Smallville Destiny

This was a little disappointing for me. I only watched a handful of episodes from Season 1 so I'm not familiar with the source material. The only other frame of reference I have is juice's Smallville Episode 1 edit. (I'm not comparing the edits though.)

The tech side is great. A/V quality is as good as the source material (which isn't that great to begin with). The editing was top notch throughout.

I was let down though because it was just too long for my tastes and I was bored easily by it. Maybe if I was more of a fan of Smallville I would have enjoyed this edit more. As it stands I don't really have any strong desire to see the next installment of Smallville (be it watching Season 2 or watching a hypothetical Part 2 fanedit).

So if you're a fan of Smallville you'll hopefully like this. If you've never seen Smallville before I don't really recommend it to you.

This was a series I loved right away and was excited when I heard it was going to be made, but I will admit that the "freak of the week" formula did become, well, formulaic pretty quickly. Since I can still watch the episodes as-is, of course, this is a very welcome alternate version of the first season, and would definitely be my preferred viewing option overall. Technically, everything is top notch, and all the story decisions made were sound. Even if something seemed odd at first, it was soon explained, so no problems there. Leaving a couple of the "freaks" in made sense from a character development standpoint as well.

Thanks for a really fun edit, LS! :)

P.S. I wholeheartedly agree with this comment by Omaru: "As for other seasons? ... The main arc about Jason and Genevive Teague, I’d probably abandon that in it’s entirety." Yeah, that was horrible! :/

Review by Omaru1982 — May 2, 2011 @ 9:22 pm

Watched this yesterday and today (1 part per day)

Absolutely fantastic, even though I have season 1-7 on dvd I hadn’t watched them in quite a while.
Removing most of the meteor freaks was a great choice, if I recall the fortune teller was just one episode, however splitting up her encounters across different events made it seem like clark’s time with her was enjoyable enough to re-vist her. I know bob mentioned cutting the adaption storyline, but as Clark’s only discovered power (other than speed and strength) it gave us a chance to see him using his power before the finding his dad storyline (nice call omitting clark perving on the cheer squad by the way)

I really have nothing bad to say about this, it plays to everyones strengths, Whitney comes across less dickish, especially early on. The only thing I found close to a continuties were the reporter and kryptonite, what exactly did he see Clark do previously, but I was happy to overlook this very minor detail. Regarding with Kryptonite, we can assume that Smallville is littered with Rock fragments and in his youth he probably encountered some and fell sick, hence Jonathan’s knowledge of them.

As for other seasons? I’d love that, although maybe span a few plots from the various seasons to cut across them quicker? The main arc about Jason and Genevive Teague, I’d probably abandon that in it’s entirety.

Tech: 10/10 (I recall one little scene near the start where the image has been cropped to hide the credits)
Story: 9/10, a perfect digest of the important plot strands of season 1 (and the tying up loose ends from season 2) with maybe a little filler thrown in for good measure.

I watched this last night and wasn't blown away to be honest.

I'm intrigued as to why the decision was made to anchor this edit in its television roots rather than go for a streamlined 'smallville the movie' experience. To me that idea has the potential to craft something more engaging and intentional - whereas this edit felt a bit meandering and aimless to me at times.

Without a doubt, the episodes that LS chose to focus on were some of the best moments from Season 1. The fortune telling old lady and the Ryan story really grappled with that theme of destiny, and I understood what LS was trying to do there. Those themes are certainly present, and come through loud and clear. But we also have many scenes of Lana, Chloe, Witney etc, and these stories just aren't as interesting to me.

One of the major problems of constructing an engaging narrative from cobbled together episodes of a tv show is finding a strong throughline that can anchor the whole thing together. I'm sorry to say, I didn't feel like this edit achieved that successfully overall. Yes, removing the villain of the week did put more emphasis on the drama, but the drama as performed in smallville is arguably not all that compelling. It's pitched squarely at teenage angst, and sitting through scene after scene of that tone and sentiment was difficult to stomach after a while - like bold and the beautful: the teenage years.

What I would love to see from a smallville edit would be to focus almost exclusively on the relationship between Clark/Lex, and their respective parents. I realise those aspects are front and centre in this edit, but by including all the minor stories of the peripheral characters, that focus is lost a bit along the way. I do think there is a strong story in here to be drawn out, but perhaps by limiting it to 90 minutes max, and including the arc from seasons 1 and 2 of the show, you get to end the 'movie' with that wonderful scene with Christopher Reeve, and have a fitting and emotional climax to the story, pointing towards his great destiny. In a perfect world, I would also add elements of the Williams sound track throughout to point the way.

Technically, the edit was fine. I watched the AVI, so the picture quality wasn't perfect, but the audio and video editing work was great, and did not distract in anyway, save for only a couple of noticable changes.

My lasting feeling is that perhaps LS started out with the intention to craft a tight and focussed movie length adaptation, but ended up getting too attached to various storylines along the way, and went for the tv mineseries approach instead. If you want to relive the key relationship moments between all major characters from the first season of smallville, then I would recommend this edit for you. On the other hand, if you want a tightly paced and plotted look at the origins and destiny of two huge characters in pop culture mythology, unfortunately I would have to say this doesn't quite hit the mark.

Wow. Who would've thunk that a Supes serial with almost no physical conflict and almost no superhuman stunts would be more fun to watch than the Boy of Steel dodging bullets and tossing people around?

By removing the freaks-o'-the-week, a lot of the action is gone as well, but therein lies this fanedit's strength: the fine character moments are pretty much all that remain. You get to see not only Clark Kent's growing pains, but those of his friends. And his earthly parents aren't the abstractions they were in the comic books and most of the theatrical versions.

A fault of the series itself and not of the fanedit: Lex and Clark know each other rather well, which means that their future selves should recognize each other, allowing Lex to blow Supe's cover.

LastSurvivor's edit is really entertaining, the best Superman experience I've had since watching Christopher Reeve in the theaters.