Max Fleischer's Superman Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Max Fleischer's Superman Blu-ray Movie Review

Superman, defeated by a bug.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 13, 2012

Superman could use his own Man of Steel to untangle rights issues that have continued to roil various multimedia releases of the iconic hero. The heirs of Superman’s original creators are still involved in incredibly contentious litigation with various parties that has put at least a temporary kibosh on the long gestating feature film reboot of the franchise. But there’s another kind of rights issues at stake with the beautiful old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from the forties. The cartoons, like most (if not all) of the Fleischer catalog, passed into the public domain, though certain assets (including 35mm masters of the Fleischer Superman fare) remain with Warner Brothers. That means that all sorts of labels have released their own “unauthorized” versions of the Fleischer cartoons, while Warner has itself released its own versions. The announcement that the Fleischer cartoons were going to finally be released in high definition caused at least a ripple of excitement through the still large Superman fan base, but a little digging into the details reveals that this release is culled from PD source elements. The problem with many of these PD releases is that whatever studio decides to spend a little moolah (and unfortunately it is too often a little moolah) to upgrade these to HD wants to protect their investment, and so they decide to “watermark” their work with logos, AKA “bugs”. And that’s one of the most distressing elements (but not the only one) in this new Superman set: every last second of all of these seventeen animated episodes has an intrusive Gaiam logo burned into the lower right corner of the image. Now to be fair it is not as intrusive as several other logos like this that I’ve experienced on other PD releases. Whoever did this made the logo slightly transparent, and so it actually almost disappears at various moments, depending upon the coloring in that part of the frame. But there are other segments where it’s not just noticeable, it either covers salient parts of the image or, in a couple of quite funny moments, looks like it’s being chased by the Man of Steel himself.

For those who have never seen any of these Fleischer Superman outings, they’re charming little entries into the Superman canon and they obviously deeply influenced the George Reeves Superman television series of the fifties. Virtually every episode sees Lois Lane storming into some hazardous activity, from which Superman must extricate her, often just in the nick of time. There’s also an emphasis on science fiction in many of these episodes, with all sorts of mad scientists (and in one especially outré outing, a “dastardly” Native American) plotting to achieve world domination courtesy of fanciful technologies.

There’s no denying therefore that all of these outings are by their very nature formulaic. We have the mad scientist or other villain (or group of villains) who routinely put Lois in jeopardy, Clark quickly changes into Superman, we get the fight scene and the rescue scene, and then Lois writes her story and thanks Superman while Clark looks on knowingly. It’s like comfort food in a way—you know exactly what you’re going to get, and that’s a large part of its allure.

The sad part in all of this is that the Fleischer cartoons are in a very real way works of Art, easily the equal of the early Disney fare, but unfortunately never having had the loving care given to them that the Disney catalog has regularly had lavished on it. Fleischer’s battles with Disney are legend, but it seems like adding insult to injury that the Fleischer Studios’ legacy has been so disgracefully abandoned when it really wouldn’t take all that much for someone—Warner or some ambitious licensor—to give these shorts the respect they so obviously deserve. We've already experienced the botched Blu-ray release of Max Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels, and this new Superman set unfortunately only continues this unfortunate situation.

Max Fleischer's Superman Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Superman is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Gaiam Vivendi with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Where to begin with this release? Aside from the intolerable "bug" in the lower right corner, this presentation has odd "tracking" issues (yes, that's not a typo, tracking issues), with clearly noticeable horizontal lines extending across the frame (see the screencap of the close-up of the "bullet car" newspaper for a great example). There's a distinctive anomaly that crops up in animated fare than has been upscaled that has been colloquially called "the jaggies" that makes line detail, whether on characters, or any number of text elements in episodes like newspaper headlines, "roll" and twist, making them look like braided ropes (I've really struggled to come up with a suitable description for this phenomenon and hope I've adequately indicated what it looks like). (Take a peek at both Superman's and Clark's arms and hands, as well as cheek lines in any number of characters, as well as the white text in the last two screencaps of the credit screens I've included with this review.) Has this actually been sourced from some old SD video elements? It absolutely looks like it at times. Colors are generally quite nicely saturated but there's a general lack of clarity, with things like Lois Lane's legs melting into one amorphous unit at times. There's also a noticeable lack of grain here, indicating some aggressive digital scrubbing. In comparing these versions to the Warner (SD) versions released on the The Superman Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray set, there has been some attempt to remove blemishes and scratches, though rather strangely there are still some fairly badly damaged moments as well, moments that could have been cleaned up considerably had they been attended to. Many of these episodes follow the PD tradition of not including complete openings and closings.

Max Fleischer's Superman Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Max Fleischer's Superman Collector's Edition features a pretty lackluster Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that often doesn't sound as good as several Fleischer shorts that have been uploaded to YouTube. The overall sound here is incredibly boxy and shallow sounding, and there are some significant synch issues, something hampered by the less than effective cutting of the real openings and closing of the shorts. "New, improved" sound effects have been layered on to several of the action elements, and they immediately jump out (not in a good way) as they're more often than not severely panned to increase stereo separation and also feature great clarity and precision, something the bulk of the soundtrack definitely does not exhibit.

Max Fleischer's Superman Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While there are no on disc supplements, the set does come with an actually very nice commemorative insert booklet which contains great background on Fleischer as well as rather long synopses of all the cartoons. The booklet in fact may be the single best reason to consider buying this release.

Max Fleischer's Superman Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You can't blame Gaiam for trying with this new set, especially since Warner seems intent on sitting on its corporate hands and never spending the time and money to properly release the Fleischer Superman cartoons in high definition. But the problem with a PD release is—well, it's a PD release, which means the label wants to protect their handiwork (read: logos AKA bugs) and the source elements are more often than not completely inadequate for a real high definition presentation. That's sadly the case with this release. I know many (myself included) had their hopes up that maybe finally some Fleischer classics would get the attention they deserve. Surely there must be some film lover out there who appreciates the Fleischer legacy and wants to preserve and upgrade it for future generations. I can think of any number of iconic filmmakers who have their own history with animation who might want to step up and help facilitate this. For the time being, my personal recommendation is simply to stick with the standard definition presentations included on the huge Superman Blu-ray set.