advantage of it's R rating all they use it for is for some gore and that's really it. Which for any other movie would be fine but these are villains so these guys would swear at every possible chance and not use words that sound like there swearing even tho there really not or replace swear words with other words but to give them credit they did give the Suicide Squad the rating that they deserve which is always a good thing in my opinion and I hope that Warner Bros. give the 2021 film the same rating but they most likely won't tho.

One thing I noticed when I was watching the movie for this review is that the opening titles have a very Grindhouse feel to them. Heck the same thing can also be said for the whole film since it has a very grindhouse vibe and feel to it which oddly works for the Suicide Squad and it honestly makes me wonder why no one has ever tried to take this approach with these more adult comic book characters before since it could work very well.

Now then since this is a super hero comic book film that does mean that we have to talk about the action in the film. This is perhaps the best use of the R rating since it allows the team to really go crazy which is what the members of the Suicide Squad would do , it also helps that the action in this film is also really fun and creative as hell with each member getting a chance to shine and we get a lot of humour in those scenes which is always welcome in my opinion.

Overall this is by far better then the live action film which to me is really telling since you would think that the live action division would get the characters more right since they involve the creators but nope they don't it's the animation division that gets them right. As I said at the start of the review i'm only covering this movie because Birds Of Prey is out this week however now I have to find something to cover when The Suicide Squad comes out , this film gets an 8.5 out of 10 from this animation fan.