Superman movies soundtrack very mediocre.

[Smokey]

Recently had a chance to watch Superman movie I, II, III and audio quality on these discs leave alot to be desired, especially on II and III. The soundtrack was flat, and dialog was not the best I have heard.

Supposedly a new deluxe edition of Superman movies will be released soon (for promotion of new superman movie), and hopefully new soundtrack will be added to these discs.

[Woochifer]

These are old DVD editions (dating back to 2000) that will be replaced with new two-disc editions in conjunction with the release of Superman Returns. Hopefully, with the Superman series Warner will do the same boxed set treatment as they did with the recent Batman reissues, where they cleaned up the video, upped the DD bitrate, included a DTS track, and brought in all kinds of new bonus features.

But, IMO the biggest news with the upcoming Superman reissues is the inclusion of the previously unreleased Richard Donner footage from Superman II. This topic has been discussed previously.

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=13861
http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=15964

Another topic I've brought up many times in the past is with the Superman II and III DVDs. Those DVDs are a sore spot with me because they were theatrically released in 70mm, which meant that a six-track version of the soundtrack was produced for those 70mm prints. Yet, the DVDs only included 2.0 Dolby Surround tracks. Along with the absence of bonus features on those DVDs, that's why I never purchased those titles.

The original Superman: The Movie DVD was pretty decent IMO. The soundtrack dates back to 1978, but the fidelity and surround imaging are pretty good for a soundtrack of that vintage. (Just compare this soundtrack with Star Wars) That DVD is the only Superman title that got remixed for 5.1 (the movie was released in 70mm, but I believe that it originally used five-screen channels, plus a monophonic surround channel, so it got remixed for split surrounds). The bonus features and the Donner commentary are also very good, and the isolated John Williams score (in 5.0 audio) is another great feature. My primary criticism of that DVD is that Warner went with a lower bitrate 384k DD track for both the 5.1 movie soundtrack and the 5.0 isolated score. With the 384k soundtracks, the overall surround effect tends to sound a bit bloated with slightly less coherent imaging.

[Smokey]

Hey Wooch

I did read your post (links) when you posted it while back about Superman I director Donner, and his outtakes of Superman II. It will interesting to see how his vision of Sup. II differ from director Richard Lester. Seeing Sup I and II, one would notice that Sup. I use lot of wide angle [outdoor/indoor], while II had more “intimate” look to it.

Sup III try to inject humor in between with Richard Pryor, and it did work in some level, and
sometimes it didn’t.

As you said, the audio lean toward mono (due to low bitrate), and probably revisit the new
edition of these movie. And hopefully include a DTS track also :D. Do you know if they are going to remaster Sup I soundtrack also, or just II and III?

Thanks.