Today, Man of Steel flies onto Blu-ray, DVD and digital download. Warner Bros. sent me a review copy of the film’s Blu-ray-DVD combo pack. As Bob Leeper already covered the film’s merits and missteps, I’ll just briefly take you through the various special features.
Journey of Discovery: Creating Man of Steel: This is the showpiece of the special features. Director Zack Snyder, stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Diane Lane and many more chime in with their observations as you watch the film. This is done in an intriguing visual format far better than the traditional “cast and crew commentary.” It’s unusual, and it looks interactive, so it’s a shame that it isn’t. But it’s still worth a look.
Planet Krypton had me excited for a moment that we were getting a serious look at the fascinating homeworld of Kal-El, but instead we got a War of the Worlds-style faux-historical broadcast. Pretty weak.
Strong Characters, Legendary Roles is another standout feature, going beyond the initial star sound bites to look at what the Superman mythology means to many, and how the cast and crew approached changing it in so many fundamental ways.
The Krypton Decoded segment talks a lot while saying very little, mostly as light special-effects-related banter between Dylan Sprayberry, the emo actor who plays teenage Clark, and VFX maestro John ‘D.J.’ Des Jardin. It barely scratches the surface of how the effects were done, dumbing down everything to a ludicrous two-step process. That’s a shame, as there was so much going on.
All-Out Action is really just a heaping helping of beefcake featuring the rigorous workout routines required to sculpt all those hot Kryptonian bods. The team behind 300‘s ridiculous riptitude does it again.
That amazing animated tribute to Supers’ 75th anniversary made it onto the disc, I’m happy to say. This will find its way to my home theater again and again.
On, and for some reason there’s a documentary about New Zealand’s role as Middle-earth in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies. Warner Bros. synergy at work!
The Blu-ray ($35.99) and Blu-ray 3-D ($44.95) combo packs and limited-edition 3-D collector’s set ($59.99, pictured at top) contain all the above features. The two-disc DVD-only set ($28.98) features only Strong Characters, Legendary Roles, All-Out Action and Krypton Decoded.
