If life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? So what happens if life hands you a kumquat
If life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? So what happens if life hands you a kumquat
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You don't need me to tell you to buy this DVD. If you're even the slightest bit 'movie-inclined' (and have a DVD player, obviously) you will have bought this disc already (probably on release day), watched it, ploughed through the extra stuff, watched it again, invited your mates round to show off the 'pod-race', and then watched it again, all before sundown. Why? Because this is easily the best showcase for the digital format yet to be released. True, in recent months there have been some splendid discs hitting the shelves - remastered special editions, director's cuts, 2-disc sets and all manner of box-set collections - but this is the big one, this is a Star Wars movie. Maybe not THE Star Wars movie, and certainly not the BEST Star Wars movie, but a Star Wars movie nonetheless, and arguably the most anticipated movie of all time. Whether the film actually lived up to its enormous expectations is, of course, another matter, and for many the answer to that would be a resounding 'no', but I'm not here to discuss the artistic merits of the movie - that has been done already (and far more comprehensively than I could ever hope to. I'm here to tell you how good the DVD is. And it's good. Really good.
You know it's going to be good as soon as you put the disc in your player - the menu screen that greets you as the disc boots up is a work of art in itself. Following the obligatory introduction where the film's title appears against a space backdrop - complete with fancy, whooshy noises and the unmistakeable sound of THAT theme tune - a space ship hurtles towards you and swoops down towards the desert planet of Tattooine, home of the young Anakin Skywalker. Beautifully animated and great fun to watch, this is a prime example of why 'Fox Home Entertainment are quickly earning themselves a reputation as the market leader in terms of imaginative menu designs. But that's not all - eject the disc, insert it again and this time the spaceship will take you on a journey to the magnificent cityscape of Coruscant, or possibly on an aerial tour
of Naboo - each menu 'theme' (selected at random on each playing) is underscored by its own music and has nifty little animations that make navigating the DVD a huge giggle in itself.
However, it's the presentation of the actual film that really matters here, and when it comes to audio/visual quality, The Phantom Menace is second to none. Digitally THX mastered, they've even designed a funky, new THX logo that gives your speakers a thorough workout before the film has even started. Exactly what THX mastering entails I've no idea, but the the logo is really cool, and it seems to do the job. Picture quality is, quite simply, superb. It's anamorphically enhanced (ooh, big word!) and every scene, every damn frame is so bursting with colour, depth and intricate detail that you feel like you could walk into any one of Phantom's huge sets or sumptuous locations at the drop of a hat - it really is that good. But not as good as the sound. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 EX, Star Wars - Episode 1 will give you an audio adventure like no other movie. Even the benchmark standards set by previous discs such as The Matrix and Terminator 2, pale in comparison to what is on offer here. All of the sequences that you would expect to sound good, do, with obvious highlights being the space battles, the much-touted pod-race and the astonishing three-way lightsabre battle at the end, but even during Phantom's quieter moments (not that there are many), the sound design has been precision-engineered to fully exploit any decent home set-up. Die hard audiophiles may be slightly disappointed at the absence of a DTS soundtrack (Digital Theatre System - reputedly the definitive surround-sound standard), but the 5.1 soundtrack is good enough to freeze any criticism dead in its tracks, and it's hard to imagine DTS offering any noticeable benefit.
But enough of this techno waffle, what about the extra stuff? Well, there's loads of it - the cover proudly boasts of over six hours of additional material. Wow, six hours - it's gonna be a late night! Okay, about two of those six hours are made up of a director/crew commentary, but that still leaves about four hours worth of special features to get stuck into, and believe it or not, most of it is really good. No lousy 'production notes' or piffling little 'cast & crew bios', no, these are genuine, fly-on-the-wall documentaries that cover almost every aspect of the making of Phantom', before, during and after production. Whereas most 'making of...' featurettes are little more than extended trailers, intercut with the stars talking about how wonderful the director is, and the director saying - "You're gonna see things that you've never seen before" - for this film Gearge Lucas hired a documentary crew to chronicle the entire process from day one, the result of which is the fascinating documentary - 'The Beginning'. An hour long and culled from over 600 hours worth of on-set footage, this excellent feature is a Star Wars fan's dream come true, offering a first hand look inside some of those locations previously considered off limits - Lucasfilm, ILM, production meetings, cast auditions, even Lucas' own private screening room - it's all good stuff.
Another five 'mini-documentaries' (about ten minutes each) concentrate a little more specifically on various aspects of the shoot - storyline (ahem!), design, costumes, visual effects and fight scenes - and again these are all very interesting and don't feature rehashed material from the main documentary, something which many 'featurettes' are guilty of. Further documentaries appear in the guise of an award-winning, twelve-part web series, originally released on starwars.com during the film's production. Although these were primarily designed to crank up the expectations and the hype surrounding Episode 1, they too are full of - 'bugger me! I didn't know that' - moments and again feature very little material that we've seen elsewhere on the disc.
One of the highlights though has to be the deleted scenes, seven of them to be precise. Like the rest of the features on this DVD though, the makers have gone that extra mile to ensure that the scenes really are worthwhile. All the sequences, (some (but not all) of which have been sneakily spliced into the actual film) have fully completed sound and special effects and are presented in the proper widescreen format. You also have the option of watching the deleted scenes on thir own, or as part of yet another documentary which details what the scenes are about, how they were produced and why they were excised from the final cut. So, are these extra scenes any good? Well, they're not bad - some are better than others (the 'waterfall sequence' probably being the best one), and it is interesting to be able to see them, but on balance the decision to remove them from the finished article was probably the right one.
Some of the more techie-minded among you might find the 'multi-angle animatics' fun to play with too. Essentially these are two sequences from the film (submarine and pod-race) that are shown in various stages of completion - storyboard, animatics (computer-generated graphics), raw footage (no special FX) and final product - the 'angle' button allowing you to switch between each stage to compare them. It's all very clever, for sure, but not that interesting to the casual viewer and is probably best left to the real anoraks.
There are, of course, the obligatory trailers & TV spots and a mammoth photo-gallery, but even these are way above the standard that you'd normally expect to find under this heading. The TV spots are all different enough from each other that they don't become repetetive, and the trailers remind of the excitement you felt prior to the films release. Whether the film lived up to this anticipation is a matter of opinion, but the trailers certainly got you in the Star Wars mood. Also included is the very popular 'Duel of the Fates' music video, which had shed-loads of air-play on TV and in cinema foyers at the time of release, and features live footage of John Williams conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, intertwined with scenes from the film - Williams proving yet again that when it comes to movies of this stature, he is simply the only man for the job.
That constitutes the bulk of the extra features on the DVD, with sundry extras coming in the form of poster campaigns, a featurette on 'Starfighter' (a Star Wars based aerial combat game for the PC) and the DVD-rom content but as I don't have a DVD-rom drive I can't really comment on it. The more intuitive of you might like to try and find the handful of hidden 'easter eggs' that are dotted at various points on the disc, which supposedly include a few more snippets of info from Lucas himself, and a collection of out-take bloopers, but these hidden features are so well hidden (for a change) that I haven't actually found them yet. If only this much thought had gone into the script!
So, like I said - you don't need me to tell you to buy this DVD. With such a wealth of interesting and genuinely entertaining material, coupled with the outstanding quality of the presentation, you'd be silly not to - this is worth buying if for no other reason than to see what the DVD format is capable of. The fact that this has the 'Star Wars' name attached to it only confirms it's status as a must-have, even if the film itself doesn't quite live up to it.
The Godfather Collection, The Alien Legacy, The Die Hard trilogy, The Superman Set and now Star Wars?
You've never had it so good.
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Production Year: 2007 - Science Fiction - Director: Francis Lawrence - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Will Smith, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
Begin your STAR WARS collection with STAR WARS : Episode 1 THE PHANTOM MENACE. Packed with ... more
over six hours of additional material, including exclusive documentaries and never-before-seen deleted scenes, this 2-disc set provides the perfect showcase for ...
Advantages: Some very good scenes, as a standalone film it's pretty good Disadvantages: Some bad decisions made in the build up to this, overhyped and up against the best sci-fi films ever.
Oct 19th, 2001
(Dec 12th, 2002)
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