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Reviews - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
All-Star Superman
Street Date: April 18, 2023
Studio: Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment
Run Time: 76
Rating: PG
Press Release: Click here!

Synopsis: Grant Morrison's beloved, Eisner Award-winning vision of Superman's heroic final days on Earth is brought to exquisite, animated life in All-Star Superman. The film begins as the Man of Steel rescues an ill-fated mission to the Sun (sabotaged by Lex Luthor) but, in the process, is oversaturated by radiation - which accelerates his cell degeneration. Sensing even he will be unable to cheat death, Superman ventures into new realms - finally revealing his secret to Lois, confronting Lex Luthor's perspective of humanity, and attempting to ensure Earth's safety before his own impending end with one final, selfless act.

Special Features:
-The Art of the All-star Adaptation (New Featurette)
-An All-Star Salute to the Silver Age Superman (New Featurette)
-Superman Now (Featurette)
-The Creative Flow: Incubating the Idea with Grant Morrison (Featurette)
-Audio Commentary - Featuring the thoughts of Bruce Timm and Grant Morrison.
-Digital Comic Book - All-Star Superman
-Trailers and Previews

All-Star Superman 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Review by James Harvey

Nicely timed for Big Blue's 85th anniversary, Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment has finally released the acclaimed DC Universe Movie title All-Star Superman to the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format, and the results do not disappoint. Nearly all the bonus features from the movie's original Blu-ray release over a decade ago are carried over here in addition to a small batch of new extras. For those who haven't yet added All-Star Superman to their home media collection, patience has paid off!

Just to quickly note, this review is focused on the actual 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release for All-Star Superman. For thoughts on the movie, click here. In short, All-Star Superman holds strong more than a decade after its original release, and this new release is a great reason to revisit this fantastic film.

Taking a look first at the audio and video quality for this release and, unsurprisingly, Warner Bros. has put together a really good presentation. Here, All-Star Superman gets a brand-new 2160p HD transfer upscaled from the original standard HD source and, all in all, it looks good. There's no jump in detail, but colors jump a little more and the blacks are much deeper in comparison to previous presentations. Any issues with the transfer, such as any macroblocking and banding - are not noticeable and essentially nonexistent. Even if it's not demo quality, it still blows the original 1080p presentation out of the water.

The audio transfer here is strong but ultimately a little lacking. Warner Bros. uses the same DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track as used in the 2011 Blu-ray which, while a commendable effort, ends up a little disappointing. All-Star Superman really could've benefitted from a new mix for its 4K presentation - though what's here is ultimately a fine piece of work - to properly round out this updated presentation.

When it comes to bonus features, All-Star Superman is fairly stacked, though the majority of the content is repeated from the movie's original 2011 release. Despite adding up to a few hours of extras overall, only 15 minutes consist of new material for this release.

Starting with new featurettes, "An All-Star Adaptation (7:57)" and "An All-Star Salute to the Silver Age (7:57)" provide a broad overview of both the animated movie and the Superman comics of the Silver Age. Featuring director Sam Liu, producer Bruce Timm, composer Christopher Drake and character designer Dusty Abell, in "Adaptation" they all touch upon their roles in the adaptation's production, how they shaped it into a 75-minute movie, and even some feedback they received on it. These four names pop up again in "Silver Age" where they essentially talk about Silver Age comics and how that all factored into All-Star Superman. They're brief but provide some good insight and commentary on the source material, inspirations and decisions made when adapting the acclaimed comic series.

The above features are exclusive to the 4K Blu-ray disc, with the remaining content spread out over the 4K disc and regular Blu-ray disc. Included on both discs are audio commentary, the "The Creative Flow: Incubating the Idea with Grant Morrison" featurette, the "Superman Now!" featurette and an All-Star Superman digital comic. The remaining extras, all repeated content, can be found on the Blu-ray disc and consist of a Green Lantern: Emerald Knights extended preview, two bonus episodes (Superman: The Animated Series "Black from the Past, Part One" and Superman: The Animated Series "Black from the Past, Part Two" ) and an assortment of trailers and previews. A closer look at the 2011 material can be found here.

And, to wrap with a random (and extremely tiny) nitpick, this 4K Ultra HD edition of All-Star Superman is for some unexplained reason released under the DC Animated Movie banner, despite originally being a DC Universe Movie. Does this movie "count" for both separate home video lines now? It's either a puzzling choice or a baffling mistake, one of the two. Also puzzling are the missing letters on the back cover's description text.

All things considered, Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment has put together a pretty strong package for All-Star Superman's debut on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. Not only is All-Star Superman a genuinely great movie, but the studio's 4K format release is also a good overall effort, despite a small nitpick here or there. The new bonus content is a nice treat, in addition to porting over all notable extras from the 2011 iteration, and the audio/video presentation is quite excellent thanks to the new transfer. Die-hard fans and new viewers should unquestionably pick up this release, though fans already owning the 2011 release can easily wait for a price drop. Highly Recommended!

Note: The iTunes edition of All-Star Superman has been updated to include the new bonus features created for the film's 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release. See images below:



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