TheAlexLynch's Movie Review: Superman vs The Elite

Superman vs. The Elite places Superman against a super powered group of people who call themselves The Elite. Are they heroes or villains? Are they fighting for Truth, Justice and The American Way or something else? Will they be a threat to Superman?

This movie has a great voice cast, a great story and mediocre animation when it comes to the style of the models. I know it wasn’t just me who saw the lackluster cover that gave Superman a giant stomach and thought this movie would be flat out terrible. DC Animated Movies are amongst my favorite Comic Book media because Marvel is extremely poor with the quality of their animated movies (Ultimate Avengers and Next Avengers are amongst the exceptions.) so I’m always looking forward to a new DC movie. This movie thrusts us right into the action within the first five minutes where Superman battles the Atomic Skull who has already killed innocent civilians. This makes Superman mad and he will retaliate accordingly. You would probably think that he is mega-pissed here but it doesn’t compare to the end of the movie’s Superman who is extremely pissed. The story revolves around The Elite and how easy it is to kill villains instead of putting them in jail and risking them to return. Like the rest of the Superman movies the viewers are thrust into an already established Superman universe where Super bots exist, Lois and Clark are together (although it is unknown if they are married) and there are plenty of Superman artifacts in the Fortress of Solitude such as the shrunken city. This movie delivers tons of pop culture references all through the movie such as Lois saying “I think I have an app for that on my phone” and Clark saying that he “tweeted” his source connected to Superman.

George Newbern returns as Superman from his role in Justice League and a few other films and I have to say I think this is his best unique performance as Superman yet. Near the end, he puts on a very serious tone to be deeper and since Superman is pissed, his performance is very well done. Pauly Perette plays a unique Lois Lane that we haven’t heard before. Her voice is rougher but still captures an essence of a reporter. At the beginning, I felt very uneasy about her take and really wanted Dana Delaney back but by the end of the film I felt comfortable to accept a new and great take on Lois Lane. I hope they keep her for any following films because it could get annoying to fans to have to listen to different Lois’ for each movie if they continually bring back George Newbern or Tim Daly. World famous voice actors Nolan North and Tara Strong also join the voice cast but in very minor and small roles. Nolan North’s voice is instantly recognizable. George Newbern is no doubt a very good Superman voice so if you haven’t watched all of Justice League, I suggest you do now.

If you like your animated movies to have more mature and adult themes then this will be no disappointment as it features tons of sexuality speech and intense blood-filled action as well as plenty of death to feed your sadistic minds. One of the team members of Elite – Pam – can be called the slut of the team because whenever Superman is around she tends to make a sexual statement. Some of the best ones are “Even though it may be a kicked ass, it’s still a fine ass” or “Maybe he has the stones to do me.” She also uses sexuality to attain information from an irrelevant character during an interrogation. Although no one’s head is chopped off, the blood in this film only showed dripping from the eyes and mouths of characters. This film is very mature and obviously not meant for kids as Manchester and Superman call bad guys “wankers”.

I didn’t feel as anything was negative in this movie except for the animation which has been pointed out since the film’s initial announcement. The character models were slightly too over the top for the tone of the film and I thought if they used the exact animation from Superman: Doomsday that it would’ve been the perfect Superman movie so far produced by DC. I rate this movie 4/5 stars and I really can’t wait until The Dark Knight Returns and a possible Flashpoint movie. You can check out my Arkham City article to see Kevin Conroy leak a Flash-based movie.