Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

All Superheroes Must Die Blu-ray Movie Review

All Films Need a Good Script

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 27, 2013

Originally titled "Vs.", All Superheroes Must Die feels like the third part of a trilogy. If it had an origin story and a fully developed set of relationships among the quartet of costumed figures pitted against their arch-nemesis, the emotional confrontations might have the resonance that writer/director/star Jason Trost clearly intended. But Trost wants to evoke a response from the audience that he hasn't done the work to earn. The entire enterprise feels perfunctory and flat, and this isn't a matter of budgetary constraints. Other filmmakers have done much more with similar limits. The failure is one of imagination.

Trost's previous film, the self-declared cult classic, The FP, suffered from a similarly casual attitude toward plotting and motivation. The event that set the plot for that film in motion was the death of a character for no discernible reason. When Trost was pressed for an explanation, his response was simply that the character lived in a place where "shit's just tough". This kind of abbreviated storytelling may be the reductio ad absurdum of cynical studio moviemaking, but it's a risky practice when divorced from the huge budgets for "ooh! aah!" set pieces and effects that distract viewers from the hollowness of the script. Low-budget filmmakers need compelling stories and fully rounded characters to compensate for their lack of funds, and Trost doesn't seem interested in either.

All Superheroes Must Die (hereafter, "ASMD") opens with four superheroes waking up in different parts of an apparently deserted town with no memory of how they got there. We're supposed to know they're superheroes, because they have costumes, but their names and powers are unidentified. That information gets tossed at us as we go along, with a slight hint about where their powers came from. (Something fell from the sky.)

Also, each figure has a bloody bandage on his or her wrist covering an injection puncture. With one ambiguous exception, the injection has deprived them of their powers. So, in other words, the people we're meeting are drastically transformed from the people they've been, but we have no basis for comparison, because we never see those earlier versions, not even in a handful of black-and-white flashbacks. And how were our heroes so easily overcome? How did the villain create a serum to nullify their powers? Trost cannot be bothered with such details.

I'm going to save everyone a little time. The four superheroes are: Cutthroat (Lucas Till), whose power was that he was fast (no more information is provided); Shadow (Sophie Merkley), who could be invisible; The Wall (Lee Valmassy), who was imprevious to injury; and Charge (Trost), whose power is never defined, but he is the leader and chief strategist. An old enemy named Rickshaw (James Remar) has resurfaced, although Charge was supposed to have defeated him long ago.

Instead of killing them all when he could have, which is the classic supervillain mistake, Rickshaw wants his four enemies to taste the agony of defeat. (Remar, who is by far the best part of the film, gives these speeches genuine conviction.) He has designed a game in various "rounds" that are essentially unwinnable and are intended primarily to turn the four compatriots against one another. Rifts within the group makes the latter task easy, but we only learn about these antagonisms—and several other "reveals"—as we go along, and none of it has much impact, since we have no expectations to upset and no existing investment in the characters to create any sense of loss. We don't even feel their pain when Rickshaw gleefully punishes them by blowing up innocent civilians strapped to bombs. After all, collateral damage in a superhero movie is to be expected.

Trost follows the playbook of contemporary comic book movies down to the final shot after the credits that sets up a potential sequel, but he's overlooked one of the essential challenges of making a comic book film, which is preventing the audience from having any time to wonder about logistics. How do supervillains manage to organize and execute these massive logistical operations, often all by themselves? Where do they find the endless supply of expendable henchmen, and how much do they have to pay these guys to risk their lives? Trost literally forces these questions before the audience, as he reveals the scale of Rickshaw's transformation of the town and then has Charge confront him in his lair—which is "guarded" by guys in animal suits that render them effectively blind, and which Charge finds by "triangulating" Richshaw's TV broadcasts in a manner that bears no relation to the laws of physics. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but insulting your audience's intelligence is another.

According to IMDb, ASMD was written in four days and shot in fifteen, due to scheduling issues. That explains a lot, but it's no excuse.

All Superheroes Must Die Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

All Superheroes Must Die was shot by Amanda Treyz, part of the regular crew of director Jason Trost's brother Brandon, the professional cinematographer who shot The FP . (Treyz was the gaffer on Brandon Trost's first feature as DP, Lightning Bug, and graduated to DP on the third feature by that film's director, ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2.) The film was shot digitally, and numerous shots have distortions that were deliberately introduced to simulate the point of view of someone watching on a video monitor.

Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presents a generally pleasing image, with solid blacks, sharp focus, good detail and distinctive but not overly saturated colors, as is appropriate for a film that takes place entirely at night. The only significant flaw in the picture is video distortion that resembles aliasing and crops up occasionally either along horizontal edges in long shots or in unexpected places like the right side of Charge's green face mask around the eye (this latter involves an odd spiraling shift in the color spectrum; see the first "extra" screenshot for an example). These issues are likely source-based, since the production company did their own color-correction in order to save the cost of a professional digital intermediate.

With no extras of any kind, the Blu-ray clocks in at a healthy 29.99 Mbps on a BD-25. No compression artifacts were observed.

All Superheroes Must Die Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is serviceable but unremarkable. Surround effects are limited, as is bass extension. Those moments that should pack a wallop, notably the multiple explosions, are dull and anemic. The dialogue is clear, and the electronic score credited to George Holdcroft (who also did The FP) sounds fine, although there should also be an additional credit for Beethoven, whose Moonlight Sonata is used at length.

All Superheroes Must Die Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc has no extras.

All Superheroes Must Die Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I once had the privilege of attending an informal gathering with the actor Alfred Molina in which he talked about various theater and movie roles, including Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2. Afterward, one of the attendees expressed surprise at the level of intensity with which Molina approached a character in a comic book movie. He treated "Doc Ock" just as seriously as a part in Shakespeare, examining his background, motivations and intentions and putting all of that preparation into his portrayal. You never saw all the work, but you felt it.

That's the true craft of telling a story through performance, but it's something that Jason Trost doesn't appear to value. In his writing, acting and directing, he seems to think he can get by without doing the spadework of digging into who his characters are, where they come from, how they got there and what makes them tick, down to the minutest detail. He slaps labels on stick figures—"superhero stripped of powers", "arch-villain", "innocent victim"—and expects emotional truth to follow. His movies are like novels reconceived as a series of text messages: "Am Ishmael. Sailed on Pequod. Capt crazy. Chased whale. Ship sank." No one would remember Melville for that tale, and ASMD fades just as quickly. Not recommended.