Wednesday, 26 February 2020

Superman: Red Son - Feb 26


Obligatory disclaimer: real life still sucks for all sorts of reasons. For a more specific explanation, see the previous entry. Now, about the latest animated Superman movie – the Red Son, (as opposed to the Red Sun and the Rad Son labels that I have seen on YouTube since yesterday).

…Ok, what about it?

It is one of the more depressing Superman and DC stories ever, one where Superman grows up in the U.S.S.R., (as opposed to the U.K. or in the darkest Africa, which are also DC comic stories, incidentally), has interactions with Bizarro, a variant Barman, Wonder Woman, a Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) and so on, and mows down the opposition, no sweat. Pause?

Yeah, the live action Justice League movie had something similar, only it was so bad, that it was actually funny, (when it was not being so lackluster that it was insipid instead. Cough Infinity War rip-off cough). SRS, on the other hand, is none of those things, it is actually well put together, and it is somewhat sad. Violent too, for an animated movie, even more so than the actual comic was.
True, I am not the biggest fan of DC and it has been a long time since I have read the SRS comic, but there are some differences between it and the movie. More importantly, reading the comic is not important to watching the movie, and the movie is…depressing, straightforward, simple and well made, from the technical side of things. And-?

And it is the simplicity that is the defining point of SRS – usually DC can do convoluted about as well as Marvel does, Disney baking or not. Here, conversely, everything is going from point A to point B, which concludes with Superman apparently finding a possible ‘redemption’ after his stunt as the flagman of communism. What?

…Here is the thing. SRS is not exactly a propaganda piece, because for any propaganda piece to work, the state/country in which it is released needs consistency, and right now, the US is in the state of flux, because of the upcoming elections. Nobody knows as to who will win, but the safe bet is the Donald, in no small part because the Democrats, a), can’t get their shit together, and b), now that it is coming together, the forerunner will be either Bloomberg, a variant of the Donald, or Sanders, a social-democrat, and neither man is very popular with the rest of the Democratic party’s leaders. Will they opt to instead give the U.S. to the Donald for another 4 years while they try to find someone better? Odds are very good on this one too. Will they continue to bitch about the Donald, even though they aren’t all that better than he is, (as surprising as that sounds)? Yes. Did I mention that real life sucks? Do bears shit in the woods?

Getting back to SRS, again, it isn’t intended to be propaganda, but you have to admit that its’ timing isn’t very good, and given that we’re talking about the Western society here, at least someone there will think so and act accordingly with unpredictable results – but for the majority, SRS will be just another DC animated movie and as such it will fade into obscurity, either becoming a classic or not. Go, team DC! Another solid hit for you, really. Anything else?

Sadly, no, not this time. See you all soon instead!

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