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DVD Smallville - The Complete First Season
The venerable Superman mythos gets a 21st-century updating in this imaginative and engaging television series from the WB Network, and series fans can celebrate the ratings success of Smallville with a six-disc set that compiles its entire first season. The deluxe package offers a chance to revisit the origins of the characters and their numerous plotlines, as well as view deleted scenes and other bonus features.
The premise of Smallville--Superman as a teenager--takes up just a few pages in Superman's very first comic book appearance (in Action Comics back in 1938), but series producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar flesh out that period by portraying young Clark Kent (Tom Welling) not as the noble Superman-in-waiting, but as an average teen with some not-so-ordinary supernatural powers, including incredible strength and heat vision (Clark hasn't lifted up, up, and away as of yet). Clark's desire to fit in with his peers and make sense of his extraordinary abilities ground him in very realistic and identifiable terms for the series' primarily under-25 audience, as does his appealing and tentative romance with Kristen Kreuk as Clark's dreamgirl Lana Lang. But Smallville also strikes gold when it takes a turn towards more comic book territory, as evidenced by the parade of shape-shifting killers and other outlandish antagonists (many generated, in one of the series' most ingenious notions, by the same devastating meteor shower that brought the infant Clark to Earth) that Clark must harness his powers to face and defeat. Gough and Millar, along with their capable cast (which includes Michael Rosenbaum as a young and already bald-pated Lex Luthor, and Annette O'Toole and John Schneider as the Kents) manage to pull off the precarious high-wire act of combining science fiction with coming-of-age drama to create this highly watchable program.
Smallville: The Complete First Season offers a very complete and attractive DVD package that is rounded out by some highly desirable extras for longtime series fans. The six-disc set offers all 21 episodes of the first season, including the pilot, in widescreen anamorphic format; Gough and Millar are featured on the set's sole commentary track, which appears on the pilot episode. Viewers can also access a number of deleted scenes from various episodes as well as view original pre-production storyboards and WB promotional spots. An interactive "tour" of Smallville rounds out the extras, but DVD-ROM owners can use the discs to access more features via the Smallville web site. --Paul Gaita
Review(s): DVD Smallville - The Complete First Season
Smallville rocks!
I love it. I am a die hard superman fan and I have all the seasons now and working on getting season 5.
A sensitive new-age superhero... in high school
I had caught the occasional episode of Smallville on TV, but in no particular order. The premise was immediately obvious -- Clark Kent in his small Kansas hometown, learning to cope with his powers and to function in society. It was clear, even from my few experiences with the show, that there was a story arc, so I picked up Season One. If nothing else, I figured, seeing the pilot episode would help me figure out everyone's background. (Which it did.)
Smallville could have been lame. But it succeeds admirably well because the writers constructed characters who are thoroughly believeable even though they're put in comic-book predicaments. Admittedly, this season does have a propensity towards "monster of the week," but it manages to overcome it, because of very "human" reactions. Clark's parents are frightened about the powers their kid has, and how he can possibly create a normal life ("He woke up _floating?!_ Well, I guess he'll have to get over his fear of heights"); they also get annoyed with Clark for being an ordinary teenager who doesn't do his chores.
And, as one appreciated bit of versimilitude, the Kent Farm really operates like a farm, with daily concerns about keeping the tractor going or putting in fence line. (My husband grew up on a farm, so Kent's ability to knock in fence posts, with the ease you'd insert a bamboo skewer into a melon ball, was extremely funny. And that's just in the background of a scene.)
It's told with a wonderful sense of humor, sometimes very subtle; an irritated female classmate, encountering Clark's cluelessness about what girls want, blurts at him, "Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, Clark, but you're from some planet in a galaxy I haven't even heard of!" Yet the humor doesn't get in the way of the story; we laugh because, in some ways, we know more about Clark Kent than do the Smallville residents.
The key, though, is the inclusion of a young Lex Luthor who is adamently Clark's friend; since we know what happens to Clark in the long run, the compelling mystery is how Lex evolves from the guy with good intentions to Superman's arch-enemy.
Overall, it's a fun series to watch. I'm about to get Season Two -- and I think you'll have the same reaction.
man/superman
Never was much for the Superman legacy, but I picked up the first season of this series on DVD and fell in love with the retelling of Superman. Great to see a breath of life in this franchise.
Related DVD's Smallville - The Complete First Season
For many fans, the Superman revisionist series Smallville truly hit its stride in its second season, when it shifted focus from traditional comic book conflicts to one of self-discovery for its hero, a teenage Clark Kent (Tom Welling). Fans and first-timers can judge for themselves with this six-disc set, which compiles all 23 episodes and a decent selection of supplemental features. Whereas season 1 focused on Clark using his powers to combat a host of menaces à la the WB's other big fantasy hit, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 2 delved into Clark's past and the extent of his super powers, most notably in the back-to-back "Heat," in which he discovers his heat vision, and "Red," in which red kryptonite in the high school class rings uncorks Clark's... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 18 May 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Truth, identity, and responsibility are the cornerstones of Smallville's exceptional third season. When viewers left Clark (Tom Welling) at the end of season 2, he was feeling his oats in Metropolis with the help of a red Kryptonite ring, but by the opening of season 3, he must return to Smallville to not only help his parents save their farm, but seek some resolution in his relationships with Lana (Kristin Kreuk) and Lex (Michael Rosenbaum), who's returned from his abandonment at the conclusion of the previous season. Lex himself must deal with some shocking revelations regarding his relationship with his sinister father Lionel (John Glover, magnetic as always), and Lana becomes involved with a new figure in town, the mysterious Adam Knight (Lost's Ian Somerholder), who may... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 16 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The arrival of another gorgeous young woman with the initials of LL further complicates Clark Kent's (Tom Welling) life in the fourth season of Smallville, the WB's hip and sexy reinvention of the Superman legend. In this case, it's Lois Lane (Erica Durance), a would-be college freshman who's come to the Kansas heartland to investigate the disappearance of her cousin, Chloe. What she discovers instead is a naked, amnesiac Clark Kent in a cornfield, and things take off from there. Durance doesn't appear in every episode--she was credited as a "special guest star"--but her tough spirit and crackling wit provide a great, non-romantic foil to Clark.
That's just as well, because there's plenty of romantic triangulation--or worse--going on. Clark's former love interest--and... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 13 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Consistently solid with some major developments, the fifth season of Smallville kicks the characters off to college, but not before finishing the cataclysmic disaster that ended the fourth season. With Chloe transported to the Arctic Circle and Kryptonian supervillains in town, Clark (Tom Welling) is in the Fortress of Solitude meeting Jor-El (voiced by Terence Stamp). He gives up his powers, but to get them back will cost him the life of someone he loves.
The even bigger development is that Clark and Lana (Kristin Kreuk) finally give up their dalliances with others and become an official couple. That means the other girls in Clark's life become fifth and sixth wheels, so Chloe (Allison Mack) reveals the secret she's been keeping from Clark and becomes a best pal. ... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 12 September 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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