Lord
Acton’s famous dictum has been confirmed over and over throughout history: “power
tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Yet, it has never
been applied to Superman—until now. Fortunately, the baby Kal-El landed in Middle
America, a devout land governed by Constitutional principles. Suppose he landed
in Soviet Russia instead. That is the what-if alternate timeline scenario
explored in Sam Liu’s animated feature Superman: Red Son, which releases
today on DVD/BluRay.
Svetlana
is amazed by young Mishka’s powers, so she convinces the naïve boy to put
himself at the service of the Soviet state. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished
in Stalin’s regime, because the innocent woman will be condemned to a gulag for
knowing Superman before he was a symbol of Communist power. Initially, the costumed
hero follows Stalin loyally, but a challenging interview with tough-talking
American journalist Lois Lane prompts him to discover the truth—including poor
emaciated Svetlana’s fate.
Unfortunately,
Superman is not ready to embrace freedom. Instead, he stages a coup d’état, replacing
Stalin as General Secretary. With Superman literally leading the Red Army, America
is suddenly at a distinct disadvantage in the (not-so) Cold War. However,
Eisenhower has a key ally: Lane’s husband, the genius inventor and
industrialist Alexander “Lex” Luthor.
There
is a lot in J.M. DeMatteis’s adaptation of the Red Son graphic novel
that is smart and insightful. Stalin is definitely depicted as the monster that
he was, but Superman’s supposedly benign dictatorship is not much different. Lord
Acton’s warning regarding absolute power is absolutely spot-on here. The roles played
by Brainiac and Wonder Woman are also quite clever, with the former becoming
the allegedly perfect Socialist administrator and the former representing the
Amazons, who like the so-called “Non-Aligned” nations of the Cold War era,
protest their neutrality while favoring Superman’s USSR, until they can no
longer ignore the truth of the despotic regime.
This
is a Superman movie, but Luthor and Lane are the heroes. They are also the most
interesting characters—by far. The snappy voice-over performances of Diedrich
Bader and Amy Acker reinforce that brassy, Thin Man-His Girl Friday dynamic.
Red Son also offers an interesting way to observe the 80th
anniversary celebration of Batman, since he appears as a Dostoyevskian
terrorist who launches defiant assault on Superman’s police state.
Much
of the alternate Cold War timeline makes sense, but the notion of the U.S, building
the Berlin Wall to protect against Superman, probably intended as some kind of
commentary on Trump’s border wall, in fact borders on the offensive for those us
who lived through Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech. Still, the rest of the
film makes up for it—notably with positive portrayals of Ike, JFK, Luthor and
Lane, and the American military (including the Green Lantern Corps).
Recommended for fans of DC’s animation and Harry Turtledove’s alternate history
novels, Superman: Red Son releases today on DVD/BluRay.
