I'm not a huge comic book fan but I knew a bit about this idea of "The Death of Superman" so I was quite pleased to find this animated version had been made. OK, so they've brutally removed the Justice League and just kept Superman vs Doomsday. But what a fight! Now clearly the creators of this have'nt seen either Superman II (where he has to fight 3 other Kryptonians), Superman III (where he fights an evil version of himself) or Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (where he fights Nuclear Man, cloned from Superman's hair). Why do I say that? Their Superman fights Doomsday (and within a few minutes of fighting him it's pretty obvious their evenly matched in strength) but not once does he consider the city or the safety of the people as he fights through buildings, roads and train tunnels.
The way he kills Doomsday (Superman has never had to kill an opponent ever, at least none that I'm aware of), he could have quite easily thrown him into the depths of space. His "death" does seem a bit final but I'd have preferred to have seen a bit more damage taken by Supeman before he is seen to die. Obviously once Superman is dead, crime in Metropolis goes up again (they must have a really ineffectual Police force?). At least until Superman rises from the grave, or appears to. At first he's seemingly normal, saving people, fighting crime. Visiting Lex Luthor. Hang on! Visiting Lex Luthor? That's where we start getting the first feelings everything isn't quite right. Like he won't kiss Lois who he's had a relationship with, and not just a casual one either! So we eventually discover this Superman is a clone and Lex has the real dead body in his labs. This body is stolen (by Superman's helpful robot sidekick) and we discover he wasn't dead, he was merely resting. Not pining for the fjords mind you!
So as the real Superman is healing, clone Superman is getting weirder and weirder. Killing criminals, removing the device that allowed Lex to control him (in a scene that's very similar to something from Superman 3). Clone Superman starts hurting the police and army as they try to stop him (thinking he's the real Superman) until of course the real Superman has healed up to 68% to go and stop him. Then we have the mega battle. Clone Superman versus Real but not fully healed Superman. Eventually the clone is brought down after being shot by a kryptonite gun used by Lois, then the real Superman detonates the kryptonite cartridge and the clone is crushed and dies in the real Superman's arms. The feature ends with Superman telling Lois he is Clark Kent (well, he gives her enough information for her to work it out herself). A very good animated feature that deserves to be an actual movie.
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