Review: Superman: Unbound

 Brainiac is the worst kind of collector. 

I am on a bit of a DC kick lately, so I figured I should cover a few more of their straight to video movie adaptations. And since My Adventures With Superman covered a Brainiac Storyline, I figured maybe you’d like to see another interpretation of Superman’s battle with the alien supercomputer. This movie is based on the Superman: Brainiac graphic novel published in 2008. I should note, this version of Brainiac isn’t a full computer, instead being an alien named Vril Dox that has given himself extensive cybernetic upgrades to become more or less a machine. This version of Brainiac is obsessed with collecting the world’s knowledge in the form of the most scientifically advanced city on a planet, shrinking it down and putting it into his collection of shrunken cities. He usually also destroys the planet to ensure no knew knowledge can be generated from that world, but he spared Krypton when he took their capital city of Kandor because he detected it’s impending doom. That should be enough context, let’s get to it.

 

The movie opens with a stylized montage of the alien Vril Dox giving himself the various upgrades and steroids that turn him into Brainiac. It’s kind of gross, showing us his eyes being plucked out and his body growing to absurd size.

 

We then jump over to Metropolis where a group of thugs have just kidnapped Lois Lane and taken her on a helicopter. There’s a brief shootout with the guards but the goons escape with Lois and bags of cash. The guards just basely escape before the goons set off some plastic explosives. The goons unbag Lois’ head and she makes a snarky remark about not wanting to miss the view. The thugs helicopters start getting shot at by police copters. One of the goons starts chatting with Lois, saying that the cops didn’t seem to like her much. Lois says its an occupational hazard and then asks if these guys are angling for life in prison or going out in a blaze of glory. Ya know, because you’ve got to be kind of nuts to draw this much attention to yourself in Metropolis. The goon says that there was a 7.2 earthquake in Belize this morning, so Superman’s hands are rather tied right now. He fires an RPG at the police copter, shooting it down. Seeing the shot, Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl decides to get involved. She super speeds over, takes a few rifle shots from the second helicopter before punching it’s tail rotor and causing it to spin out but she catches it before it crashes. The talkative goon asks who the hell that is, and Lois brings him up to speed on Superman’s cousin. The goon fires another RPG at Kara, but… ya know, that just pisses off Kryptonians. Lois deduces that the goon doesn’t know many teenage girls, as they can be rebellious, angry at the world, and not know their own strength, which can be really dangerous when they can lift metric tons. He loads up another shot, but Kara uses heat vision to melt the RPG and then takes out the other goons and frees Lois. She prepares heat vision the talkative goon to the face, the guy shouting “wait, the skirt is the bad cop?” before Superman flies in and stops her, saying she’s just visiting. Superman has Lois put on a seatbelt before tilting the Helicopter size ways and dropping the talkative goon into the river.

 

Kara flies off and puts out the fire the initial explosion caused. Clark follows after her and starts chewing her out for causing so much destruction stopping the bad guy. Kara tells him not to talk down to her, as she’s older than him, but Clark points out that’s not how time works, the wormhole that brought them to Earth dropped him off first and thus he’s not 20 years or so older than her. Kara says that’s not fair, and Clark tells her to tell it to Einstein. When she doesn’t know who that is, he tells her to do her homework, but she counters by telling him to do his “homework.”  She asks him if he remembers anything about Krypton or their family and Clark rather sadly says only a little. She reminds him that from her perspective, she only left Krypton a few months ago, and while there, she was basically human. She has powers now, and she’s going to use them to make sure normal people don’t feel powerless against crooks before flying off.

 

Meanwhile, a probe enters Earth’s atmosphere.

 

Superman returns to his office, complaining to himself about teenagers. Lois, who’d been waiting for him, says Kara’s a good kid she’s just figuring her stuff out. Superman switches to his Clark outfit and complains about Lois volunteering to be a hostage with those goons, Lois countering by saying better her than someone else. Clark rolls his eyes about Lois constantly getting into trouble for stories and Lois laughs it off, saying how it must be so difficult being the most powerful being on the planet but still not being able to control the women in his life. Steve Lombard comes in looking to use Clark’s computer, Clark super speeds away because he doesn’t want to deal with him and leaves Lois to deal with him. Steve and Lois chat for a bit, Steve venturing his theory that Clark is gay because he doesn’t talk about his personal life, isn’t a sports guy but is in great shape, all that jazz. When he starts flirting with Lois, Clark heat visions his chair causing it to drop him before telling Lois that their boss Perry wants to see them. Outside, the two fight, as Lois is frustrated that they’re keeping their relationship under wraps like Clark wants but he keeps lashing out at guys like Lombard like that because she can’t say she’s seeing someone. Quite the conundrum. Their fight is interrupted by everyone scrambling to see some “thing” falling over Arizona. In the break room, they see a news report about a meteoroid on track to hit somewhere outside of Phoenix. Clark, obviously, needs to head out but he promises Lois they’ll talk more later.

 

Superman flies off towards Phoenix. The meteoroid survives getting hit by rockets from fighter jets, almost hitting the ground, but Superman flying tackles it out of the way. The meteoroid then morphs into an android and it and Superman start fighting. Superman grapples with it and gets shocked. The robot launches a scalpel at Superman. It glances off him, but Superman catches it and notes that he actually felt that. He uses X-Ray vision to detect a transmitter before ramming his fist into the robots chest, saying no phoning home.

 

In Smallville, Kara spends some time watching the pigs before being joined by Ma Kent. She tells Martha that she can’t believe humans eat pigs, but Martha points out that bacon is a major part of the midwestern diet. They head into the house for dinner, Kara asking if she can lose the wig and glasses since no one is around for miles. Martha gives her the go ahead and Kara complains that she’s not sure the Kansas life is for her. Martha agrees, to a degree, saying that she doesn’t think Kara will be sticking around long enough to need a secret identity. And she also knows that despite Clark’s best intentions, that she and Jonathan can’t substitute for Kara’s parents, as all three of them are too old for that to work. She tells Kara to just remember she’s special to the Kents regardless and she’ll have a home there whenever she needs it. They go inside to find Jonathan passed out on the couch, a news report about Superman fighting that robot playing. Kara seems immediately freaked out by that thing and flies off while Martha’s back is turned.

 

We cut to the Daily Planet where Jimmy Olsen is working on photos for their robot story under the supervision of Lois, Perry, Cat Grant and Steve Lombard. Supergirl arrives and is clearly looking for Clark but doesn’t say anything to the humans when she realizes he’s not there. She flies north to the fortress of solitude to speak with him. She finds him examining the robot in his lab. She sees the robot and screams. She tells him that she saw hundreds of robots like this once, the day Kandor fell. She has a flashback, explaining that as a child she’d gone with her parents to visit friends of theirs at the capital when the robots attacked. They killed hundreds as they overwhelmed Krypton’s armies, murdering anyone they found to be ‘redundant’ after scanning the brains of others they killed. Ultimately, Brainiac arrived in his floating head ship and seemingly destroyed the city just after Kara and her parents escaped. She explains that Zor-El and others found robots that were left behind, scanned their minds and tech and learned about Brainiac. Kara was sent to Earth months after to protect her while Zor-El and others planned to track Brainiac down and free Kandor. The destruction of Krypton obviously put a damper on that plan. Kara heat visions the robot, destroying it. Clark hugs her to stop her. Kara says that he made them feel powerless. Clark promises to make sure that never happens again. Kara realizes that he’s going to try to find Brainiac and tells him he doesn’t know what he’s up against. Clark says that if this robot didn’t contact Brainiac, some day another will and he’d rather fight Brainiac now while he has the element of surprise. Plus, there might be 100,000 Kryptonians on that ship. Kara asks what will they do if he doesn’t come back. He tells her she’ll need to defend Earth in his place.  She asks how he knows she’s ready for that, and he tells her that she’ll have to be.

 

We jump over to Metropolis and Lois’s apartment when Clark super speeds in. She starts by telling him he missed Perry’s announcement that his kid had baby. This rolls into their fight about keeping their relationship secret, as Lois wants to have a normal life with him and do normal people things. Clark points out that she’ll be in danger if people know, but Lois counters by saying she wants to be openly dating Clark Kent not Superman. Clark asks what happens if people find out that they’re the same guy and she says they’ll deal with that if it happens. She basically tells him that this fear that she’ll get hurt is his baggage that she doesn’t share, and that while it sucks thinking that every time, he goes out might be the time he dies, she won’t stop him from being a hero, so he shouldn’t try to stop her from getting in danger to do her job. He cuts her off by saying he’s going away to find and stop Brainiac. He asks her if they can deal with this when he gets back, to which she begrudgingly agrees.

 

Clark flies off in a Kryptonian spaceship he built. As he flies, he plays his uncle Zor-El’s notes on Brainiac.  Zor-El explains what they know about him, that he was an organic lifeform from the planet Colu that upgraded himself into a cyborg. He collects cities to get their knowledge and then destroys the world they came from. Zor-El wonders why he spared Krypton but notes his brother Jor-El has theories that Krypton is dying and that Brainiac just was saving himself the trouble. Clark’s ship detects a signal and he goes to investigate. He arrives on an alien planet mid purge. The aliens, a green monkey like people, and a purple lizard race, put up a valiant effort but Brainiacs robot are too strong. Until the last Son of Krypton lands. Superman lays waste to the robots, doing his best to try to get information out of them as he does. The robots aren’t talking though.  He flies up to Brainiac’s ship and tries to stop it, but it unfortunately harvests the capital. Superman rips into the ship just before it launches a missile that obliterates the planet’s sun and the rest of that solar system.  He gets hit by the explosion, though, and knocked out. Brainiac grabs him.

 

Back on Earth, Supergirl stops some North Korean soldiers from human trafficking. This is part of a news report Lois, Jimmy and Perry are watching. The report notes that she’s basically going around the world stopping injustice, everywhere but Metropolis. Perry wonders if Superman disappearing for weeks has an angel, that maybe he’s trying to make sure Earth doesn’t get too reliant on him, or if he’s protecting other planets too. He thinks up a title “The Aloofness of Superman,” and tells Lois to run with it. When she asks if she has to, he rhetorically asks who else he’d give it too. Maybe Kent? But he’s been gone for a while too.

 

It’s amazing no one puts this together.

 

Meanwhile, Brainiac’s ship is cataloguing it’s latest conquest. The planet, Laroo, is thought to have three sentient species, but one of them is Superman. He wakes up part way through the scan and frees himself, smashing robots as he goes.  He watches as the other aliens are taken into storage, they’re covered in a pink goo and put into containers across the walls. As Superman explores, an alien beast frees itself and attacks him, but he fights them off. He flies into Brainiac’s trophy room. He hast he planets he harvested hung from the ceiling, arranged by planet they were taken from in the milky way galaxy. Superman quickly finds Krypton but wakes Brainiac as he enters the room. He spies Brainiac as he exits his pod, noting that he’s probably egocentric as he put himself in the center of the universe. The two fight, Brainiac noting that he’s Kryptonian, and that he shouldn’t exist outside of Brainiac’s control. He gets Superman restrained before saying that he’ll be incorporated into his existing Krypton specimen jar. He scanned Clark’s mind and learned of Earth. He has his ship shift course for Earth, saying that Clark has brought him a gift before sending Clark into Kandor.

 

At the Daily Planet, Jimmy and Lois hit the roof, Lois asking Jimmy if she can use the watch Superman gave him. He agrees and Lois hits the button that sends out a piercing whistle to get a Kryptonian’s attention, though the one she’s after is Kara. After pushing Jimmy out the door she goes to talk to Kara. She hurriedly introduces herself to Kara as Clark’s girlfriend, nothing that it took him a year to tell his folks about them, and then asking Kara why she’s doing so much good everywhere except Metropolis. Kara tells her to get out of Metropolis, somewhere that Clark can find her after. She says Brainiac is on his way and that Metropolis is just the sort of city he takes. Kara says that if Clark can’t stop Brainiac, there’s no way she could stop him. Lois tells Kara it’s okay to be afraid before she flies off to deal with a warlord in Somalia.  Once alone, Lois calls her contact at the pentagon.

 

In Kandor, Clark meets the locals. He tries to fly up and out of Kandor, but the simulated red sun of Krypton already started to sap his powers away. He crashes to the ground and hurriedly asks the Kandorians what’s the closest route to the city’s edge. Sentries are dispatched to keep order, shocking Clark when he talk back to them. Clark learns that no one ages inside the bottled city, which is troubling for a lot of reasons, and then he has to tell the Kandorians about the fall of Krypton. The citizens mention some Argonans that arrived just after Brainiac took Kandor, andis brought to his still alive Uncle Zor-El and Aunt Alura. He enjoys a Kryptonian meal with them, telling them about Kara and Earth. Zor-El explains that they tried to track Brainiac’s signal and must have inadvertently called him back to them, leading to their capture.  He theories there’s a bug in Brainiac’s mind, that compels him to learn everything but as knowledge is a growing thing, he has to try to control that growth. That’s why he collects cities in bottles, to artificially contain the knowledge without accepting that one can’t contain all knowledge. The El’s want to help, and Clark suggests they use Brainiac’s tools against him. He runs outside and uses his waning strength to punch the ground, shattering it beneath them. That calls in the robots, who he quickly destroys. When the computer retrieves the sentries, Clark grabs them, so he’s teleported out too. He promises to come back for them.

 

Outside, he finds a yellow sun display and absorbs enough sunlight to get his powers back.  He finds Brainiac in his pod. He quickly traps Brainiac by bending girders around him and melting them in place. He rips the cables from Brainiac’s head, temporarily cutting him off from his ship. Brainiac tells him he’s only delaying the inevitable, how he’s the alpha and omega and how Clark is nothing but fists. He knocks Brainiac out, destroys the ship’s engine room and then escapes in his ship with Kandor. He heads back to Earth. Kara sees him reentering the atmosphere and lets ma and pa know.

 

Back on his ship, Brainiac recovers and begins repairing his ship. Clark bough himself maybe an hour with that attack. He reactivates navigation and heads towards Earth.

 

On Earth, Clark plugs Kandor into his computer. Kara joins him and asks if he killed Brainiac. He says he disabled the ship. When Kara says that’s not good enough, Clark explained that he has thousands of cities hostage on his ship, and he couldn’t bring himself to ending millions of lives to stop Brainiac.  When Kara asks about him keeping cities, Clark shows her Kandor and lets her know her parents are alive there too. Clark says that he knows a planet with a red sun like Krypton, and that they’ll take Kandor there together. He then gets an alert that something is near Metropolis. Brainiac’s ship has arrived and he unleashes his robots on Metropolis. They attack the Daily Planet, but Lois comes up with the brilliant strategy of throwing the robots out a 30^th floor using furniture. Clark wants to go help but Kara is terrified at facing Brainiac. I personally would vote to free the Kandorians and get roughly a thousand partially charged up on Yellow sun light fighters on the ground, but that’s just me. Kara wants to run, but Clark warns her if she does that Brainiac will just keep hunting worlds. But on Earth they have powers and with those powers they can win.

 

Brainiac’s forces plow through the army and air force. Lois, Jimmy and Steve barricade themselves in an office. Steve makes one last pass at Lois before Superman flies in and starts obliterating robots left and right. He flies in and saves Lois and company from a group of Robots, slamming them into a bridge. He faces off against a robot that nearly overwhelms him until Kara crushes it’s skull. More drones are dropped off, which Kara handles as Clark goes after Brainiac.  Brainiac begins to shrink Metropolis. Clark uses his heat vision on the emitter but it’s not phased. Clark goes to check on Lois but he can’t get to her. He and Kara try to rush the ship but they’re captured instead.

 

Clark wakes up strapped into Brainiac’s pod. Brainiac has cables lower from the ceiling and plug themselves into Clark’s skull.  Brainiac reveals that the ship and him are essentially one organism, so Clark’s attempt to separate him was from it was pointless. He’s disgusted by Clark’s affection for Earth, an unremarkable planet that he finds redundant. Clark uses his X-Ray vision to see Kara being ‘examined’ by Brainiac, who says he needs at least one Kryptonian and that Clark might not survive the procedure. He begins downloading information into Clark’s mind, attempting to turn Clark’s mind to sludge by overstimulating it. He’s going to torture Clark until he learns where Kandor is. He learns its in the North pole. He promises to destroy Earth soon, and Metropolis. As Brainiac talks about how much Earth sucks and is unimpressive, he zooms in on the Daily Planet, to find Lois standing alone on one of the floors. She flips him the double bird, which actually makes him pause. You go Lois Lane. Clark calls Earth his home, his heart, and that it gives him strength. Strength enough to break free. He grabs Brainiac by the head and then hurls him out of an exhaust port, telling him to go to hell. He grabs Metropolis and then saves Kara. Brainiac sends drones at them and promises that he’ll destroy Earth with a thought once he has Kandor back. Clark and Kara start mowing through robots. Clark grabs a pair of cables and rams them into Brainiac’s face, shorting him out. The ship prepares and then fires the missile that will destroy the sun. Kara flies after it.

 

Brainiac pulls himself up, saying he’s giving up on Kandor. He has Krypton’s knowledge and Clark will do as a specimen. Brainiac tells Clark his efforts are futile, that even if Kara stops the missile, he’ll launch another.  Clark tells Brainiac that he has him figured out, that he never leaves his ship and that means he has a bug. Clark uses his super breath to blow Brainiac back and then free himself from the cables. He slams Brainiac through a wall and to a bayou below the ship. Clark says that he saw his weakness in Kandor, and when Brainiac was downloading knowledge into him. Brainiac has data, knowledge, but no real sense of life or how it exists outside his bottled, controlled cities. It’s at this point that Brainiac’s enhanced senses start hearing things like trucks and bugs and children playing. Clark deduced that Brainiac seals himself off in his ship where he can control everything in part because his brain can’t handle the chaos that exists outside of it. He’s basically got an extreme form of agoraphobia as well as germaphobia, the mud of the bayou seems to particularly freak him out. Clark hits him a few times, but Brainiac’s mind is already shorting out.

 

In space, Kara catches the missile and tries to pull it off course. When that doesn’t work, she blows a hole in it’s side and uses it’s venting gas to push it sideways far enough for her to make it miss the sun.

 

On Earth, Brainiac overloads, his mind unable to process any more. He torches himself, melting his organic bits to goo and then causing his metal skeleton to explode. He break down into rubble. Clark welcomes him to Earth. Kara returns and he flies up to hug her. They take Brainiac’s ship and return Metropolis to it’s proper place. Later, he and Kara drop Kandor off on that planet he mentioned. Krypton born anew, though personally I’d be pissed on not getting to be put on a planet with a superpower giving sun.  Kara’s reunited with her parents.

 

Clark returns to the Daily Planet and finds everyone cleaning up after the disaster. The first thing he does is grab Lois and kiss her hard in front of everyone. He tells her that he wants to protect her, but he’s learned that he can’t keep her walled off from the world. Basically, Brainiac taught him there’s a difference between reasonable safety precautions and bottling people up. Ultimately, Clark gets down on his knee and proposes to Lois. We don’t see her reaction, but I think we all know what she says. She’s the mother of his children in multiple timelines for goodness sake. Lol

 

I really wish animation was more of a money maker in the US because DC really needs to put its focus on these animated film adaptations. While their score card isn’t perfect, (the Killing Joke and Hush adaptations have some weird choices in them) they’ve done far better in the last 20 years than their live action cinematic universe. Clark’s story is pretty easy to understand. Because of his immense power and lifestyle, he’s trying to keep Lois at… not an arm’s length, but maybe half an arm’s length, from him and keep her safe from the world. Almost like he wants to put her in a bottle or something. And it takes fighting Brainiac, a man who’s whole thing is doing that, to realize life isn’t life if you’re kept in a bottle. Meanwhile, Kara is getting used to having powers but has to get over a very rational phobia of this faceless monster that literally kidnapped her friend, a whole city of people, and may have also killed her parents. So, her finding the bravery to step up and help Clark take out Brainiac once and for all is a pivotal character moment for her. And I loved Brainiac in this. My first introduction to the character was in Superman: The Animated Series back in the 90s so he’s almost always the cold robot from Krypton to me. But seeing the comic accurate design, of a green alien cyborg that collects cities as well as data is neat. The dude has a rightly earned god complex after harvesting so many planets, and he pontificates with the best of him. The fact that Clark is able to beat him not on brute strength but on the simple realization that his brain can’t handle too much chaos was nice. Clark is at his best when it’s equal parts his immense power but also his big brain saving the day. Oh, and the scene where Lois flips him the double bird and he sees lives rent free in my head as one of Lois’ greatest moments. She doesn’t have much to do in this story besides being snarky and encouraging Kara when Clark’s MIA, otherwise. So yeah, overall a fun DC animated tale. See you tomorrow when I have another. 

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/109005583

Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero