This movie would be pretty cool if they didn't make Superman a lib and Stalin a villain. He should have destroyed Wall Street when he had the chance.
In the movie the US tries to draw in Superman by dropping a deadly object from space and almost kills a bunch of people if it weren’t for Superman stopping it. And the US also starts a war with the USSR. But somehow the US is the good guy
Also, the faults of some egomaniacal dictator is representative of communism entirely, but the faults of capitalism are portrayed as the fault of bad apples lol
Isn’t the Berlin Wall analogue erected by capitalist nations this time around, as a means of “combatting the spread of communism”? Yeah…
The potential of the premise dries up so quickly that it was hard for me to stay invested.
I've been very hesitant to look up the original comic or watch the cartoon as I figure it'll start off sensible and descend into capitalist propaganda...my psychic damage resilience is pretty low nowadays
At least by the end it's more like average timey-wimey DC capeshit.
If anyone is wondering:
The Animated movie and the Comic share designs and a few plot points but are actually radically different executions of the concept. Actually I should really reread the comic because I was a huge lib when I did the first time, but I remember it being far FAR more sympathetic to the USSR and more cynical towards Luthor and America.
One key change for example is that in the movie, Superman goes to see a Gulag and then, horrified at what he's seen, comes back and heat visions Stalin in cold blood to do a Coup. In the comic: Stalin and Superman actually have an extremely ammicable relationship with Stalin seeing him as something of a Son, prompting his son Pytor to poison him with cyanide out of jealousy. Superman actually declines to lead the party initially until he is strongly encouraged by his childhood friend Lana. Don't even get me started on the ending.
It is definitely Liberal ultimately in that the moral of the story is about how Superman shouldn't interfere with human affairs and how the ends never justify the means and blah blah blah....but its at least a much more nuanced and thought out story then "WHAT IF SUPERMAN, BUT BAD!!!"
Edit: Like one detail I really enjoyed is that even though the USA and President Luthor are kind of the "heroes" in a sense, the Comic is VERY explicit that even in THAT universe, Luthor is still a selfish egotistical narcissist whose primary concern is beating Superman just to prove that he's better. Any "good" that he accomplishes is practically incidental.
Not to mention Luthor fixes the United States by enforcing a planned economy
For all intents and purposes, Luthor does a Socialism but calls it Luthornomics and everyone is fine with it
Oh shit! Either I completely forgot that part or (more likely) my 20ish lib brain completely glossed over that detail...but I kinda remember it! I do remember that in the end of the comic(prior to the twist at least): communism basically wins right? Like the irony of the whole story is that at the end it isn't a fight between capitalism and socialism, but rather Luthor flavored Communism and Superman flavored Communism.
Yep
Aside from the Time Loop aspect, it's actually a fairly optimistic story about how Communism will win
AFAIK the director of the movie wanted to show Superman as “living proof communism doesn’t work”. Bout as lib brained as you’d expect.
I feel like the premise could be done well, grappling with the idea of Great Men even under a socialist system and the issue of someone fundamentally from outside the people trying to come in and reform things and help them, but I don't feel like Red Son does it because of the fundamental edgy liberal perspective of its authors. Like Superman's micromanaging and insistence on handling everything himself was flawed, but its refutation should have come from within the socialist context and not from a single pithy remark from Lex Luthor, and it certainly shouldn't have been a hamfisted allegory for socialist policies in general. The closest thing is Batman's attack on him, but there he's just being a violent wrecker out of an extremely personal vendetta and thus fundamentally cannot refute Superman's approach.
The Animated movie and the Comic share designs and a few plot points but are actually radically different executions of the concept.
I feel like I say this one all the time. It's such a bummer too cause the animation goes so hard, whoever is running the show at DC/WB animation knows how to make a good cartoon.
Superman finds an underground Gulag filled with children, Stalin monologues, USA good now
