Review: 'Smallville' has never looked better than on Blu-ray

Posted Wednesday, October 20, 2021 at 3:57 PM Central

by John Couture

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this news story. The opinions I share are my own.

The first superhero movie that I ever recall watching as a child was Richard Donner's 1978 film Superman. At five years old, this film introduced me to the world of comics as Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman thoroughly entertained me.

It wasn't perfect, but it was darn near as close to perfection that we will see for many, many years. But even as I watched this thrilling film, I was left with a bit of longing in my young heart for the "lost years" in Superman's journey.

Decades later, enter Smallville.

I get it. I quickly learned that film's old trick of the montage is a valuable tool to communicate large chunks of plot and exposition in a short period of time. In Hollywood, time is literally money, and looking back, I'm surprised that we got as much time with a young Clark Kent that we did.

But, I always wondered what those years of self-discovery and fitting in would be like and how Clark managed to deal with his duality in such a small town. Yes, we got pieces of this to further the plot along and get Clark to Metropolis as soon as possible, but I always wanted to know more.

In 2001, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar finally satiated my curiosity when they debuted Smallville on the WB. A relatively unknown cast at the time including Tom Welling, Erica Durance, Kristin Kreuk and Michael Rosenbaum would change TV forever and help to answer all those questions I had been holding for over 20 years.

It's wild to think that it's also been 20 years now since that first episode of Smallville debuted on October 16, 2001, but here we are. It's pretty much impossible for me to put into words what this series meant to me at the time and in the years since, but suffice to say, I'm not the only one whose life has been transfixed by this show.

The groundbreaking, Emmy-winning 10-season hit that redefined the origins of the world's greatest hero is all here - from Krypton refugee Kal-el's arrival on Earth through his tumultuous teen years to Clark Kent's final steps toward embracing his destiny as the Man of Steel. Relive a decade's worth of thrills in fantastic adventures full of action, heart and humor in abundance, all anchored by the marvelous performance of Tom Welling at its center. Savor again the series' thoughtful and imaginative integration and reinvention of the iconic characters of DC Comics lore. And let your spirits be lifted up, up and away.

Up until now, the complete series of Smallville has only been available on DVD. In fact, only Seasons 6 through 10 were ever released on Blu-ray as single-season offerings. I'm sure that this odd dichotomy has to do with the CW's (the defacto channel that Smallville aired on after The WB and UPN merged in 2005) decision to air their programs in high-definition. Up until then, The WB wasn't broadcasting in HD, so the HD masters for seasons 6-10 already existed which made converting them to Blu-ray must easier and quicker.

So, this week's release of the entire series of Smallville on Blu-ray is the first time that anyone has seen seasons one through five in anything other than standard definition. If you need a reminder of how dreadful SD was, check out the season one teaser trailer above.

Yes, it was pretty bad.

Now, there were upconversions available in streaming in recent years, but this offering is the first time that we are getting true 1080p transfers from the original negatives of the first five seasons. To say that they look breath-taking would be an understatement. There's a reason that every network now broadcasts in HD and the comparisons are like night and day.

Now granted, many blu-ray and 4K players attempt to upconvert DVDs, but they can only be successful to a certain point. Trust me, comparing the DVDs from the first five seasons to the Blu-rays is like comparing apples to oranges. Not only are the images crisper, but the color gamut is wider and while the blacks and color balancing isn't up to par with HDR and 4K, the show has never looked better.

And don't even get me started on the audio.

My biggest complaint about the existing DVD complete series was that the audio was all over the place. Seasons one through three were in stereo while seasons four and five were in English 2.0. Thankfully seasons 6-10 were in Dolby Digital 5.1 again thanks to the original broadcasts being in HD. But, the audio on the Blu-ray set is even better.

The entire series is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, so not only does the first half of the series sound more amazing than ever, but now the entire series is presented in the same video and audio formats so that it feels more cohesive. There was nothing more jarring than going from season five to season six and noticing the massive bump in quality in both and sound and video.

Really, the only negative thing I could say about the Blu-ray offering is that there are no new bonus features. Warner Bros. basically repackaged the existing DVD set's features on this collection and, sadly, they are on two DVDs. But, the quality of the set on Blu-ray as a whole makes it worth the upgrade.

There is new content out there as evidenced by the 20th Anniversary Celebration at DC FanDome, but timing surely prevented them from including this on the physical offering. Who knows, maybe future editions will include this awesome retrospective including stars of the show.

Believe it or not, 'tis the season and for the Smallville die-hard fan in your life, I can't think of a better gift than Smallville: The Complete Series on Blu-ray. They will thank you and you will give them over 173 hours of Superman goodness in their life.

Smallville: The Complete Series is now available on Blu-ray.