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Batman/Superman Movie, The
Warner Bros. // Unrated // April 23, 2002
List Price: $19.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie
The Batman/Superman Movie encompasses Superman's animated series episodes 39-41. This arc is commonly known as The World's Finest (which I shall call this from now on) and I was surprised they did not call it that for this release. This arc was originally put on television unlike many of the direct-to-video releases the Batman series enjoyed over the years. This release brings the two biggest heroes, Batman and Superman, and the two biggest villains, Joker and Lex Luthor, together into one arc.
The movie starts off with Joker stealing a green dragon in Gotham. Batman picks up a piece of the dragon and determines it is kryptonite. It seems Joker has grown tired of always being thwarted by Batman, so he decides to go to some new digs in Metropolis. First order of business is to talk to Luthor. Harley Quinn takes out Luthor's usual driver and picks up Luthor. Then the Joker joins them and has a proposition for Luthor: pay him $1 billion to kill Superman. Luthor first blows him off saying if he could not defeat a human like Batman how could he defeat a superhuman like Superman? Joker then shows him the green dragon and Luthor agrees to Joker's deal.
Seems Bruce has some business in Metropolis relating to Luthor and he knows the Joker is somewhere in Metropolis. A joint venture between Lexcorp and Wayne Industries has created robots that are able to do things that humans do. Luthor says that the military would love to get their hands on these robots, but Bruce refuses saying that he does not want these robots to be used as weapons. Bruce then proceeds to take Lois Lane to dinner and she is very smitten with him. She even talks about moving to the Gotham branch of the Daily Planet to be closer to Bruce. This makes Clark/Superman a little bit jealous, but he certainly will not stand in Lois' way if she wants to do that.
Batman meets up with Superman and lets him know why the Joker is in town. At this point Superman also uses his x-ray vision to find out that Batman is indeed Bruce. Bruce takes Lois out to dinner again, but this time the Joker shows up and kidnaps Lois as bait for Superman. Superman comes with his radiation suit on and Joker is none too pleased that Superman cheated him by doing that. The Joker finds some acid and proceeds to melt the radiation suit and the kryptonite starts to take effect. This is just the beginning of the epic meeting between Batman/Superman and Joker/Luthor. All in all this is a very enjoyable film and should satisfy anyone looking for a superhero and supervillain team-up like this.
The DVD
Video: This is presented in Full-Frame. The presentation here is actually better than in the Justice League DVD. Watching this just made me wonder where the transfer of JL went wrong. I noticed no bad effects in this transfer and since it is a newer print than the old Batman series I really was not expecting any.
Sound: Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. Directionality is used to the minimum here. The best part is in the menu where we hear the Superman animated series theme. Overall the sound is good, but not as good as many of the other Warner releases on the same day. The languages presented here are English, French and Spanish.
Menus: Simple menus with the Superman animated series theme in the background. This is another "wait too long and the movie will start" Warner releases. I find it funny that there are other releases this same day that did not have this problem.
Extras:
Joker's Challenge: You can go through 2 little semi-interactive games, picking either Batman or Superman. The first screen gives you a choice of Batman or Superman. You choose one and then you are given a situation and you have to click on the correct item on the screen at that time. Then you see a short clip part of the movie and another choice comes up. This gives some interactivity to the release.
Conversation with Bruce Timm: Short interview about the series and the movie itself. The interesting thing here is that Paul Dini created Harley Quinn and that she has gone on to star in her own comic book nowadays. The interview was not all that exciting and I would rather have had an audio commentary than this.
Art of Batman./Superman: Shows storyboards and concept drawings from the movie.
Get the Picture Batman/Superman: short and quick drawings of each character. Batman is a little longer than Superman and it is just very interesting to see how they are drawn.
Trailers: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Batman/Superman Movie (uh, why?), Scooby Doo on DVD and a trailer for the upcoming Scooby Doo movie.
Final Thoughts: Batman/Superman Movie is a good movie just from the fact that the top two heroes and villians in DC comics are all together. There was not as much switching of enemies as I would have liked to see, but what was presented here was very good. This just continues the greatness of all the animated series made by this creative team (minus Justice League). I recommend this movie for at least a rent and possibly for a buy if you are interested in these two characters. Chances are the Superman animated series will never come to DVD, but at least you can catch some of it here.
The Batman/Superman Movie encompasses Superman's animated series episodes 39-41. This arc is commonly known as The World's Finest (which I shall call this from now on) and I was surprised they did not call it that for this release. This arc was originally put on television unlike many of the direct-to-video releases the Batman series enjoyed over the years. This release brings the two biggest heroes, Batman and Superman, and the two biggest villains, Joker and Lex Luthor, together into one arc.
The movie starts off with Joker stealing a green dragon in Gotham. Batman picks up a piece of the dragon and determines it is kryptonite. It seems Joker has grown tired of always being thwarted by Batman, so he decides to go to some new digs in Metropolis. First order of business is to talk to Luthor. Harley Quinn takes out Luthor's usual driver and picks up Luthor. Then the Joker joins them and has a proposition for Luthor: pay him $1 billion to kill Superman. Luthor first blows him off saying if he could not defeat a human like Batman how could he defeat a superhuman like Superman? Joker then shows him the green dragon and Luthor agrees to Joker's deal.
Seems Bruce has some business in Metropolis relating to Luthor and he knows the Joker is somewhere in Metropolis. A joint venture between Lexcorp and Wayne Industries has created robots that are able to do things that humans do. Luthor says that the military would love to get their hands on these robots, but Bruce refuses saying that he does not want these robots to be used as weapons. Bruce then proceeds to take Lois Lane to dinner and she is very smitten with him. She even talks about moving to the Gotham branch of the Daily Planet to be closer to Bruce. This makes Clark/Superman a little bit jealous, but he certainly will not stand in Lois' way if she wants to do that.
Batman meets up with Superman and lets him know why the Joker is in town. At this point Superman also uses his x-ray vision to find out that Batman is indeed Bruce. Bruce takes Lois out to dinner again, but this time the Joker shows up and kidnaps Lois as bait for Superman. Superman comes with his radiation suit on and Joker is none too pleased that Superman cheated him by doing that. The Joker finds some acid and proceeds to melt the radiation suit and the kryptonite starts to take effect. This is just the beginning of the epic meeting between Batman/Superman and Joker/Luthor. All in all this is a very enjoyable film and should satisfy anyone looking for a superhero and supervillain team-up like this.
The DVD
Video: This is presented in Full-Frame. The presentation here is actually better than in the Justice League DVD. Watching this just made me wonder where the transfer of JL went wrong. I noticed no bad effects in this transfer and since it is a newer print than the old Batman series I really was not expecting any.
Sound: Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. Directionality is used to the minimum here. The best part is in the menu where we hear the Superman animated series theme. Overall the sound is good, but not as good as many of the other Warner releases on the same day. The languages presented here are English, French and Spanish.
Menus: Simple menus with the Superman animated series theme in the background. This is another "wait too long and the movie will start" Warner releases. I find it funny that there are other releases this same day that did not have this problem.
Extras:
Joker's Challenge: You can go through 2 little semi-interactive games, picking either Batman or Superman. The first screen gives you a choice of Batman or Superman. You choose one and then you are given a situation and you have to click on the correct item on the screen at that time. Then you see a short clip part of the movie and another choice comes up. This gives some interactivity to the release.
Conversation with Bruce Timm: Short interview about the series and the movie itself. The interesting thing here is that Paul Dini created Harley Quinn and that she has gone on to star in her own comic book nowadays. The interview was not all that exciting and I would rather have had an audio commentary than this.
Art of Batman./Superman: Shows storyboards and concept drawings from the movie.
Get the Picture Batman/Superman: short and quick drawings of each character. Batman is a little longer than Superman and it is just very interesting to see how they are drawn.
Trailers: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Batman/Superman Movie (uh, why?), Scooby Doo on DVD and a trailer for the upcoming Scooby Doo movie.
Final Thoughts: Batman/Superman Movie is a good movie just from the fact that the top two heroes and villians in DC comics are all together. There was not as much switching of enemies as I would have liked to see, but what was presented here was very good. This just continues the greatness of all the animated series made by this creative team (minus Justice League). I recommend this movie for at least a rent and possibly for a buy if you are interested in these two characters. Chances are the Superman animated series will never come to DVD, but at least you can catch some of it here.
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