The Movie

So, you may know or may not know that Superman: Red Son, an animated movie, came out yesterday. The movie is... quite loosely based on the 3-part comic series by the same name from 2003. Both IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes have only a handful of reviews at this point, and show a somewhat wide range of opinions.

I'd say the animation was good, the music was well-done, the writing wasn't terrible, and it had a good flow. For someone who has never read the comics, it was probably a much better watch. Having just re-read the comics recently, I was quite struck by the many drastic changes they made, and the effects they have on the story and characters.

Below the image, I'll lay out some of these changes, and my thoughts on them.

Image Source

The Changes

Spoilers Ahead!

These are just the changes that come to mind first, I may add some in tomorrow in an edit.

1. Supes kills Joseph Stalin?! What the actual %$@#!? In the comics, the fact that Superman stayed utterly loyal to Stalin until he died, at which point he actively resisted appointment as the leader of the party, was a HUGE part of developing the character. He was a genuinely good man.
2. Wonder Woman is a lesbian. Probably. A change of a character's sexuality is rarely something that I care about, but in this particular story, it was extremely important. It was important because we learn that WW was in love with Superman for decades, and that love was the reason she broke her lasso later.
3. Wonder Woman is super anti-men. This didn't really happen in the comics. She becomes anti-Superman after breaking her lasso and what it did to her, but she still wasn't so hateful & judgmental at any point in those books as she was in the movie.
4. "Superior Man" wasn't smart or good... In the comics, when Superman fought the Luthor-made copy, it ended up with the clone sacrificing itself to save innocent people. We also learn shortly thereafter that the copy had had the audacity to beat Lex at Chess.
5. Where's all the chess? In the comics, they show Lex playing chess a BUNCH of times, usually against dozens of opponents at once, and the fact that he is passively doing this while going through the rest of his life is a big thing in showing his intelligence.
6. Superman doesn't seem all that smart. In the comics, it is shown multiple times that Supes is on the same level as LL intellectually, he is solving problems left and right.
7. Superman sure didn't help much In the comics, they emphasized over and over how Superman was perpetually in a state of heading off to rescue someone or stop some tragedy, because he could basically hear everything happening on the planet, and couldn't bear to stand by as people were hurt.
8. Where's the monsters? Where the comic gives cameos of dozens of Superman baddies, explaining that Lex created all of them in an attempt to defeat Superman... the movie leaves all of them out completely. Straight from Superior Man to the Green Lanterns.
9. Brainiac won instead of Lex First, the movie left out the part where Brainiac was working with Lex when he arrives on Earth. Next, the whole means of defeating Supes (convincing him he's doing more harm than good) was Lex's final (post-humous) move in the comics, but they completely removed the emotional closure it offered the story and instead had Brainiac just off-handedly make a comment that has the same effect.
10. The future/time paradox - The end of the comics. Which is the cause of the story, in a perfectly crafted time-travel loop. I guess I understand leaving it out for simplicity's sake or something, but it was SO GOOD! I think it would have been excellent in the cartoon as well.

Anyway

Any particular thoughts about the movie? or the comics? I thoroughly enjoyed the comics, and will probably end up picking up the TPB to have on my shelf next to the few others I still have.