Superman: Unbound Review

DC Comics fans it's been little around a month since I last talked about anything animated from DC Comics and while I was content to leave it a little longer. What I didn't want to do was for you all to think that I forgot that the company makes animated straight to DVD movies and as luck would have it I happen to own a few of them on DVD and so it was just a case of me picking one out and I picked one that I not only haven't seen in a while but also never reviewed and so here is my review of 2013 film "Superman: Unbound" enjoy.

The plot of this film is an alien robot crash lands on Earth and after a brief battle with Superman the man of steel finds out it is in fact a scout robot and what follows it is something much more dangerous. Yeah I had no idea how to summarise the plot of this movie and so I did the best that I could , I did find the story to be rather well told and that is honestly the best thing that I can say about the story because it's also rather simple as well which isn't really something I personally want from an R rated DC animated movie.

Starring in the film is Matt Bomer as Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman , Stana Katic as Lois Lane and John Noble as Brainiac. Also starring in the film is Molly Quinn as Kara Zor-El / Supergirl , Diedrich Bader as Steve Lombard , Alexander Gould as Jimmy Olsen , Frances Conroy as Martha Kent , Stephen Root as Zor-El , Jason Beghe as Terrorist Leader , Sirena Irwin as Alura , Wade Williams as Perry White and Melissa Disney as Thara Ak-Var.

As for what I about the acting in the film I honestly thought that it was that bad but that's also the issue since it's not that good either. Nobody really makes the character their own or makes an effort to do so these performances will just be one of thousands of versions of these characters with nothing done to help the actors make their performance standout but like all of these films all of the characters are indeed really well cast.

The animation for the film was provided by Moi Animation Studio who apart from working on Avatar: The Last Airbender have also worked on several DC animated properties for both TV and film. In my opinion the animation in this film was actually one of the better things about the film since it's that good you can tell that the people who worked on the animation have alot of passion for what they do since they are always trying to push themselves further and further and that kind of passion really does show in this film.

Now I do believe that this is the second straight to DVD animated DC movie to feature Supergirl not counting all of the DC Super Hero Girls movies of course. AS such I do want to talk about her character since I honestly liked how they did her in this movie they portray her as typical teenager in that she's angry at the world and wants to rebel against everything and everyone the only difference here is she has superpowers and she actually has a pretty traumatic past that not only ties into but has an effect on the main plot of the film.

Now what many of you might not know is that this film is based on the comic book storyline Superman: Brainiac which was published in Action Comics in 2008 lasting from issues 866 to 870. Now I know nothing about the storyline in question as such I have no idea if this is a good representation of the book or not but I can say that after watching this film I do want to check out the storyline just because it seems like a good storyline.

This film is just over an hour and fifteen minuets long which while that is the average length for one of these movies doesn't do this film any kind of justice. If this film had been at least an hour and a half long I feel that things would have moved at a more natural way instead things feel rushed which is sadly how things feel here and that shouldn't be the case the case the story should dictate how long the film is and not the other way around.

What I wasn't expecting from this film was for the character of Supergirl as played by Molly Quinn to have a traumatic past. Her past in this film, is that Kandor her home planet was trapped by Brainiac with Supergirl's parents on it as such she harbors a sense of survivors guilt and is fearful that Brainiac will come and attack her new home I honestly wasn't expecting her past to be this shocking and to have it effect her character in the present day actually makes alot of sense to me and i'm shocked that other adaptations of the character haven't taken the same approach with her.

It's not only Kara who has a plot arc either because Clark and Lois actually have a plot arc as well as Clark has to get over his fears of letting the world know that Clark Kent is dating Lois Lane. The Clark and Lois plot line I actually didn't like that much because Clark's fears are pretty genuine and the the fact that Lois just blows them of is if there not that important just makes her seem like a b**ch which should never be the case yes there should be some give and take between the two but here Clark is fearful of loosing her and so she should back off the subject a little bit.

Now let us take a second to talk about the villain of the film who as you can see is Brainiac and as stated before was played by John Noble. I really didn't like the character in this film because they striped away his smarts just so they could make him more evil but what these guys don't realise is you can be as smart as this character is and still be evil you don't have to be one or the other you can be both smart and evil and on top of that he doesn't have an end goal here he's just evil for the sake of being evil which is never a good thing.

Now then boys and girls since this is an action film that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's in the film itself. Which yeah I thought really entertaining that doesn't mean that it was good because yeah it's not but I was entertained by the action that I saw which for an action film is still a really good thing and it helps that during the opening action scene they do these really cool camera moves that you can only do in animation.

Overall this is a pretty decent film i'm not going to say that it's the best animated Superman film out there because it's not it. It is however very entertaining especially the scene where Lois straight up gives the bad guy the double middle finger which still makes me laugh to this very day , but at the same time the film is riddled with problems as such it doesn't even come close to earning it's 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes but it does however get 6.5 out of 10 from me this comic book fan.

All the images that I used in this review were gather from the DC movies fandom wiki page and like alot of the images I find they are very high quality images. So yeah if you like to use high quality images in your post I highly recommend you use that fandom page and if you don't well i'll come to your house and trap you in a tiny bottle just for the hell of it yeah that was the best joke that I could up with so yeah. 

 

Warrior Nun : Psalms 46:5 Review

Comic book fans there have been so many comic book shows and movies released in the past ten or so years so it was only a matter of time before Netflix got in on the action and they got in hard because they have two comic book adaptations coming out in the space of a week. I'll be the first to admit that I no nothing about the original source material that this show is based of and so i'm only judging this as an episode of a TV show and not as an adaptation and so here is my review of the Warrior Nun pilot episode "Psalms 46:5" enjoy.

The plot of the episode is a young girl called Ava wakes up in a morgue with a strange embedded in her back and that's really all the story I got out of the episode. Yeah for a pilot episode is very lacking in actual story instead just having random things happen for no reason which oddly makes the episode pretty boring to watch and the very thin story only serves to make that point even more in my humble opinion.

Starring in this episode and thus the rest of the series are Alba Baptista as Ava and Tristán Ulloa as Father Vincent. Also starring in both this episode and the show are Kristina Tonteri-Young as Sister Beatrice , Lorena Andrea as Sister Lilith , Toya Turner as Shotgun Mary , Thekla Reuten as Jillian Salvius , Sylvia De Fanti as Mother Superion , Emilio Sakraya as J.C. , Olivia Delcán as Sister Camila , Joaquim De Almeida as Cardinal Duretti , May Simón Lifschitz as Chanel , Dimitri Abold as Randall and Charlotte Vega as Zori.

Now i'll admit that not all of the actors listed appear in this episode but because I have a bad memory and because the official fandom page for the show as well as the Wikipedia page for the show are useless i'm listing every actor who's in the show. The acting for me rather understandably felt a little bland which I do understand why since this is the first episode of a TV show and so of course the acting isn't going to be that good and so here's hoping that it gets better as the show goes on.

This show is adapted from Warrior Nun Areala a 1994 comic book written by Ben Dunn and published by Antarctic Press. I have no idea what was adapted from the book and what wasn't since until a few weeks ago I hadn't heard of the book but I do find it interesting that a very unknown comic book is getting a TV adaptation from Netflix when it would have been much easier for them to go with something a little more well known.

Just based of this first episode I see nothing that makes this show perfect for Netflix you could have aired this on HBO and you would loose nothing. To me if your airing a show on Netflix then you better have something that pushes the boundaries otherwise what's the point and here there is none of that it looks just like a show you'd find on any network and the things that they show are the things that you'd find on any network.

Now there is something that I did like about the episode and that was it's use of what I assume to be practical effects. I say assume because they look really good and given how good TV CGI can be it could be CGI but if they do use practical effects in this episode then they look really good and it wasn't something that I was expecting to see as such I was pleasantly surprised when I good practical effect showed up very early in the episode.

This show does what alot of bad pilot episode do and that's not start up storylines for the rest of the show. Which I have to say is honestly putting me of watching the rest of the show because why should I watch something if there's no story to it I honestly have to reason to go and watch episode 2 because there's nothing plot wise that makes me want to watch the rest of the show which for a pilot episode is always a bad thing.

What I didn't like was the episode's pacing which yeah I really freaking bad honestly even tho this episode is fifty minuets long it feels so much longer then that and that's because scenes just drag on and on. As well as having scenes that go nowhere and add up to nothing I honestly don't see why this episode had to be fifty minuets long when there's only enough story for at least twenty two to thirty minuets.

Since this is an action show that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's in this very episode. I honestly didn't mind the action in this episode at all if anything it showed how much potential that the series had since the action is actually pretty fun and creative it's just a shame that the rest of the episode is a chore to get through since those fun action scenes are very few and far between with the rest of the episode being spent with the characters just doing random stuff.

Overall in terms of first episodes this is most likely one of the worst ones that i've seen in a long freaking time. For all of the reasons that i've listed and then some but with that being said there are times when this episode does show potential it's just a shame that you have to sit through long scenes where nothing happens as such this episode gets a 5 out of 10 from me and I was forced to use images from other episodes just because the fandom page for this show is pretty freaking bad.

Images used in this review were gathered from either the Warrior Nun TV series fandom wiki page or in the case of The Old Guard poster Google images. I really don't have a joke in mind here just because the episode was so bad but yeah if you don't use either of these sites or don't like high quality images then I will force you to watch this episode for hours on end with no break inbetween viewings so yeah that's the best joke I got.