The Death and Return of Superman (2019)

What makes The Death and Return of Superman special is the sheer confidence of its storytelling: it takes one of DC’s most famous arcs and lets it breathe as a single, seamless feature, so the emotional fallout lands with real weight instead of feeling like a highlight reel. The action is big, bruising, and surprisingly physical for animation, but it’s the quieter stretches—Metropolis grieving, Lois Lane holding the center, friends and rivals circling a suddenly Superman-shaped absence—that give the spectacle its pulse. Jerry O’Connell brings a grounded warmth to Clark, Rebecca Romijn’s Lois has grit and heart, and Rainn Wilson’s Lex adds a sharp edge that keeps the world feeling complicated. If you’re not into intense, city-leveling superhero brawls, this may be a lot, but if you want a DC animated film that balances catharsis, momentum, and genuine affection for the myth, it’s an easy recommendation.

This movie is clearly trying to give Superman’s most famous tragedy-and-comeback arc the “complete edition” treatment, stitching two stories into one long, uninterrupted event. The upside is you get plenty of DC animated action and a genuinely weighty sense of fallout after the big fight, with Lois and the supporting cast doing solid emotional heavy lifting. The downside is that it can feel like a marathon of punches followed by a checklist of plot beats, with the middle section crowded by multiple “replacement” Supermen that don’t all get room to breathe. If you want a tight, character-driven Superman film, this may feel overstuffed and repetitive, but if you’re here for a faithful, high-impact comic-book saga with relentless momentum, it mostly delivers.