Superman: Red Son (2020)

As a fan of comic books with sufficient disposable income, I’ve been subscribed the DC Universe streaming service since it started. True, the original programming there may not be overly plentiful (though some of it is really good), but the appeal may be access to decades’ worth of DC comic books. The service also adds the straight-to-home-video animated movies there from time to time. Most recently, that was the adaptation of the Elseworld’s story Superman: Red Son.

Red Son may be one of the best Superman what-if stories ever told. So, yeah, of course I watched the movie.

Red Son has a simple premise: instead of landing in Smallville, Kansas to be raised by the Kents, infant Kal-El lands in the Soviet Union to be raised by a Ukrainian farm couple. This Superman (voice of Jason Isaacs) is a big believer in Communism and at least initially follows directives from Josef Stalin. Over in the United States, billionaire genius inventor Dr. Lex Luthor (voice of Diedrich Bader) is set up against this new superpowered Soviet with Luthor’s wife, reporter Lois Lane (voice of Amy Acker) observing the action all along. As the story progresses, both Superman and Luthor rise in the ranks of their respective governments, as both seek to topple the other in the name of the Cold War. Can these two men find a way to peace?

Anyone hoping for a completely faithful adaptation of the original work will probably be disappointed, but these animated features are never completely faithful This adaptation does hit all the important story beats: Brainiac, brainwashing, an American Bizarro, and Soviet-influenced versions of Batman and Wonder Woman do appear. This adaptation gets the story right even if it isn’t the most faithful version. Quite frankly, changes made were appropriate for an animated feature where a word-for-word adaptation might not have worked as well. Sure, it means we don’t have a Soviet version of Pete Ross, but he wasn’t that important to the story in the grand scheme of things anyway.

As for the casting, I might not have pegged Isaacs, a guy who mostly seems to play villains these days, to be a good Superman, but he actually does fine with his cartoon Russian accent. Likewise, Bader usually plays more comedic roles, having played a goofier version of Batman in both the Brave and the Bold and Harley Quinn animated series, but this Luthor isn’t necessarily the bad guy so much as Superman’s opponent. This is a Superman who isn’t afraid to take more drastic measures, and a Luthor who, though extremely arrogant, may be somewhat on the side of the angels as both characters seem to be taking some kind of moral middle ground.

That said, my one real complaint about this story is how the rather cool twist at the end of the original comics, a final reveal about this particular Superman’s origins, was completely omitted. It may not have been necessary, but it was a rather cool change to the Superman mythos.

Grade: B+