Review of DC Showcase: Adam Strange

"Adam Strange" is a really new animated short film as these 16 minutes were released in May 2020. Depends on when you read this review how new it is still then. Of course this is another DC Showcase made by Warner Bros and approximately 90 seconds (or slightly less) of it are closing credits, which is a lot given the running time, but as the film starts right away, it's acceptable. The director and writer is Butch Lukic who was worked on many similar projects in the past, but not every time as the man in charge. Still his experience and also the one from his co-writer pays off and I liked the overall outcome here. It's not a masterpiece, but there is some nice retro touch to it that helped the entire thing. Does not really look 2020 and I mean that in the most positive sense possible. I gotta admit I am not too familiar with the character Adam Strange. Sorry, not a comic book nerd here. My initial connection included Dr. Strange, but then I remembered that this one had the first name Stephen if I remember correctly from the Cumberbatch movie. And he also does not seem like a brother. The only thing that seemed familiar for me was the science aspects when he does all these calculations, so science apparently helps him to defeat the villains in here. I will get to these later. But the real time aspect that is so crucial to Dr. Strange is not much of a factor, if at all. Maybe only in the sense of timing when he attacks with the perfect timing. Let's not even get started on Dr. Strangelove. Now, as for the contents here, yes, as I wrote in the title of my review, the way how he is a bum initially, gets beaten up by everybody, but then becomes a superhero basically is a bit unrealistic, but they had to fit it into 15 minutes and honestly, it's almost an impossible challenge given the running time. They still did alright taking this into account. We have a group of explorers who dig deeper than they should have and release a big tribe of super dangerous mechanical ants or something and these ant-like creatures easily kill many explorers (well, mix between explorers and soldiers you could say) right away with their superior size and kind of super toxic slime. But luckily, Adam Strange is back to his old self, finds his strength and literally takes down all these ants by himself. That was kinda cool, not gonna lie. And pretty much the main reason why I gave this one 3 stars out of 5. I guess him standing up there to save especially the two innocent females had to with his own background and those he lost. Sadly, this key story felt really rushed and I cannot use the short running time every time as an excuse, so this also could have been a 23-minute movie or an even longer one and it may have worked better. But these DC Showcases are all shorter than that. The ending with the large beam that moves him to his next challenge indicates that there could be a sequel at some point, maybe even a series. We will see about that. A close call here and there, but overall this short gets a positive recommendation from me. Go watch it. By the way, the guy who saves him early on from the guy beating him up outside the bar reminded me a bit of SLJ on the Avengers movies, not only because of his skin color. But yeah, nice reference in the end how the tables are turned in terms of who saves who. It's not an uncreative film and the plot is alright too. Go see it. Obviously not one for small children as you see some characters being killed and some blood here and there, even if the ants are almost too fast to be dangerous.