Superman is available to stream from tomorrow, August 15, via NBC’s astonishingly expensive Fandango At Home service. And to accompany its arrival, a five-minute cartoon has been released on YouTube that features the movie’s stand-out character, superdog Krypto. It’s apparently to be the first of a few cartoons, with more due to appear next year. You can watch the whole thing below.
One of my favorite things about James Gunn’s very enjoyable Superman flick was that Krypto is never redeemed. Sure, he happens to help out in some vital moments, but it’s never through altruism or some internal sense of heroic duty–it’s cos he gets to bite someone. It must have been so tempting to include a schmaltzy scene in which Krypto is forced to choose between enjoying biting someone’s ankles or putting his own interests aside to save a key character, showing us that there’s some good in his little doggy heart. It’s so wonderful that it never happens. All his helpful moments are self-interested, and that’s a joy.
That’s not the case in this astonishingly bad cartoon. Yeah, sorry, I lured you in with a non-committal tone, but I’m woefully unimpressed with what’s been put out here. It begins correctly, with Krypto eye-zapping a flea, and then using his super-powers to terrorize an innocent pigeon, but then completely loses its way by the end as the doggo is saving a school bus out of obligation. Boooooooooo.
It doesn’t help that the entire short is derivative of Hanna-Barbera’s Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, (which I have Mandela Effect-levels of remembering being called Stop The Pigeon), yet doesn’t have the basic courtesy to even nod to this. You don’t make a cartoon about a dog trying to catch a pigeon and not tip a hat–that’s revolting.
But unlike Dastardly and Muttley, there’s absolutely nothing inventive or ingenious here–just a bunch of clumsy events that repeatedly put a school bus in peril, until its crappy conclusion. And yes, sure, I’m making a big, silly fuss about a five-minute free cartoon used as a commercial, but also, it sucks that it’s hung around the neck of such a lovely movie.
As a Brit, I don’t have access to your Fandango At Home service, but oh boy, those are some prices! You can pre-order access to Superman ahead of tomorrow for $30! I’m sure you’re used to these fees, and I imagine they’re meant to be contemporaneous prices with a couple of people going to the theater, given its still showing. Given prices on other movies on the service, it looks like it’ll be $20 just to rent–imagine Blockbuster trying that shit! Good lord. I get resentful when Amazon Prime tries to charge me £3 to “rent” a film, and then sets time limits on how long I have to finish it!
Anyway, I bet you weren’t expecting this level of complaining in a post about a free cartoon! But then, they should have made it good. In the meantime, here’s a perfect palate cleanser.
