I picked up a copy of this set at The Future Shop, here in Canada, and opened it up in my car to make sure that all of the discs were free of marks (you'd be surprised at how many pre and post production marks/scratches I find on brand new, unopened, unloose, DVD's, and we're not just talking the odd blemish, we're talking someone took a fork to the play surface, kind of marks).
Well, first of all, upon opening the tin (which had dents in it, even though I picked through 15 different sets to try and get a dentless tin, the cheap metal of this tin, made this impossible) I found a DVD bundled set, pretty much like the Buck Rogers, or Babylon Five DVD sets, with a piece of black foam, loosely placed on the right hand side of the set, to take up the extra room (of which there was about an inch) to stop the set from bashing about inside the tin during shipping.
The set case itself has seven, double sided, clear plastic, DVD trays, linked together on the left hand side, by some sort of plastic hinges (at least it's not by tape, as is the case with the Star Trek, original series, CD sized, clear plastic, cases) with a disc on the front and back of the trays, and the whole thing is anchored on the bottom to a thick cardboard, booklet type cover, and the whole thing comes in a plastic slip case (once again, like the Buck Rogers, DVD set) which has Superman flying and smashing through a metallic Superman "S" on the front, and a picture of the new Superman from, Superman Returns, on the back.
I found this setup to be very awkward, and it made getting at the discs (especially the back of the tray discs) pretty hard to do, without fear that you were going to either drop the discs, brake the plastic hinges or pop the trays loose from the cardboard booklets, backing (which is just held on by four measly dabs of glue).
So, one by one I popped out the discs, and out of the fourteen discs, four had scratches on them (one of which was caused by the fact that the injection hole for the plastic DVD trays, is positioned right in the middle of where the discs sits, and since the discs don't sit very far from the trays surface, if this injection spot hasn't been sufficiently buffed down, and any of the injected plastic is at all sticking up on this spot, then you end up with a nice, circular scratch on the discs play surface, due to the fact that the discs spin slightly on the centre locking hub, during transit).
So I took the set back, and after standing in the customer service line for almost half an hour (and this was first thing in the morning, so you'd assume that the line would be pretty non-existent) I exchanged it for a new set.
But, so as to make one blemish free set, by exchanging only the marked discs in the old set with discs from the new set, I opened the new set at customer service, and guess what; this set had six discs marked up, including the same four ones from the previous set.
Well that was it for me where this, "Ultimate Mess" was concerned, and I opted instead to get the, Christopher Reeve Collection box set (which is just a slip cover housing movies one to four, in their regular plastic, DVD cases) The Richard Donner Cut DVD (as, stupidly, it's not included in the, Christopher Reeve Collection, go figure) and the, Superman Returns DVD.
Now granted, I paid about $30 Canadian, more, and didn't get the two bonus discs (one of which was on TV and the other was downloadable from the, Superman Returns web site anyway) or the, Superman comic reproduction (which amounted to nothing more then a flimsy, pamphlet style booklet) or the mail in offer for the five, Superman posters, but all of the discs bought this way, where in immaculately pristine condition, with all of the proper contents per disc, intact.
Not to mention that the regular cases are much nicer then that, Ultimate Editions, plastic nightmare of a double sided tray system, and ill fitting metal tin with dents.
So for peace of mind, forgo the, Ultimate Edition, and its need to return two of the discs back to Warner Brothers, due to authoring errors, the crappy case set up, as well as the scratched discs and do what I did.
You'll be less stressed for it.
P.S. Concerning the, Superman, The Movie, theatrical edition disc, in the regular set, I read that the original, two channel, stereo track was missing from all the versions of this movie, but my version (and I'm in Canada mind you, so this my only be a U.S. edition problem) has a two channel, stereo track as well as the newer 5.1 track, which, when switched between, on my two speaker stereo system (as I only need to hear Superman fly from left to right, or visa versa, and could care to hear him doing flybys behind me) it sounds like two different sound tracks.
I tried taking this up with the guy who eventually answered the phone, at the 1-800-I-Got-Screwed, number, but he barely knew his name let alone which sets where effected.
So if anyone could shed some light on this, I'd be most grateful.
