Taking a cue from the LEGO playbook, Playmobil (Germany’s largest toy manufacturer) has a new animated show: Super 4. The show was originally announced as part of Playmobil’s 40th anniversary, and it premiered last year on French television screens. It was then dubbed into English and appeared in the UK and Canada. Today, the show makes its U.S. debut on Netflix. Netflix has certainly ramped up their slate of original and exclusive shows, and it’s nice to see that they haven’t forgotten kids. Most of the original shows in the Kids area of Netflix have been based on existing properties, and they’ve been a bit hit-or-miss, much like their live-action, adult-oriented series. (Turbo FAST, All Hail King Julien, and Inspector Gadget are already streaming. Dragons, Danger Mouse, and Bottersnikes & Gumbles are coming soon.) Inspired by the unique design of Playmobil toys, Super 4 follows a team of four heroes: Alex the Knight, Ruby the Pirate, Agent Gene, and Twinkle the Fairy.
Each obviously represents a different themed toy line, or–as the show explains–distinct island communities of their planet. (Think of how the different worlds were connected in The LEGO Movie, and you’re not far off.) The first season, which launches today in its entirety, consists of 26 episodes aimed at the 5-9 crowd. Each episode has two 11-minute segments. So is it any good? My kids (3 and 6) were riveted to the screener episode we were sent. As soon as the credits began to roll, they immediately asked for more. If you’re a fan of the Playmobil brand and its various toys, then it’s certainly fun to see the characters on screen, interacting in various “worlds.” Each character has a unique personality that is a bit stereotypical to his or her “type,” but the potential is there for that to develop. For example, Agent Gene (the spy) is a technological genius, overly pompous, and “never wrong.” Alex the Knight is, well, a brave knight. Twinkle the Fairy is a brainless dope.
And Ruby the Pirate is… a pirate? Except for her clothes, it was impossible to tell she was supposed to be a pirate in the episode we saw. She was incredibly bland, even though she did ostensibly “save the day.” Notice anything troubling in those gender portrayals? Kudos to the developers for at least making the pirate a girl, but Ruby and Twinkle were the only two female characters in the entire episode. And they were also the least developed. The villain of the episode (also a pirate) was more fully realized than our two female protagonists. I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be watching more now that they’re all on Netflix, but I hope to see something other than “brave guy and genius guy save the world alongside two useless girls.” And if you were wondering, yes, OF COURSE Playmobil is going to have toys based on the show. They’ll be available from late summer. I saw a few of the playsets at Toy Fair a couple months ago, and, even though I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, they did look like a ton of fun.
We’re Playmobil fans in this house, what can I say? Sign In or Join to save for later Genre: Family and Kids Running Time: 100 minutes What parents need to know Parents Need to Know LEGO Batman: The Movie -- DC Superheroes Unite LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers LEGO Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu Top advice and articles What parents and kids sayFor the second year in a row, 4k Ultra High Definition was all over the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This year, the manufacturers promise not only more 4k TVs, but (with the arrival of Ultra HD Blu-ray) some actual 4k content to watch on them. There’s just one catch: Most of the movies you’ll watch in “4k” aren’t 4k at all. Here’s the dirty secret about the industry’s move to 4k or higher displays: The majority of modern movies are either photographed digitally at 2k resolution or have a 2k Digital Intermediate. While it’s true that some movies are indeed starting to be photographed with 4k cameras (and movies shot on film may get scanned at 4k resolution), most of them still get downgraded to 2k for the post-production workflow.
The higher pixel resolution of 4k requires a big increase in bandwidth resources that most post houses can’t handle. And, ultimately, most viewers can’t tell the difference between 2k and 4k anyway.Let’s look at some of the launch titles that have been announced for early release on the Ultra HD Blu-ray format this spring. Here are the titles that Warner Home Video has announced: ‘The Lego Movie’ – Animated on a 2k DI ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ – Shot in 2k, with a 2k DI ‘Man of Steel’ – Shot on 35mm, with a 2k DI ‘Pacific Rim’ – Shot in 5k, but only a 2k DI ‘Pan’ – Shot in 3k, with a 2k DI ‘San Andreas’ – Shot in 3k, DI is not listed but probably 2k Yes, every single film that Warner plans to release on the 4k Ultra HD format is a 2k movie. The 20th Century Fox release titles are only marginally better: ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ – Shot in 5k, with a 2k DI ‘Fantastic Four’ – Shot in 2k, with a 2k DI
‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ – Shot mostly in 2k, with a 2k DI ‘Life of Pi’ – Shot in 2k, with a 2k DI ‘The Martian’ – Shot in 5k, with a 2k DI ‘The Maze Runner’ – Shot mostly in 2k mixed with some 5k, with a 4k DI ‘Wild’ – Shot in 2k, with a 2k DI ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ – Shot in 2k, with a 2k DI That’s 13 launch titles from two major studios, and only a single movie was actually produced at 4k resolution (‘The Maze Runner’) – and even that one was mostly photographed in 2k. And these aren’t just old movies made before 4k was possible. Even major big-budget tentpole blockbusters from the past year were made in 2k. Many more will continue to be made in 2k this year and going forward too. Only Sony appears to have a genuine commitment to making movies in 4k. Here are that studio’s Ultra HD Blu-ray launch titles: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ – Shot on 35mm, with a 4k DI ‘Chappie’ – Shot in 5k, with a 4k DI
‘Hancock’ – Shot on 35mm, with a 4k DI ‘Pineapple Express’ – Shot on 35mm, with a 2k DI ‘Salt’ – Shot on 35mm, with a 4k DI ‘The Smurfs 2’ – Shot in 4k, with a 4k DI In all the hype about Ultra HD, the manufacturers and home video studios have also been careful to downplay another issue that some viewers will find disappointing. If you happen to be a fan of 3D (and it seems that fewer and fewer people are these days), you’re completely out of luck. The Ultra HD format does not support 3D. I say again for emphasis: The Ultra HD format does not support 3D. It’s not in the spec. Nobody has any interest in adding it to the spec anytime soon. As far as Ultra HD is concerned, 3D is dead. How can this be? Why would the new, super-advanced format drop a feature that’s already available on regular Blu-ray? The first thing you need to understand is that there is no such thing as a 4k 3D movie at the present time. Not in theaters, not anywhere.
All 3D movies are 2k. Yes, this includes that special overpriced screening of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ you just saw in super deluxe IMAX 3D Laser Projection from dual 4k projectors. Even that was upconverted from 2k. Nobody in Hollywood is making 3D movies at 4k. The resource requirements are too huge. Given that the public’s interest in 3D is waning, there’s been no big push in the industry to invest in 4k 3D. That being the case, the Ultra HD Alliance decided to dump it altogether. If you enjoy 3D and want to continue watching movies in that format, you’re stuck with standard Blu-ray. If most of the films getting released on 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray are really 2k movies, what’s the point of Ultra HD at all? Honestly, the increase in pixel resolution from 1920×1080 to 3840×2160 is the least interesting thing about Ultra HD. At the screen sizes available in almost all home theaters, 1080p already hits a sweet spot for delivering richly detailed images with no visible pixel structure.
Our human eyes are not capable of resolving much of the additional detail 4k may offer, except on perhaps the largest of projection screens. That extra resolution is more beneficial on a huge 50-foot cinema screen, but for the needs of home theater, it’s basically irrelevant. Fortunately, Ultra HD brings other new improvements over regular High Definition. The most notable of these are enhanced colors and High Dynamic Range. You may have read about how Ultra HD will offer millions of new colors that HDTVs of the past were never capable of reproducing. While technically accurate, those claims are largely overblown. The 10-bit color depth and expanded color gamut will be subtle improvements. Ask yourself when was the last time you watched a Blu-ray and thought it wasn’t colorful enough? (Please spare me the inevitable snark about watching black-and-white movies.) Many of the new colors in the expanded gamut are beyond the range of human vision – and of those that are visible, most of today’s two-tone, digitally graded, teal-and-orange movies will never use them.
However, the 10-bit color depth means the elimination of banding artifacts in color gradients, which are a genuine limitation of the 8-bit color that standard Blu-rays are encoded with. Artifacts like that are already pretty rare, but Ultra HD shouldn’t suffer them at all, which is a good thing. High Dynamic Range is by far the most interesting development of Ultra HD. HDR movies have much darker darks and much brighter brights than those of the past, yielding a richer, more vibrant and lifelike image. HDR projection started rolling out to theaters over the past year, and the response from viewers has been overwhelmingly positive. Now that experience is coming to the home as well. With that said, be aware that not every movie is HDR. A movie has to be specifically graded for the extended dynamic range in post-production. So far, only a handful of movies have undergone that treatment. The very first HDR movie was Disney’s ‘Tomorrowland’, which was released theatrically on May 22nd of last year.
Other notable HDR titles include ‘Inside Out’, ‘Pixels’, ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’, ‘The Martian’ and ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’. Not every movie that gets released on Ultra HD Blu-ray will be encoded in a High Dynamic Range format. (The UHD spec contains three competing HDR standards.) However, it is possible to re-grade older movies into HDR, and of the supporting studios, Warner Bros. has announced that it plans to do so for all of its Ultra HD Blu-ray releases. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. Re-grading a movie for HDR is a form of revisionism that the filmmakers did not intend when they originally made the movies. If those filmmakers are still alive and approve the decision, I might be interested to see the results, but I have no more interest in ever watching ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ in HDR than I’d want to watch ‘Casablanca’ colorized. Sadly, the Ultra HD rollout has been a confusing mess. The UHD Alliance only just recently settled on some of these critical features, and 4k TVs purchased in the past (even many still available in stores today) may not be compatible with either the enhanced colors or High Dynamic Range.