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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2017 - 9:22 AM
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By: |
CCW1970
(Member)
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I can briefly tell you the differences in the timings. The theatrical version ran 127 minutes. The version currently available on DVD/BR runs 143 minutes and this "new" version, which aired on television years ago but has never been available on DVD or Blu-Ray, runs 188 minutes.
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The theatrical version of the film has always run 143 minutes. The 127-minute version appeared on the film's first videocassette release, which was shortened to better fit on a single cassette. No actual story material was cut from this release. Instead, the film was "time-compressed" by speeding up the opening credits and scenes with no dialogue, and the film's closing credits were omitted.
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Now I'm confused. So how long is the mid-length version currently/commonly available on DVD and Blu-Ray?
The Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition (DVD) which came out in 2006 has two versions of the film. First is the original theatrical version, which runs 143 minutes.
Then there is the "Expanded Edition," which runs 151 minutes. That cut is being termed the "Special Edition" on this upcoming Blu-ray.
A few years after its theatrical release, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind pieced together a much longer version of the movie - without any input from Richard Donner - for international release. When ABC obtained the rights to broadcast the film, they took the Salkinds' "international cut," trimmed a few scenes, and aired it as a two-part, two-night movie event. That is the never-before-released 188-minute version called the "Extended Cut" on this upcoming Blu-ray.
Here's the story behind the 151-minute "Expanded/Special Edition": In 2000, Warner Bros. invited Donner to create a new, spiffed-up version of the film. The film print was polished (while, mercifully, leaving the original special effects alone), the soundtrack was remixed in Dolby 5.1 (with some new sound effects replacing old ones that were no longer usable, which caused a bit of a stir among fans and purists), and a handful of scenes (chosen from the 45-some minutes of added material which had previously appeared in the international and ABC edits) were fully restored and edited into the film.
The intent was to give the film a special edition theatrical re-release, as had been done for STAR WARS in 1997. The plans fell through, however, and Warner Bros. instead used this version of the movie for their first DVD release of the title, which arrived in stores in 2001. (It did make it onto a few big screens on the revival circuit, but never got the wide release that was intended.)
I saw this "Expanded/Special Edition" cut at Arclight Hollywood, with Donner doing a Q&A after the film. He remarked at how great the score is, how happy he was that the film still holds up for an audience, but did say he thinks it's too damn long.
He also insisted Chris Reeves would walk again, as he has such tremendous spirit and strength. Alas, that didn't happen.
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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2017 - 9:34 AM
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By: |
CCW1970
(Member)
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As someone who was there, I can confirm much of what has been stated about the original STM mix.
In 1978 I worked at the Northpoint Theater in SF. This was cinema expressly designed to showcase widescreen, stereophonic epics. It had a compact , single seating section, with no balcony 900 or so seats. It had a trapezoid(?) shape with one LARGE surround speaker on the left and right walls, and one below the projection booth. Dolby Labs, headquartered in SF, used it as their venue to test out their equipment . Needless to say the sound was state of the art.
SUPERMAN opened in Dolby Stereo. The processing didn't work properly. Both the front left and front right contained dialog tracks. With such as wide screen the effect was terrible!!!
Fortunately, a 70mm print arrived which had spectacular sound. During the end credits I would go and sit front and center to listen to John Williams music. It sounded as if one were at a live symphony (three tracks)/
I won't swear to it, but I remember split surrounds, at least during the destruction of Krypton. Now, It is possible that the mono surrounds were slightly out-of-phase to create a 'stereo' effect.
btw THE WIZ played before SUPERMAN and it too had a Dolby Stereo soundtrack that was almost entirely mono. SO, yes Dolby had its problems in the early days even with their techs on the scene.
Bruce
Really interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I remember when the film was first released, at 8 years old, thinking the tag line "You will believe a man can fly" was silly. But, when the film was released, my brothers, sisters and friends took up a whole row at the Aurora, IL West Plaza cinema. It was in the biggest of that cinema's three screens, which featured the exact surround speaker set up you describe. That screen had three huge Altec Lansing "Sound of the Theater" speakers, one on each side, and one below the projection booth (and three behind the screen).
We saw it at least three or four times during the initial release. I recall it sounding really great, probably because I had just started noticing the difference between mono and Dolby Stereo. My older brothers were hi-fi geeks, and pointed this out starting with Star Wars the year prior. Of course, now I'm a hi-fi geek 
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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2017 - 9:51 AM
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By: |
1977
(Member)
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It's the bitrate. DTS-HD MA is about 5x what those old PCM tracks could do. That was the one advantage they lost after Dolby Digital got phased out.
But yeah, the actual source is lossy by default being several generations removed, so no degree of audio resolution is going to help much, if at all.
Ok, I see what you are getting at, although to be honest, I wouldn't call the S: TM optical track used for this new release a "lossy" source, as it's analogue all the way, but yes, it could be called "lossy" in the sense that it has dated fidelity and a limited dynamic range.
By the way, when did Dolby Digital get phased out?
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I think he scored a slightly longer version, but certainly not the whole three hours hence the tracking. It's obvious that the cut he scored had a longer Krypton sequence, for example. It seems that the theatrical version was set before the scoring sessions began.
Am I misunderstanding this? BEFORE THE SCORING SESSIONS BEGAN?!
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I think he scored a slightly longer version, but certainly not the whole three hours hence the tracking. It's obvious that the cut he scored had a longer Krypton sequence, for example. It seems that the theatrical version was set before the scoring sessions began.
Am I misunderstanding this? BEFORE THE SCORING SESSIONS BEGAN?!
Hard to know, but some sequences must have been locked down when John composed the music otherwise the score wouldn't match the scenes. According to the liner notes, John conducted to the film starting in the summer of 78, also pick-ups in September, October and November. So he must have scored a version close to the theatrical cut.
It's not hard to know, you just have to know where to look. "The Making of Superman the Movie" is a good place to start. Someone transcribed the whole book for us and it's online.
All the schedule reshuffling and the new delivery date of "Superman" called for delicate tightrope-walking by many key people on the film who were committed to other projects now imminent. For a tense week or two, it looked as if composer John Williams would have to bow out. John had screened a rough assemblage of the picture in early March, but many essential scenes were still incomplete— and John likes to work from a finished print. Returning to London at a later date seemed out of the question, as he had been booked to score several other films that would pose a conflict. But after talks with the Warner people, Donner and the producers, Williams agreed to juggle his schedule, start working on the film from the story boards, and come back in July to record with the London Symphony Orchestra, as he had done with "Star Wars."
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Williams clearly scored something longer than the theatrical cut, but shorter than the TV cut (which has a lot of material in it that is just footage and nothing more). What he was working on was also probably changing a bit as well, and some stuff was changed after the score had been recorded. Also… and this is really important… some parts of the film would have been locked earlier than others.
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