Let's start with the two features that are the bottom feeders (at least in terms of box office receipts) in this set:

Daredevil was so critically panned upon its release that it may well have jeopardized future Marvel adaptations. The good news is, the film isn't quite as bad as a lot of scuttlebutt would have you believe. The bad news is, it's not much better than the scuttlebutt. This "new, improved" director's cut, at almost two and a half hours, proves that you can indeed have too much of a mediocre thing.

Actually, my gut instinct is if Daredevil had preceded Spiderman, it may well have been better received. Having had the misfortune to arrive shortly after the first visceral Spiderman feature, however, it just seems patently derivative. Instead of a tortured hero suffering the slings and arrows of a mutant spider bite, we get an equally tortured hero suffering the travails of a horrible childhood blinding. In both films we are treated to an adult drawn to a stretchy red costume (though truth be told I think the choice of vinyl for star Ben Affleck's getup in Daredevil may be a singular reason the film elicited such an "eww" factor upon its release), who is able to perform acrobatic sleights of hand (and feet) that boggle the mind. Of course our hero fights for the underdog while attempting to bring down the kingpin of New York's Hell's Kitchen crime syndicate, suitably named, well, Kingpin. There's the formulaic love interest, though at least Jennifer Garner gets to assume superheroine status herself as the nascent Elektra (see below).

In the film's plus column are a striking visual design, especially in the "radar vision" scenes which are filmed with a literally cool blue filter, as well as some good supporting performances, especially by formulaically kidding sidekick Jon Favreau as Affleck's non-superhero life law partner. It's also a bit refreshing, in perhaps a slightly ambivalent way, to see a superhero suffering wounds from his fights and having to gobble down Percodan to numb the pain. In the minus column is virtually everything else, from a too-dark palette (are we supposed to feel blind as well, I wondered throughout the film's impossible to discern nighttime scenes), an episodic screenplay that doesn't even attempt Screenwriter 101 "arc-dom," and some embarrassing overacting by the usually brilliant Colin Farrell, as one of the two main bad guys in the film. Even the stunts seem lethargic at times, something deadly for a film that depends on gasp-inducing fight sequences. The film just limps to its purported "climax," with no real buildup and therefore no real release. This expanded director's cut also features several subplots cut from the theatrical release, but they reveal nothing and, aside from Coolio's affably comic presence, add little to the finished product.

Video: A generally nice, if often too dark, enhanced 2.35:1 transfer is offered. There's simply not enough contrast in the frequent dark scenes, most likely intentional considering the hero's blindness, but really annoying nonetheless.

Audio: A wealth of soundtracks are offered: English DTS 5.1, DD 5.1 and Spanish DD 2.0. All offer excellent separation and fidelity, with the omnipresent sound effects nicely detailed throughout. There are also English and Spanish subtitles.

Extras: A brief featurette is offered which is refreshing in its honesty as it recounts how flawed the original release of Daredevil was and which details some of the differences between the original version and this extended cut. Producer Avi Arad is here on record repeatedly asserting he prefers speed over quality (well, maybe not quite that explicit, but close). There's also a commentary featuring director/screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson and producer Avi Arad.

Elektra, the quasi-sequel to Daredevil (though Affleck is nowhere to be seen), actually fares much better than might be expected, and not just because Garner looks considerably more attractive in a stretchy red suit than does her beau. Though her "previous" life in Daredevil is at least alluded to, Elektra is pretty much a standalone feature, and builds a convincing mythology while unfolding a nice "passing the torch" scenario that very wisely incorporates Oriental martial artists themselves into Elektra's storyline, a fighting style that is obviously at the heart and soul of Elektra's quick kicks and acrobatic sleights of fist (though there's an obvious tip o' the Stetson to the western with the way Elektra twirls her scythes and places them back in her hip holsters--one almost expects her to blow the smoke off of them at times).

After a voiceover prelude detailing the eternal battle between good and evil, and then picking up at least a little while after Daredevil left her for dead, Elektra deals with its heroine's repressed memories and her anger issues as it shows her being dismissed from the "fighting for good" martial arts academy headed by Stick (Terrence Stamp), who just happens to be blind (what is with blind guys and Elektra, anyway?--but this does set up a little Daredevilish misdirect when Stick is revealed to be sightless). When she, in her guise as a hired assassin, is sent on a mysterious mission only to find out her neighbors are her target, she rebels, especially when she finds out a pseudo-Yakuza group known as The Hand (that would be the guys fighting for evil, in case you haven't guessed) is trying to get her previous targets. That sets up the bulk of the second half of the film, with Elektra and her charges, including a spunky teen named Abby (Kristen Prout, in a very appealing performance), on the run as The Hand sends a trio of frankly pretty groovy baddies after them. In fact, it's a little ironic to see a malevolent trio out for the heroine in a film with Stamp, since Stamp was part of the evil triumvirate himself in Superman II. Two of these three villains offer some of the most impressive CGI effects in this film, with Tattoo's skin art coming impressively to life and Typhoid's ability to kill everything in her path handled beautifully in a scene where she walks through a forest.

The film is undeniably escapist fare, with the occasional mostly hilarious attempt at profundity ("You must let go of yourself completely," tutors Elektra to Abby as she teaches a meditation technique. Pause. "It's really hard."). But simply comparing the mostly listless Daredevil, which certainly had no greater ambitions than this film, with Elektra, shows what a difference there can be in two films with much the same background and generic similarities. Though Garner is hampered by a character who is by design emotionless, she actually manages to imbue a little humanity into Elektra, at least in those moments when she's not kicking some serious butt. I for one was quite pleasantly surprised by Elektra.

Video: As in its precursor, Elektra sports a 2.35:1 enhanced transfer, though (my eyes! my eyes!) you can actually see this one. Excellent use of an at times subdued color palette with some very crisp and clear detail make Elektra a lot of fun to watch.

Audio: Both an English DTS 5.1 and DD 5.1 track are offered, both with absolutely excellent fidelity and separation. You can almost feel the metal of Elektra's blades when the sound of her unsheathing them spreads out over the channels. Ther are also English and Spanish subtitles available.

Extras: A couple of by the numbers featurettes, including a Making Of and a more interesting Editing piece are offered, as well as deleted scenes, and, most interestingly, Jennifer Garner's appearance at Comic-Con.

The rest of the boxed set (with the exception of the bonus DVD and CD-ROM, dealt with below) ports over the previously released X-Men Trilogy and two Fantastic Four (so far) films. Fantastic Four is an enjoyable romp recounting the genesis of the superpowered quartet. How many variations on the "exposed to some alien something that mutates people" trope can Stan Lee and Company come up with? Lots, evidently. This time we have a mysterious space cloud that our intrepid astronaut heroes come in contact with, morphing them into creatures who can stretch themselves, become invisible, turn into a flying flamethrower, and become something akin to a giant moving mountain. Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm (AKA The Thing, the aforementioned mountain creature) is the most fun character in this exercise, if only for his curmudgeonly demeanor. Grimm is not happy to have transmogrified into this ogre and his palpable dislike for his new form makes for some of the best comedy in the piece. While Jessica Alba is photogenic and spunky as Sue Storm (AKA the Invisible Woman), it was actually Chris Evans as her brother Johnny (AKA The Torch) who appealed to me most after The Thing. With his surfer-dude persona perfectly melded (or should that be melted?) to his superhero antics, Evans makes The Torch a sort of lovable goof who can't quite believe he's able to perform such "kewl" feats. Frankly, Iaon Gruffudd's Reed Richards (AKA Mr. Fantastic, the rubbery guy) was a bit too generic for my tastes. The CGI wizardry to make Richards stretch to and fro was visually amazing, but the character underneath was strictly plastic. Also generic was the villain of the piece, Dr. Victor Von Doom (Lee's character names are never known for their subtlety), who, like our heroes, is also exposed to the cosmic cloud and morphs into super-baddie Doom. Julian McMahon does what he can with a character that mostly struts and threats, but there's not a lot to work with.

On the whole, however, Fantastic Four is exactly what a big budget summer blockbuster should be: fairly mindless, with a lot to look to at and some great action sequences. The special effects, always a must for these kind of features, are exceptional, suitably cartoonish (and I mean that in only the nicest way), helping to bring these comic characters to a reasonable facsimile of life. If you accept The Fantastic Four on its own merits, you most likely will not be disappointed.

Video: The enhanced 2.35:1 transfer is excellent, with deeply saturated color and contrast. The film, which relies so heavily on CGI, looks, well, fantastic.

Audio: As usual with this set, you get an English DTS 5.1, DD 5.1 as well as a Spanish DD 5.0, all sporting superb separation and fidelity. There are both English and Spanish subtitles available.

Extras: All of the extras from the previous release have simply been ported over: a commentary by the stars, a sort of fun hectic "video diary" showing them in support of the opening, deleted scenes, a making of featurette, a Fox Movie Channel piece on the casting, and another Fox Making a Scene feature. There are also some music videos, the trailer and teaser, and what was then a sneak peak at X-3.

Unfortunately the magic wears a little thin in Rise of the Silver Surfer, the second feature in the Fantastic Four oeuvre. Growing up I always thought the Silver Surfer was far and away the coolest ever Marvel superhero--agonized, distant, mysterious, and just incredibly cool looking on his spaceboard zooming to and fro from various galactic adventures. Though the CGI Surfer looks suitably sleek in this feature, the film loses a lot of momentum setting the Surfer up as the putative bad guy, when anyone with any sense of proceedings like these is going to know going in that that can't possibly be the case. By the time the Surfer's real motives are revealed (honorable, if slightly misguided), a lot of time has flown by without a lot happening.

The real fun of Silver Surfer is seeing the screwball antics of the Four when their powers gets switched after Johnny's initial interchange with the Surfer alters his molecular structure (it's amazing any of these Marvel superheroes have any molecules left, considering how much they're constantly changing). This sets up some running gags as Johnny and his Four cohorts unexpectedly "flame on" or become invisible, or, in one of the coolest transformations, become Thing-like.

All told, however, there's just a bit too much of a "been there, done that" feel to this second adventure that leaves the entire proceedings feeling fairly lethargic. By the time Doom shows up to draw the Surfer to the dark side, it just seems like a virtual retread of every superhero movie you've ever seen, albeit with a really cool CGI surfer-dude center stage.

Video: While the enhanced 2.35:1 image is certainly excellent, it suffers from some of the darkness, especially in the space scenes with the Surfer, that Daredevil does. That said, the bulk of the feature is bursting with excellent color and sharp detail.

Audio: English 5.1, and French and Spanish 2.0 soundtracks are offered, all with top-notch fidelity and separation. There are some nice sound effects accompanying the Surfer. There are English and Spanish subtitles available.

Extras: Not much here compared to the first outing in the series. There's simply one commentary track by director Tim Story and another featuring producer Arad with the writer and editors. Also, if you want to stretch things a little (irony intended), there's the full screen version of the film on the dual sided disc.

By far the best batch of films in this set is the mostly exemplary X-Men Trilogy, for which I think we mostly have ace director Bryan Singer, helmer of the first two, to thank. Need I say that the film involves genetic mutation? This time, we have a whole gaggle of folk, evidently the next chain in mankind's slow, tortuous evolutionary process, all of whom have remarkable new powers and most of whom soon gather at the school of telepath Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, as commanding as ever). Though the one complaint some people may have with this film is its somewhat heavy handed and too obvious handling of those who are opposed to the mutants on moral grounds (Sen. Joseph McCarthy and/or anti-gay activists, anyone?), the film actually paints a surprisingly deep and emotionally resonant picture of supposed outcasts and the slings and arrows they suffer at society's hand. Mix in a truly stellar and actually almost sympathetic bad guy (Ian McKellen, every bit Stewart's acting equal as Magneto), who has his own tortured backstory, and you have all the elements of a truly spectacular superhero franchise. In fact, X Men's rave reviews and boxoffice receipts were largely responsible for the slew of Marvel adaptations (including some of the less successful ones noted above) which followed.

X-Men sets up an epochal struggle between Xavier's students, whom Xavier is hoping to educate to use their powers "only for good" (could it possibly be otherwise?), and Magneto, a mutant who has come to the conclusion that only if mutants take over the world will their futures be safe. Played out against this basic conflict are the personal subplots of Xavier's followers, notably in this first feature Anna Paquin as the tormented Rogue, who tends to kill anyone she touches, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, the Edward Scissorhands of the mutant society. The massive set piece at the Statue of Liberty which is the climax of this episode also provides some stupendous visuals and visceral sound effects that help explain why this first X-Men set boxoffice records around the globe, and assured at least one sequel.

X2: X-Men United picks up the Magneto-Xavier conflict from the first feature, but adds a new, almost Matrix-like wrinkle as new bad guy, government op William Stryker (Brian Cox), gains control over Xavier's mind in an attempt to commit genocide on all mutants, exiling Xavier to a thought-world of his own. Several new mutants are introduced in this second feature, notably Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), who, truth be told, bears a certain resemblance to Tattoo from Elektra (above). The interesting development in this feature is the growing split among the mutants themselves--some are firmly with Xavier, hoping to achieve peaceful co-existence with humans, others, having seen the world governments' nefarious attempts to target and identify them (possibly as a first step toward eradication), feel a mutant-human war is the only possible "final solution." X2 is that very rare sophomore effort that loses little if any steam from the first feature. Singer has an extremely firm hand on the character development here, and his visual sense, as always, is immediately striking and frequently gasp-inducing. While some people evidently had some problems with the "false reality" segments Xavier finds himself in, there is enough transitional information imparted that some momentary confusion should be cleared up for most discerning viewers within a scene or two. The evident death of one of the main mutants provides a bridge to the final installment of the series.

X-Men: The Last Stand suffers just a bit by being helmed by Brett Ratner, who substitutes a great deal of flash and style over the substance of character development with which Singer imbued the first two features. The plot this time hinges on a supposed "mutant cure," which suppresses the mutants' various powers. This now adds an interesting third layer onto the conflicts which have made up the first two episodes. We now have mutants, like Rogue, who feel (perhaps logically) that they could survive better without their powers which can be a double-edged sword. Then there are the armies of Magneto, who believe the "cure" is simply a shortcut toward eventual mutant eradication. Ratner and the screenwriters attempt to duplicate the first feature's knockout Statue of Liberty denouement, this time placing the climax at Alcatraz, where the pharmaceutical company making the mutant vaccine has its headquarters (funny, I didn't see that on the island tour I took last year). While the sequence is visually arresting, the subplot of Wolverine and the supposedly dead mutant from the second episode is brought to a too obviously heartstring-tugging conclusion, which leaves an otherwise exciting moment feeling like it's the victim of a major buzz-kill.

The X-Men trilogy is, overall, one of the most satisfying triptychs of film superhero-dom yet, in some ways actually superior to the Spiderman movies. The depth and breadth of the various characters portrayed, as well as the metaphors (some a bit on the obvious side) of our modern lives, make these films the highlight of this set.

Video: All three of the X-Men features offer superb enhanced 2.35:1 transfers. The palette on all three features is decidedly on the cool blue side, especially in scenes featuring Rogue and Wolverine. There is some spectacular CGI throughout this series, and it is all rendered with pristine clarity.

Audio: All three features offer extremely robust DTS 5.1 and DD 5.1 mixes, full of literal whiz-bang separation and fidelity. Most of the X-Men's superpowers are accompanied by auxiliary sound effects, with some emphasis on the subwoofer that will occasionally get your floor vibrating. X-Men offers a French language track; X-2 offers only a French alternate track; and X-3 offers French and Spanish. All three have subtitles in English and Spanish.

Extras: The first feature fares best in the extras department, with deleted scenes, a Charlie Rose interview, a making of featurette, Jackman's screentest, some storyboards, an art gallery, animatics, and the expected trailers. X-2 offer two commentaries, the more interesting by director Singer and cinematographer Newton Sigel, the other by the writers and producers. X-3 offers a pretty tame commentary by Ratner and the writers, another producer commentary, and some deleted scenes, including three alternate endings (with optional commentary), none of which address the fundamental hokeyness of the Wolverine moment described above.

Boxed Set Extras: These are admittedly slim, but will probably appeal to some potential buyers. There is a bonus DVD of four episodes from the new animated Fantastic Four series (full frame, of course). There is, perhaps slightly more interestingly, a CD-ROM recreating a Silver Surfer comic, and miniature reproductions of two X-Men comic books, as well as something they call a "custom designed lobby card," but which looks suspiciously like a postcard to me.

Final Thoughts:
There's probably not enough here to encourage previous buyers to double-dip, especially those who sprang for the deluxe 2 disc versions of several of these features. That said, if you only have one or two of these and want a solid, relatively bargain priced collection (in space saving slimline cases), this isn't a bad set, with only Daredevil being more or less totally lamentable. This would have been a Collector Series title if it had included the Spiderman franchise; as is, I recommend Marvel fans who either haven't seen all of these or want a one-stop shopping collection to check out this new set.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet