Releases - DVD - Justice League: Season One
Announce Date: 12/7/05
Street Date: 3/21/06
Closed Captioning: Yes
MSRP: $44.98
Packaging Type: Digi-Pack
Subformat: Multi Disc
Media Quantity: 4
Disc Configuration: 1) 9-Dual Layer 2) 9-Dual Layer 3) 9-Dual
Layer 4) 9-Dual Layer
Sound Track Language: English
Run Time: 575 minutes |
Subtitles:
English, Francais, Espanol
Aspect Ratio:
Original Aspect Ratio - 1.33, Standard [4:3 Transfer]
Sound Quality:
|
Episodes:
Disc 1 -
Secret Origins Part 1, Secret Origins Part 2, Secret Origins Part 3, In
Blackest Night Part 1, In Blackest Night Part 2, The Enemy Below Part 1,
The Enemy Below Part 2
Disc 2 -
Injustice for All Part 1, Injustice for All Part 2, Paradise Lost Part
1, Paradise Lost Part 2, War World Part 1, War World Part 2
Disc 3 -
The Brave and the Bold Part 1, The Brave and the Bold Part 2, Fury Part
1, Fury Part 2, Legends Part 1, Legends Part 2
Disc 4 -
A Knight with Shadows Part 1, A Knight with Shadows Part 2,
Metamorphosis Part 1, Metamorphosis Part 2, The Savage Time Part 1, The
Savage Time Part 2, The Savage Time Part 3
Special Features
• Audio Commentary: The Enemy Below, Pt.2 Audio Commentary: Audio
Commentary with Bruce Timm- Producer, James Tucker- Producer, Glenn
Murakami- Producer, Rich Fogel- Producer & Dan Riba- Director
Audio Commentary: Legends, Pt.2 Audio Commentary: Audio Commentary with
Bruce Timm- Producer, James Tucker- Producer, Glenn Murakami- Producer,
Rich Fogel- Producer & Dan Riba- Director
Audio Commentary: The Savage Time, Pt.2 Audio Commentary- Audio
Commentary with Bruce Timm- Producer, James Tucker- Producer, Glenn
Murakami- Producer, Rich Fogel- Producer & Dan Riba- Director
• Interviews:
- Inside Justice League: A private panel discussion takes
place between Bruce Timm and his team of creators about Justice League
with some special surprises.
- The Look of The League: Bruce Timm explains character design of
Justice League.
• Storyboards: Storyboards: The Blueprint For Justice: The creative team
of Justice League discuss storyboarding process.
• Other: Justice League: The First Mission: Watch this exciting "Never
Seen Before" promo which helped Justice League leap into action. |
Official Synopsis: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash,
Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl: they have all used their
unique powers to fight evil across the galaxy. These 7 super heroes
unite to become the Justice League. These 26 adventures feature battles
with favorite villains like Lex Luthor, Vandal Savage and sorceress
Morgan Le Fey. Acts of justice include saving Aquaman from a coup and
clearing Green Lantern's name in a charge of genocide. From the smash
hit TV series, these triumphant tales of teamwork will enthrall and
inspire!
Review: The complete first season of Justice League
arrives on DVD in a four disc set, but whether this is a good or bad
thing is really up to your opinion of the shows first season. While I
was extraordinarily excited to see the premiere of Justice League
(to this day I remember watching the premiere with ex-World’s Finest
admin “The Flash” and our comments on how strange this all looked, being
the first all digital DC toon), the first season proved to be a
tumultuous ride. Quite a few episodes held plenty of enjoyment (“Brave
and the Bold”, “Injustice For All”, “Legends”, “A Knight of Shadows”,
“Savage Time”), but there were others that are considered some of the
worst, by fans standards, that are hard to overlook (“War World”,
“Metamorphosis”…”War World”).
Still, even with the hard-to-stomach episodes, this season does provide
its fair share of action. If you keep in mind that this was the Timm-verse
teams first foray into such a large roster of superheroes, they can’t be
expected to get it right the first go around. Indeed, the second season
of Justice League was much improved over the first, with a few design
tweaks (goodbye old Superman!) and with more fleshed out characters.
Even if you don’t ignore the few lackluster story arcs in this first
season, there is still plenty of fun to be had.
Regardless what you think of the season, you have to hand it to Warner
Home Video for releasing the entire first season on four discs. This is
only the second DCAU animated show to get such treatment (BTAS being the
only other four-disc releases) and they really seem to have gone all out
on this one.
The packaging for this release is somewhat of a shocker. Instead of the
full four-digi tray layout that B:TAS received, we get the dual layer
trays this time around. I personally love this style of packaging; it’s
clean and a lot smaller, so it takes up less shelf space. It features
less in-box art as well, which also saves on production and release
time. Some will be disappointed, but I personally love it. It looks
great.
Menus on this release are wonderful. The main menu is animated with
music and all sub-menus feature different League poses and model sheets.
It’s got a cool look to it and is definitely a pleasing sight to see
when you first pop the disc in.
Video and audio are a mixed bag on this release. Because of its pristine
digital animation and color, compression likes to dance around during
the more intense action sequences and interlacing is always a pain in
cartoons. Even worse is the fact that the transfers from the single disc
releases were reused here. The horrible “Paradise Lost” and “War World”
transfers with their incredible amount of interlacing are present and
make for an uneven package. Flipping over to disc three and checking out
“Fury” and seeing it in beautiful glory without the excess of
interlacing is a sight for sore eyes, but I’m still disappointed in the
lazy copying and paste job from earlier releases. Aliasing is a major
issue on some of these episodes, as is the intensity of Superman's red
cape (watching "The Savage Time, Part 2" showed a lot of ugly aliasing
and some blocky red on Superman), but it's usually quick and not too
distracting.
The video is presented in the 4:3 framing that it was animated in. While
fans wanted the 16:9 “preferred framing” versions (preferred due to the
story boarders and directors animating in fullscreen but making it so it
framed up better in widescreen should it be bordered), WHV went ahead
with the fullscreen transfers for this release. Luckily, Justice
League season two and all of Justice League Unlimited, both
animated in widescreen, will be released in widescreen when they hit DVD
in season sets. I personally wanted the full screen transfer, if only to
have all the animation, even if it’s just sky and boots that are
missing.
Audio is in a strong 2.0 stereo mix. Not a bad audio transfer by any
means, though there isn’t really anything too special in here. The theme
certainly sounds good blaring over the speakers though.
The three audio commentaries featured on this set are all very
informative, though one has to wonder why they didn’t choose to talk
over the premiere episode of the series. The “Legends” commentary is a
particular treat because I absolutely love that story. Fans will
complain that they don’t talk over both parts of the episode, but as
they’ve proven on STAS episodes, they can pretty much condense
all their thoughts of an episode arc into one commentary. In addition,
they often talk over their favored episodes in the multi-part arcs
(hence why “Savage Time” part two has the commentary).
Also of note is in “The Enemy Below” commentary, they tackle the issue
of Justice League in widescreen. The mandate for season two being
released in widescreen on DVD is even stronger after listening to this
commentary.
“Inside Justice League” is a great featurette that features the
producers of Justice League. Jason Hillhouse is back moderating
and does a great job asking questions and setting everyone up for some
informative talk from the creative team. A lot of the information most
fans will know already from browsing the internet, but it’s nice to have
it one, tight package.
“Justice League: The First Mission” features an intro by Jason
Hillhouse, James Tucker and Bruce Timm explaining how this early footage
was created. While many thought that it was just the repeated easter egg
of the original JL pitch and others hoping it was new—well, you’re both
right. This pitch, while featuring all the footage from the previous
easter egg version, features new footage that throws in a female Cyborg
character, Impulse and even Robin into the mix of the Justice League.
It’s certainly a lot of fun to watch, though you have to be glad that
this isn’t what eventually came out (as even Tucker and Timm will
attest).
Looking at the rest of the special features, you can probably already
deduce that they’re repeated special features from the single disc
releases. While the Bruce Timm episode intros are not to be found on
this release, “The Look of the League” and “Storyboards” are repeated
special features from the single disc outings. This is nice for those
who didn’t purchase the single disc releases, but disappointing for
those who already saw them the first go-a-round.
Overall a solid release of Justice League’s first season. It’s always a
shame we can’t get more commentaries on the set, but what’s here is
satisfying to me. It’s just nice to be getting all of the DCAU on DVD
after all these years of waiting. |
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