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DC’s animated film adaptation of Injustice ends up ignoring its most powerful characters, and this makes the Man of Steel look weak.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Injustice, now available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray and Digital.
DC’s animated film adaptation of Injustice definitely highlights Superman as a tyrannical figure, as he implements his dictatorial regime after killing Joker. He wants to be the iron fist that protects Earth, even if humanity doesn’t see this as good. However, the movie ends up ignoring its most powerful characters and in the process, it makes the Man of Steel look weak.
Superman doesn’t have much opposition in this film, apart from metas like Plastic Man and street-level vigilantes like Batman, Harley Quinn and Green Arrow. There’s admittedly one moment where Atom takes a kryptonite shard into his brain, but he’s disintegrated by Ra’s al Ghul’s nerve gas, so it ends up being Kal-El taking on Batman’s troops without any real heavy-hitters around.
The thing is, the movie had ample characters to use to show Superman as a scary tour de force. Admittedly, Flash was killed off early to avoid a possible Flashpoint, but one big possible scrap was already set up with Hal Jordan standing up to Superman before he killed Joker.
Kal-El took away his ring and caught him before he fell to his death, so Injustice could have had a re-powered Green Lantern trying to fight back later on. Seeing Hal and the Lanterns return to Oa and the Guardians feels cheap. Had Hal been changed from an initial ally to a rebel, it’d have added more firepower. John Stewart and Guy Gardner could have entered the battle as well, allowing Superman to smash their constructs and show who’s the stronger entity. It’d have made him truly intimidating and imposing, sending a message to the rest of the galaxy too.
Injustice makes the same mistake by ignoring how Aquaman stood up to the Man of Steel in the source material. Here, it just has King Arthur Curry recusing Atlantis from picking sides, even though Kal-El builds a prison in the Mariana Trench. Billy Batson also pulls out, saying magical heroes don’t want any part of this war. Oddly enough, Raven’s briefly seen helping Superman, so to see Superman’s magical forces against Billy’s would have been intriguing.
It’d have altered the source material since Billy was initially an ally before flipping, but the endgame could have been the same. If Superman killed Shazam and saw Billy there, that could have been a catalyst to rethink the future. As for other powerhouses, Superman beats Captain Atom down off-screen, choking and throwing him away from the Fortress of Solitude with the fate of the hero unknown.
Wonder Woman later realizes her partner is reprehensible and tries to fight back, but Kal-El shoots her with his laser vision and slugs her away in the finale. Sadly, she never returns as well, which leaves us short-sold on a true test for the Kryptonian. All this is done just to have another reality’s Superman come in as the Hail Mary play, but ultimately, it feels like a forced trump card when many others could have tussled with him to build the sense of dread and shown he’s indeed unstoppable.
Injustice is currently available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray and Digital.
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