Blu-ray Set Review: 'Superman/Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut/Superman Returns - Triple Feature'

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© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Superman, the Superman logo and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics


On May 15, 2012, just as director Zach Snyder's Man of Steel reboot was entering its post-production phase, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. re-released three of the earlier films in the Superman franchise, all of which were connected with director Richard Donner in some way.in a Triple Feature Blu-ray bundle. This collection consists of Superman: The Movie (1978), the 2006 reconstruction of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, and director Bryan Singer's "soft reboot" Superman Returns, which is set in the same "universe" depicted by Donner and ignores the misbegotten Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. 

 As is often the case in the home media distribution business, this Triple Feature bundle is only a good deal for consumers who had not previously bought the three Superman films' individual  Blu-ray disc (BD) releases. Unlike, say, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's 2011 Star Wars: The Complete Saga or Paramount Home Media Distribution's 2014 Star Trek: The Compendium, this set has nothing new to offer for Superman buffs who already own the 2006 BD of Superman: The Movie (which is the Expanded Edition released half-a-decade earlier on the then-new DVD format and not the original 1978 theatrical release), the Richard Donner Cut of Superman II, which was also released in '06, and 2008's BD of Superman Returns, which ended the "Donner cycle" of Superman films, albeit with a different cast and production team.

The best of the bunch, of course, is Superman: The Movie's  2006 BD; it has the best picture quality and an awesome 5.1 sound mix. It helps, of course, that Donner's first Superman film is also the best of the four movies which starred the late Christopher Reeve as the eponymous main character.

A runner-up for best Superman film of the three presented here is Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut. As most Superman fans know, Donner filmed the first two films in the series simultaneously because the producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler intended to release the two films within a 12-month period. Production delays and stresses between Donner and his employers had already delayed the release of Superman I - which Warner Bros. had planned as a Summer of '78 blockbuster - so Donner was asked to speed things up by marrying the proposed "turning back the world" sequence intended for Superman II to a quickly-devised ending for Superman I.

 To make matters worse, not only did the Salkinds change the structure of Superman: The Movie, but they also fired Donner before he finished Superman II, which was 75% complete. A replacement director was hired, but in order to get credit for Superman II, Richard Lester scrapped much of the pre-existing material and replaced it with his own stuff. The footage that Donner shot with Geoffrey Unsworth was then locked away in the Warner Archives and not released until an Internet campaign by fans convinced the studio to allow editor Michael Thau and Richard Donner to reconstruct Superman II's original version for a DVD release.

Because the footage in Superman II: The Richard Donner comes from different sources, including a screen test for Superman I and material from Lester's officially released version, The Richard Donner Cut has an uneven picture quality but great sound. It's not as good as Superman I, but it is a better sequel than the one that Warner Bros. released in theaters in the summer of 1981.

As for Superman Returns? 

 Well, it's better than Richard Lester's Superman III and Sidney J. Furie's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but it's arguably the weakest film in this BD bundle. I'm not saying that Bryan Singer's soft reboot of the "Donner Cycle" is unwatchable; Superman Returns feels like a reasonable sequel to Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut and takes some of its cues from it.

But as I wrote in my review of the 2006 film, it's a somewhat disappointing last chapter in this iteration of the Superman saga:

 “Superman Returns” is dutifully reverent to its source, even to the point where certain lines of dialogue from “Superman: The Movie” are reprised verbatim. And yet, the film has a mix of seriousness and sense of melancholy that robs it of the kinetic energy that any good comic book adaptation needs.

 If you already own the 2006 Blu-rays of Superman and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, as well as the 2008 BD of Superman Returns, this set is superfluous. It has no new extras or new commentary tracks; it's just a repackaged bundle.

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