The Death of Superman (2018)

(On TV, April 2020) The first “death of Superman,” back in the 1980s comics, was an event. Naturally, it proved to be such a crowd-pleaser that it’s now almost a mandatory episode for any new reinterpretation of the character. 2018’s The Death of Superman is the DC Animated Movie Universe’s take on the material—more closely faithful to the original comic, but still able to update the story to the context of the series so far. It’s not a bad Superman story, and is even slightly more realistic than I expected. The title is both a spoiler and not, as it happens fairly late in the film, and is resolved before the credits roll. As a result, it doesn’t have much emotional weight—we know he will be back. The narrative does give a large place to Clark Kent, which is a good idea considering what we know and expect will happen to his alter ego. But in the end, The Death of Superman ends up being nothing more an honourable entry in the DCAMU, which is often more consistently successful than its live-action equivalent.