The Corner Penthouse

Warner Brothers recently released the Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The Complete Franchise Blu-ray. Read on to find out more about it...

[ SYNOPSIS ]

Five courageous teens from all over the world are brought together to embody the power of the elements and protect the planet. With their powers magnified, the Planeteers can summon Captain Planet to help because "saving our planet is the thing to do!"

[ EPISODES ]

The 9-disc set includes all 113 episodes of the 1990-1996 series under both titles, Captain Planet and the Planeteers and The New Adventures of Captain Planet. Episodes run around 23-minutes each and none appear to be edited; though maybe "The Dream Machine" in Season 3 because it's 50-seconds shorter than the rest that season. The case interior provides an episode list, which I've scanned in and is displayed below.


[ SPECIFICATIONS ]

The show is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The show is Not Rated. Audio languages include English. Subtitle languages include English SDH.

Video quality is a mixed bag. All 113 show openings and end credits, as well as various shots from every episode, are taken from SD sources and upscaled to HD. Just from fast forwarding through every episode, I would estimate that it's 85% true HD and 15% SD upscales, including all openings and closings. I can only guess that the reason for this is because the team at Warners had to use master tape sources for the footage that was missing from the original film elements. I can only imagine how difficult it was to piece together the episodes like this. Yes, it's annoying to see a quick drop in image quality throughout the episodes, but I was actually surprised that there even was HD-quality materials available for this series.

[ SPECIAL FEATURES ]

There are no special features.

This is a HUGE disappointment given that Shout Factory's 2011 Season 1 DVD set included "Your Powers Combined: The Story of Captain Planet" (a 27 minute look at the creation of the series with interviews from various cast and crew), seven concept art galleries, 20-minutes of animated storyboards for "A Hero for Earth" (the first episode), and a minute-long Captain Planet Foundation promo.

If it wasn't bad enough that all of those extras are missing (Warners owns the artwork and could have licensed the featurette), there is an even greater item that SHOULD have been here: The original pilot (and the next five episodes) with Tom Cruise as Captain Planet. While I can't talk about episodes #2-#6, the pilot still exists. It was posted on September 15, 2015 to the official Captain Planet Facebook page with this description: "25 years ago, We had our first Eco adventure - now, see the never before seen pilot episode of Captain Planet starring Tom Cruise as Captain Planet and Nicole Kidman as Gaia." As explained by the admins in the comments, Tom and Nicole "were not put in the credits at the time as it was just a pilot - the names there are for the union voice actors." In case it gets taken down from Facebook, I have archived the original 640x480 file below.


Additional extras I would have liked to have in this set are the Funny or Die 2011 spoof with Don Cheadle as Captain Planet, and the Rick and Morty episode "A Rickconvenient Mort" (featuring Planetina), but those are more adult-orientated fare. Although adult collectors are the real target audience for this set, I'm sure Warners wanted to keep everything suitable for kids.

[ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ]

No digital copy code voucher is included. All nine discs are in one case, with each disc on its own page. I have no issues with this packaging. Very well done. Another nice touch is that each season is color-coded to one of the Planeteers' powers.

[ NOTES ]

Captain Planet: The Complete Franchise is available on Blu-ray and DVD. The DVD supposedly presents the episodes as 1.33:1 pillarboxed into a 16:9 frame instead of proper 4:3 fullscreen, which tells me that it's the Blu-ray HD masters downsampled to 720x480. With that in mind, I'd recommend the Blu-ray.

Seven years ago, I wrote about the inside jokes in the Season 5 episode "Hollywaste" on Spook Central. Since the Blu-ray gives me the opportunity to replace the video clips and images in that article with better sources, it has just been re-posted.

This item has been provided by Warner Brothers for review on this site.