X-Men-The Legend of Wolverine

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	Main Menu Audio & Animation Menu Audio Scene Selection Anim & Audio Featurette-Who is Chris Claremont? Audio Commentary-The Power Behind The X Featurette-Stan Lee's Soapbox
Rating
Year Of Production	?
Running Time	75:39
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Spanish Dutch English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Out of the Past, Part 1 - This episode involves the character Deathstrike, who discovers a mysterious alien spacecraft in the underground tunnels. She devises a trap to lure Wolverine to the spacecraft in order for him to gain entrance into the spacecraft using his claws. There is a history between Deathstrike and Wolverine that I will not go into here, but that was probably the most interesting aspect of the episode. In any case, the trap ends up with Wolverine opening the spacecraft and setting loose an alien monster.

    Out of the Past, Part 2 - This episode takes up just as the alien monster is released. This episode involves quite a few more of the X-men, including Professor X, Beast, Cyclops, and Jean. All I can say is that if the costume that Jean wore in this episode found its way into the movie versions, the rating might jump up a notch. In any case, all the X-men pull together to fight the monster and save the day.

    Nightcrawler - This episode has Wolverine and a couple of friends on a skiing holiday, and shows how they get involved with the Nightcrawler. This episode seemed rather religious to me, and I was a little uncomfortable with the preachy nature of the dialogue in some instances. It discusses in depth issues such as loss of faith and prejudice.

    Lotus and The Steel - This episode begins with Wolverine sitting down with Professor X and discussing his psychological issues; rage, previous encounters, and even his love for Jean Gray. To try and find some peace within himself, Wolverine travels back to Japan to find his former master. There he finds peace in living with the monks and helping them build their temple. A gang of bandits rises to attack the village and monks, and Wolverine joins them to fight off the attackers. This episode had a number of flashbacks to previous episodes, so at least made some semblance of bookending the collection of episodes.

    The animation certainly isn't state of the art (Animatrix this is not). But for a television cartoon for kids, I'm sure it'll keep the little ones happy. For everyone else, this is strictly for die-hard fans only.

Video

    Sharpness levels throughout the presentation are mediocre at best, with some frames particularly blurry. The opening downward pan at 1:07 and a scene a little further at 1:29 appear visibly out of focus. What is strange is that on some occasions, blurry scenes are following by one or two frames that are quite sharp. Shadow detail really didn't factor too much into the equation during the feature, and black levels were sufficient. There were some dark scenes, but I do not think we are missing anything that the animators drew.

    The episodes certainly are colourful. Right from the opening credits the various colours fill the screen, but sometimes it is excessive and over-saturation is the result. Luckily I could not detect any colour bleeding. I believe most cartoons are far too colourful these days, and it could have been turned down a notch in the transfer.

    Film artefacts abound in the transfer, with a multitude of black and white flecks fairly constantly on display. Kids will most likely not even notice, but to people who are used to viewing nice clean DVD transfers, this will come as quite a distraction. I could not detect any instances of aliasing or edge enhancement.

    English, French, Spanish, and Dutch subtitles are provided along with an English subtitle stream for the Hearing Impaired.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue is always clear, with the usual lip synching problems apparent in TV animation.

    The music is quite loud, but that should not come as much of a surprise for a kids action cartoon. Surround activity is limited to supporting the music, with no other real effects coming from the rears.

    The subwoofer is not called into action at all. What with the explosions and fighting in the episodes, some low level activity would have been nice, and could have been used to enhance these scenes (eg. the avalanche scene).

    The pseudo audio commentary is described in the Extras section below.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Who is Chris Claremont? - 15:06

    A TV interview with Chris Claremont, who discusses his involvement in the comics and how he started out at Marvel.

The Power Behind the X

    What appears to first be an audio commentary turns out to be simply Chris Claremont jumping in every five to ten minutes with one or two minutes of discussion regarding the different characters and their characteristics. Personally I had no idea what he was talking about, so am sure this extra is strictly for well-read X-men fans.

Stan Lee's Soapbox - 5:18

    Stan Lee discusses his original concept for the X-men, and how he came up with the idea. He also discusses the development of the storylines and their parallels with events happening in the world today (eg. bigotry, prejudice, and so forth).

    X-men: The Legend of Wolverine is a fairly good combination of episodes from the X-men TV series that feature Wolverine. It would have been nice if the episodes showed a little more of his past, but most kids would simply love this. All-in-all, I think this is a disc for those with kids that are really into the X-men, or for die-hard fans.

    The video quality is mediocre at best, and suffers from a lack of sharpness.

    The audio quality is satisfactory, but some sub-woofer usage would have helped in some scenes.

    The extras are more for die-hard fans that just kids.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall