"Millions under siege. One Superman to save them."
Superman: Unbound is an animated adaptation of the 2008 comic arc Superman: Brainiac due to be released in 2013. Voice actors include Matt Bomer (White Collar) as Superman, Castle stars Stana Katic and Molly Quinn in the repsective roles of Lois Lane and Supergirl, and John Noble (Fringe) as Brainiac.
This movie provides examples of:
Adaptation Distillation: Unlike the comics where the bottled city of Kandor is kept by Superman because he could not restore it to full size, the end of the film sees Kandor restored on a new worldnote probably because Metropolis was also bottled and restored in the film and the writers would have otherwise had to explain why one city could be restored and the other one left out.
Actor Allusion: At one point, Clark is suspected of being gay. Matt Bomer in real life is homosexual.
Animesque: It's subtle, but a number of the action scenes have a clear anime influence.
Apocalypse How: Brainiac vaporizes worlds once he's done with them, or destroys the local star. He didn't bother with Krypton because it was going to go up by itself.
Big Brother Is Watching: Brainiac constantly monitors all activity within his bottled cities, dispatching drones to curb any subversive conversation or actions.
Brought Down to Normal: Superman loses a good amount of strength due to Kandor's artificial red sun. He keeps enough to make a successful escape attempt, though.
Casual Danger Dialogue: Lois has a constant line of snark for her hostage takers in the opening.
Combat Tentacles: Brainiac's harvester ship has them, both outside and in.
Conservation of Ninjutsu: One Brainiac probe is a mildly difficult opponent for Superman before he knows what it is. He mows them down in droves after that.
Conspicuous CGI: Not as blatant as some instances in the DC animated line, but vehicles such as the helicopters in the opening scene are noticeably CGI.
Does Not Know His Own Strength: Lois lampshades this in regards to Supergirl as she takes out the thieves in the beginning, even using the trope name word for word.
Enhance Button: Consciously averted with Perry asking how far an image could be zoomed in before loss of detail.
Eye Scream: Brainiac having his eyes replaced with cybernetic ones in the opening sequence.
Fish out of Water: Supergirl, who showed up on Earth a few months ago well into her teens. For example, she finds the idea of eating pigs off-putting.
Fridge Horror: Supergirl fighting all those foreign terrorists, dictators, and slave runners might make their home country's government very hostile.
A God Am I: As Superman points out, Brainiac arranges his collection according to each city's former placement in the galaxy...with himself at the center.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Brainiac's decision to spare Krypton because it was going to explode anyway ultimately doomed him. More generally, Superman escapes Kandor by destroying the drones sent to stop him then hitching a ride when they're beamed out for repairs.
Holding Out for a Hero: Perry speculates that attempting to make humans self-sufficient may be the reason Superman has been gone for weeks.
Men Are the Expendable Gender: No women are seen harmed or killed on screen. We clearly see probes going into Superman's skull complete with blood, but when we see probes about to go into Supergirl's ears, the scene cuts just before it happens.
My Skull Runneth Over: Brainiac hooks Superman up to his archive and starts downloading, betting that Superman's brain would liquify after only one world. Superman then beats Brainiac by taking him out of his ship, overloading him with the constant shifting data of a living world which he so desperately tries to contain in his bottled cities.
In a blink-and-miss scene, Superman stabs Brainiac with two electrical cords just like he did in the Smallville episode "Arctic".
Superman fought a large white space monkey.
Kara wears a brunette wig and glasses like in Superman: The Animated Series. She briefly don this disguise in the comics.
Jimmy Olsen wears a bowtie. His crushing on Supergirl.
Neck Lift: See Orifice Invasion below, which naturally lends itself to a lot of examples of this trope.
Never Grew Up: The people of Kandor (and the other cities) haven't aged since they've been taken. The shielding may have stunted their growth. After being free, they likely can age normally.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Superman's eyes glow red when he's readying his heat ray vision, or often just when he's really pissed. Brainiac's eyes are always red, but they glow more brightly when he's angry.
Reflective Eyes: The helicopter chase reflects in Supergirl's eyes.
Shoot the Hostage: Bizarrely, the police in the opening have zero problem shooting at the thieves while they're using Lois as a hostage. The ringleader actually points this out, figuring they must not be on good terms.
The Stinger: Brainiac's cube boots up in the Fortress of Solitude.
Super OCD: Brainiac Up to Eleven. Due to what Zor-El believes to be a bug in his programming, he must learn everything in the universe...but since intelligent beings are constantly changing, he destroys their planets and keeps what he does collect artificially stagnant.
Teens Are Monsters: When Supergirl and not Superman comes to rescue Lois at the beginning of the movie, Lois points out that her kidnappers should be very afraid, given their opponent is an entity with all the strength of Superman along with...the hormonal angst of a teenager.
Tempting Fate: Ma Kent points out that Superman probably acts the way he does because he's afraid of history (i.e. the destruction of Krypton) repeating himself. Cue the appearance of an envoy of the guy who stole Kandor...
Thou Shalt Not Kill: Played with in some of the exchanges between Superman and Supergirl, with the latter strongly implying she's willing to use her powers to kill if necessary. (Later, when we hear of her taking on Somali warlords, it is taken as read that she isn't necessarily letting the bad guys walk away.)
Superman said that he would free them and find new planets for them to live on. He probably did that after defeating Brainiac.
We don't know if Kara is reunited with her Black Best Friend. Or if the other Argoans who joined Zor-El and Alura are still alive.
Wrong Genre Savvy: The thieves in the beginning think they've got their escape all planned out, having timed their heist to coincide with a natural disaster elsewhere in the world so Superman will be occupied. They neglected to read about the second Kryptonian, and Superman shows up anyway.
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