Superman: Doomsday (2007)

Superman: Doomsday arrived in 2007 as the inaugural entry in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line, a direct-to-video adaptation of the comic storyline in which the Man of Steel is beaten to death by a genetically engineered brute and subsequently resurrected. It sold briskly, moved roughly 680,000 units, and earned a PG-13 for its violence, a first for an animated Superman project. The enterprise is efficient, grim, and entirely uninterested in the social questions that would come to dominate the following decade. Doomsday himself appears briefly, does his damage, and exits. The title oversells his participation.

Lois Lane does the heavy lifting. She tranquilizes Lex Luthor, searches his files, and rescues hostages from a mechanical spider while the men around her drink themselves into stupors or take jobs at tabloids. Lauren Montgomery directs, and the film grants its heroine competence and screen time. None of this amounts to a thesis. It is the standard capable-heroine characterization that superhero animation had managed for years. Lex Luthor, meanwhile, runs a corporation that unearths the monster and murders its own employees, which reads as familiar comic-book villainy instead of an argument about capital. The film's moral instruction is limited to the occasional reminder that Superman protects people. It does not lecture. It punches.

What the film does not contain is equally instructive. There is no LGBTQ material, no engagement with race, no environmental concern, no body-positivity messaging, and no neurodivergent characters. The narrative follows the source comic in spirit, revising nothing. The voice cast is overwhelmingly white, with Cree Summer and Kimberly Brooks appearing in supporting roles; no casting agenda is discernible. Released in 2007, the film predates the cultural turn that would reshape studio animation's priorities, and its sensibilities belong to an earlier era of straightforward heroism. A somber, workmanlike piece, then, and a useful baseline. Future entries in this line would find other things to say.