Reign of the Supermen Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Reign of the Supermen Blu-ray Movie Review

It's Reigning Men

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 3, 2019

The DC Animated Universe keeps churning out product, and its latest offering is by far the most overcooked entry in the series to date. A direct sequel to DCAU #33, The Death of Superman—the Wikipedia numbering continues to be off by one—Reign of the Supermen is bursting at the seams with more characters, more subplots, more action and generally more stuff than any of its predecessors. As my colleague Josh Katz has already pointed out, it took the original DC artisans over 700 pages of graphic novel to cover the material that RotS tries to cram into 87 minutes. The result is a frantic mess. It'll hold your attention while it's on, but nothing in the film has any staying power. As soon as it's over, it vanishes from your head quicker than Banksy's self-shredding art.

It doesn't help that so much of RotS's storyline was recently covered by the live-action Justice League, leaving us with the distinct feeling that we've already seen much of this movie. For all its considerable flaws, the live-action Justice League still managed to draw more emotional impact from Superman's resurrection than the DCAU iteration. And as far as exposition and back story are concerned, Justice League is a masterpiece compared to RotS. The live-action film made at least some effort to explain important plot points like a "Mother Box", but RotS appears to have been made strictly for hardcore fanatics. If you don't already know your DC mythology backwards and forwards, you're out of luck.

RotS begins six months after The Death of Superman, with the world still mourning the loss of its greatest guardian in the battle against Doomsday. (If you've seen Justice League, you can almost hear Sigrid's cover of "Everybody Knows" playing in your head and imagine Amy Adams' Lois and Diane Lane's Martha in mourning. Come to think of it, those memories add more emotional heft to the sequence than anything RotS has to offer.) But then everyone, especially Lois Lane (Rebecca Romijn) and the members of the Justice League are startled by the appearance of four separate claimants to Superman's mantle, three of whom purport to be Superman himself. Superboy (Cameron Monaghan) is the brash junior version (and hates being called "Superboy"). Cyborg Superman (Patrick Fabian) resembles a souped-up verison of the Justice League's Cyborg, while The Eradicator (Charles Halford) has formidable powers but acts more like an emotionless cyborg than any of the characters who are actually named "Cyborg". Steel (Cress Williams) is the only one who doesn't pretend to be Superman; he's a formidable fighter against evil, but he knows that he's really John Henry Irons in a metallic suit.

Lex Luthor (Rainn Williams) and the seemingly infinite resources of Lex Corp remain in the mix, and so is the super-villain known as Darkseid (Tony Todd, with his intimidating basso profondo). As for the Justice League itself, let's just say that they get sidetracked by a convenient (and less-than-convincing) plot device, leaving the world to sort out the profusion of would-be Superman successors. We also get an invasion of Parademons, visits to the Fortress of Solitude, competing plots for world domination and an army of ordinary people transformed into cyborg clones in service of . . . oh, never mind. RotS devotes as little effort to explanation as it does to emotional depth or character development. It rushes through key story points so that it can devote as much time as possible to the kind of destructive smackdowns that have become the meat and potatoes of modern superhero tales. By the time DC and Marvel have finished busting up the world and sacrificing its citizens—allegedly in the fight against evil, but in reality for the entertainment of the Comic Con crowd—there won't be anything left worth saving.

Reign of the Supermen Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

By now, fans of the DC Animated Universe know what to expect from these Blu-ray presentations, and the 1080p, AVC-encoded disc of Reign of the Supermen delivers as expected. The animation style remains minimalist, and the Blu-ray renders it as effectively as in previous entries. The palette is, if anything, even more varied and brightly colorful than in The Death of Superman, with the multiplicity of costumes, powers, villains and locales providing opportunities for intense hues across the entire spectrum. The film's narrative may be an overstuffed mess, but it never lacks for visual interest.

As usual, Warner has crunched its latest DCAU feature into a tight average bitrate of just under 15 Mbps and failed to use all of the available space on the disc. However, the only artifact I observed was the series' familiar banding, which remains fleeting and minor.

Reign of the Supermen Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

RotS's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, is more aggressive and immersive than any of the DCAU entries I've reviewed, and it's also a good deal louder and more room-rattling. This results, in large part, from the increased destruction quotient, with battles involving the various Supermen, Justice League members, cyborgs, Parademons and other monsters that blast across the landscape (and into other dimensions). The mix still can't compete with mega-budget spectacles from the live-action DCU, but it's got more punch and a more expansive use of the surrounds than we typically get from the direct-to-video animated features. The score by DCAU regular Frederik Wiedmann (picking up where he left off in The Death of Superman) amplifies the proceedings, but the dialogue remains intelligible and appropriately prioritized, even as it becomes less and less relevant. (And when is Green Lantern going to get a few good speeches that will let Nathan Fillion fully exercise his vocal talents?)

Reign of the Supermen Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Sneak Peak at DC Universe's Next Animated Movie: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five (1080p; 1.78:1; 9:29). The title is self-explanatory.



• Lex Luthor: The Greatest Nemesis (1080p; 1.78:1; 16:08): Various members of the DC creative team provide their insights on comics' original super-villain (and ultimate egomaniac).



• From the DC Comics Vault


• Superman: The Animated Series,"Heavy Metal" (480i; 1.33:1; 20:52): This Nineties TV series originally aired on The WB channel (later merged into The CW) and has yet to make it to Blu-ray. This was episode 23 of Season Two, which introduced John Henry Irons a/k/a "Steel".


• Justice League Unlimited, "Panic in the Sky" (1080p; 1.78:1; 23:04): Please see Jeffrey Kauffman's Blu-ray review for an overview of the series.



• Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Aquaman and Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie, plus the current Warner promo for 4K UHD. The following trailers can be found on the Special Features menu:
• Shazam!
• The Death of Superman

Reign of the Supermen Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The biggest threat to the DCAU isn't Luthor or Doomsday; it's creative exhaustion. The mavens at DC may genuinely believe, as they say in the extras, that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman must remain the core of their series, but they risk overfishing the waters they've been trawling for so long. The better films on the animated side are those that give plenty of creative oxygen to less familiar but intriguing figures like John Constantine in Justice League Dark or the entire team in Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay. The teaser after RotS's credits suggests some interesting possibilities for the next film in the series, but who knows? In the meantime, there's RotS, which has been given a perfectly fine Blu-ray presentation but is far from the best the DCAU has to offer.