I have to say, after Superman: Brainiac Attacks, and Mystery of the Batwoman, I didn't think that WB Animation could sick any lower.

The best part for me? . Seriously, who wrote this piece of crap?

This makes me very, very afraid for the New Frontier and Teen Titans.

I wouldn't call it crap, but it wasn't my favorite thing ever. I think the story was just too big to be squeezed into such a short running time. The story it is based on isn't that great either. I could think of some other Supes stories that would have fit better, but that would be backseat producing.

The thing I really liked was the voice acting. I am in love with Dana Delaney's and Clancy Brown's portrayals of Lois and Lex, but Heche and Marsters did a fantastic job of creating new versions of these characters. They were great! Especially Heche who has that natural 40's reporter voice. I also liked the Baldwin's voicing of Superman. It was as good as the JLU version, but not as good as Tim Daly.

The Lois and Clark stuff was also really well played.

A also liked the riskier aspects of the movie. Doomsday was straight killing dudes with no "parachute" action like in GI Joe. Nothing ambiguous about it. The DCAU shows have never really needed to be as obvious to get across tension and drama, but it was nice to see them take off the gloves a bit. Same with the "ass" and "damn" Perry dropped. These things do not make a great movie, but they give me hope that these DTV's are really aimed at the fan market.

Now the story? I think the biggest problem was that the story they were working from was already kind of lame to begin with. Then by dropping the coolest elements of it (the four replacements, heroes mourning for Superman) it felt really dry. Not to mention, we just got a Doomsday episode in JLU a few years back that was pretty badass. The biggest thing they had to work with was the fight, and sad to say, it fell in the shadow of other fights the DC cartoons have had. Was this even close to being as incredible as the Superman Shazam fight was?

That being said, I don't regret watching the movie, and being a DCAU fan-nut (as well as a DC fan in general) I'll take whatever they're going to give me. I think this effort was a little lackluster, but New Frontier and Judas are better stories to work from. This storyline would have worked so much better in the scope of a Superman show. Like a 5 parter or something like Gargoyles used to do.

And just to throw it out there, I really think Kingdom Come would work great in the format of these DTV's. That story is pretty big, but it can be streamlined to fit into an 80 minute feature if need be. Probably better than either New Frontier or Judas can.

It's one of the worst Superman stories ever. The only decent thing to ever come out of that story was Hal Jordan's world going bonkers.

I thought the voice acting was good - I like it when they use actors that blend into the roles and don't steal the show or constantly remind you of the actor's face.

This was by far the worst part of the whole movie for me. It's almost as if someone wrote the script for these scenes and then randomly cut and pasted them throughout the movie. It made no sense by the end of the movie. Apparently the DVDTalk reviewer agrees with me.

I think part of the problem is precisely that these movies are aimed at the fan market. Instead of aiming these movies at people who already find these characters appealing and are in love with them, they should instead be trying to capture the hearts of people who simply don't care. The X-men, Spider-man, Batman, and Superman Animated series were all responsible for causing an explosion in interest in these comic book characters. The best comic book movies are also, ironically, those that appeal to the largest audience.

True. It didn't do anything spectacular like JLU did, or as exciting. Remember how great AMAZO was? or the Justice Lords?

Despite the superficial changes to the story in Teen Titans, the Judas contract storyline was executed wonderfully.

I agree that the movie didn't have much of an impact seeing as how the audience can expect Superman to come back in 30 minutes.

A storyline like that could possibly work both really well and very poorly for a DTV. On the one hand, a lot of the subtext in the storyline would translate very well to animation. On the other hand, I think we've seen too much of bitter Supes/Bats already.

I hated it. I really really hated it to a full passion of hate that can't be described. I saw it for free and I wanted to get paid for that shit at comic con.

The attempts to push this into a PG-13 zone were heavy handed and needless. It took away from the plot.. which was very lean anyway.

The films Death/world without superman angle was what? 10 minutes long? Yeah, way to under play a whole key to the death of superman. The lack of center characters and other heroes made the funeral pointless.

Yeah, in the comics the biggest thing that the death of superman caused was Hal's world going crazy which I hated at the time, but with Sinestro corps and the relaunching, I suppose good things come from bad situations.

This film was simply terrible.

I enjoyed it for what it was, I didn't go in expecting it would be on-par with JLA or even the Superman series. I don't think the Death & Return of Superman was the greatest choice for a 70 minute movie, but parts of it were entertaining. I'd say it was worth the $10 I paid for it, considering the documentary and lenticular cover. Going in, I'd guess the "average" person would get more enjoyment from it, just because the Death & Return was so unwieldly in comic format as it was, and the gist of the story - which was more about relationships between characters than the death itself - was retained adequately. I will say that I was off-put by the PG-13 violence in the movie - it was distracting. Not at all like the Return of the Joker, where the movie earned the PG-13 through a few key scenes that defined characters.

I'm in the negative camp, it was total crap.