News Smallville complete series finally coming to blu-ray

You can see the shield underneath his shirt before he rips it open in the final shot of the episode.

Possibly because there is an officially released version of the pilot which actually combines Pilot and Metamorphosis into one ep.

 

That was from his podcast interview. And, yeah, good for him at the time.

Aye, one thing I could never get over was that despite all the scenes of characters walking around the school and its hallways, I think we only saw the inside of a classroom once in the first three seasons, during the heat wave episode, and that was about a substitute teacher flaunting her looks, nothing academic. Obviously, scenes of high schoolers doing homework isn't the most exciting thing, and there was that episode about the class president race, but they could have done a bit more with the setting - a subplot about a school play, a debate club, etc. With 20+ eps per season, not every story needed to be about a meteor freak, or Lex's past catching up with him.

 

Loving the Superman comics and movies as a kid, I adored "Smallville", almost from day one. I did skip the first season, initially fearing it would be a shameless copy of the 1980s "Superboy" show, which I had also liked. But mostly on a whim, I watch a couple of reruns during the hiatus, before the Season 2 premiere...and after that, I was hooked. I watched almost every episode live afterward, recording them to VHS so I could re-watch them later (ah, the good ol' days). I bought the DVDs when they came out, and watched them on a fairly regular basis.

When I heard the series was coming to Blu-Ray, my inner fanboy cheered. I waited a couple of months, to see if the price would come down, then finally took the plunge and bought it anyway. I have to admit that since so much of the show remains burned into my mind, I haven't actually watched a lot of the newer discs yet...but there's no way I'm getting rid of them. I also got to meet some of the actors at past conventions, including John Schneider, James Marsters, Phil Morris, Justin Hartley, Sam Witwer, and Laura Vandervoort (the latter of whom is a total sweetheart, by the way). Some of them signed a few of my official companion books for the show, and Laura even added horns and a tail to the image of Lex on the Season 7 book's front cover. She told me, "If you ever meet Michael, he'll know for sure who did that."

 

The higher the resolution on these collections, the older Ma and Pa Kent look.

 

Meh. I’m getting older too, so they look relatively the same.

 

Are there companions of season 8-10? Because I can't find them

 

When the show started in 2001, John Schneider was 41, while Annette O'Toole was 49. Their characters' ages shifted though, over the course of the show. Various episodes suggest that Martha and Jonathan were both born in 1961, sharing the same class at Metropolis University. This would make them both 28, when the first meteor shower hit Smallville in 1989. When Clark starts high school in 2001 (twelve years later), this would make them both 40. Mr. Schneider's overall appearance and mannerisms matched that pretty well, but with Mrs. O'Toole it was a different story. In Season 1 her hair seems to be (partially) dyed, but as the series goes on it gets grayer...even though she's not even supposed to be 50 yet. So the actor/character disparity was a little more obvious in her case. Some will point out that Tom Welling was 24 playing 15 at the time, but since the role was based on Superman you could essentially "cheat" a little bit, and still have it be believable.

 

Unfortunately not. Titan Books owned the rights back then, and I guess the Season 7 book didn't sell well enough for them, so the rest were cancelled.

 

I would replace "Ma and Pa" with "Tom Welling".

 

Glenn Ford was 62 in 1978.

Did they make him look 30 years younger for the beginning when the truck fell on him, or thirty years older for the middle during his heart attack?

It's not that Tom and Annette look young or are young, it's that they looked half as old as any one else who had ever played the same parts.

 

Fair point - I just brought it up because it struck me as kinda odd, re-watching some of the earliest episodes.

As for Glenn Ford, I did bring him up to John Schneider. He didn't address the age difference, though I do remember reading once that Jonathan and Martha were purposely made younger for "Smallville", because the producers thought older parents wouldn't be able to relate to Clark so well. Where they got that impression, I have no idea...but in this case the show did seem better for it.

On a related note, I mentioned Jonathan's heart attack in Season 5, comparing it to Glenn Ford. I asked John if that conclusion for Mr. Kent was his choice or the producers'. He said, "Actors don't have choices; we are props being moved around on the set." That remark struck me as rather unhappy at the time, but I've seen more recent interviews, and he seems to have lightened up a bit about the whole thing.

 

The show was also highly praised for many things - the writing, acting, effects, etc. But I think one aspect that's often overlooked, is that almost every episode contained at least one song from a then-rising artist or group. Its almost like those in charge did it on purpose, to see how many fans would notice.

This clip is from the end of the Season 4 episode "Run", that introduced Kyle Gallner as Bart Allen, one version of The Flash. The song played is called "Feels Like Today", by country trio Rascal Flatts. I loved both the episode and the song so much at the time, I bought the album it was from...and over time, I just became a loyal fan. While the performances of both Gallner and Tom Welling are great in this moment, I personally think the addition of this particular song gave it a very special touch.

 

And now I miss the show again

 

Don’t see why this is an issue of any kind—my wife’s hair was “going grey” in her mid-20s (and she’s hardly alone).

 

I was mainly mentioning it as a fairly inconsistent plot point. But from the real side of the proverbial coin, I know every person's story is different. For example, my Mom passed from lung cancer in 2015, and her hair was still mostly brown.

 

I started going grey when I was in high school, I think my mom pointed out my first grey hair when I was like 15 or 16.
As for Smallville, I watched the earlier season for a while, and then came back for the later seasons, and really enjoyed it. It was actually my introduction to the DC Universe, and since then I've become of it.

 

The producer and some of the actors have gone on record, to say that in their opinion, a lot of the comic-based media industry wouldn't have exploded without "Smallville". The only recent examples back then were the first "Blade" and "X-Men" movies; "Spider-Man" was almost a year away.

 

Twaddle!

Season One may have been Riverdale, but that audience didn't stay.

My mum watched a bit of 7 after Kara shows up, after I left home, and then she says to me "it's really good, you you should watch to too" without grasping the fact that she was watching Superman.

 

I never saw any of "Riverdale", so I don't understand the connection you're making. All I heard about that show was about it being a drastic reinvention of the "Archie" comics, and I never read much of those anyway.

Yeah, the show had a lot of really great moments, where you could get emotionally involved and almost forget it was based on a comic book. Laura Vandervoort did a great job that season, and she's still one of my favorite actors that I've personally met.

 

Every story where the hero can't make his mind between a superhot brunette and a super hot blond is Riverdale.

Every story where the hero can't make his mind between a superhot brunette and a super hot Red Head is Gilligan's Island.

Every story where the hero can't make his mind between a superhot redhead and a super hot blond is Spider-Man.