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Justice League: Season One -Warner Brothers (2001)
Summary The Justice League FINALLY deals out some justice on DVD. My Thoughts After too long of a wait, Justice League has finally been released in its proper form as a full season boxed set. While this is a welcome development for fans of the series, it isn’t without some minor flaws. Before I start complaining, let’s look at what’s good about this release. Justice League: Season One begins with the three part opener that I’ve reviewed before in a previous release (go here for more details on the plot in that review), then continues with the rest of the episodes that all play out in two half hour segments. After seeing the first mini-movie again, I realize that it really hasn’t held up to my expectations for the rest of the series. It’s still good, but thankfully there are much stronger episodes in the rest of this set. In particular, “Injustice for All” is one of the standouts, because it is the first time this version of the Justice League squares off with an evil superhero group. It also features the Joker who’s a villain that was used sparingly in the series and wasn't available for Justice League Unlimited. It’s in these two episodes that I realize how badly he’s missed in the rest of the series. Other notable episodes include the cool Twilight Zone-like “Legends” that features slightly changed classic DC heroes like the original Green Lantern in a crazy old school comic book world. Perhaps the best episodes are the capper for this edition. In the excellent three part alternate history tale, “The Savage Time,” the Justice League goes back in time to battle in World War II in order defeat a super Nazi. There’s no beating a great time traveling Nazi fighting superhero story, unless it involves Godzilla somehow. The first part of “The Savage Time” is almost nearly watching for the cool Batman armor alone. With that being said, the first season of The Justice League is arguably its worst. However, the even the weakest of the episodes aren’t all that bad. “War World” was particularly annoying because of some pretty poor writing. It was obvious that Superman alone was to fight the alien badass and that makes sense. For the aliens to use Martian Manhunter as monster chow is ridiculous, because he’s so freaking powerful. They add a line about there being “something in the atmosphere” to explain why he’s not in top form, but it’s a pretty sad excuse to get him out of the picture. Thankfully, the second half of the story is much better. The rest of the characterizations of the heroes are great with the most notable weak point being Hawk Girl, who doesn’t really become a dynamic character until she loses the hawk mask later in the series. To be fair, the creative team actually started using The Martian Manhunter in more of a capacity than a punching bag in some of the later episodes. I also found myself really enjoying some of the stuff the creators did with Wonder Woman, who frankly I didn’t care much for before this series. The only things that really got to me were real nerdy nitpicks like the fact that most of the time Flash runs around really fast doing nothing to the bad guys until he gets knocked on his ass. The picture quality is leagues (no pun intended) better than the Superman volumes and previous Justice League release I reviewed. Hell, it exceeds most DVDs I watch in general. My main gripe about this set is that Justice League is not in 5.1 surround. This is pretty much inexcusable these days, since the show has always seemed to skew an older demographic who actually cares about such things. How much effort would it have taken to mix these shows in 5.1, seriously? The 2.0 mix is good for a 2.0 mix if you don’t care about modern day surround sound mixes, but I expect a lot more for a thirty dollar set. With that being said even this set is still totally worth purchasing for any Justice League fan out there. Let’s hope that the next season set will improve upon this already decent release.
Extras The Justice League: Season One extras are spread over the four discs. It’s not a whole lot, but it’s a hell of a lot more than I’m used to with the Superman releases. “Inside the Justice League” is a great Q&A session with the creators of the series. “The Look of the League” is a mini-doc that goes into greater detail on the design of the heroes. I bet you can’t guess what the featurette, “Storyboards: The Blueprint for Justice” is about. Best of all, the feature “Justice League: The First Mission” talks about and shows a test reel of the series that features a more kid friendly team. There’s also about three commentary tracks and if there’s anything that I could ask for on the next release, it would be for more of these insightful gems. Score: Episode Average: 8.0 Extras: 7.5 Edition: 7.5 -Paul
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