Sunday, November 27, 2005

Star Wars Episode 3 DVD Review


I finally got to watch most of my new Star Wars Revenge of the Sith DVD.

I must admit to being a prequal fan, which for some reason is not that popular among some fans. My favorite of the entire series is still the orginial Star Wars, with Empire Strikes Back a good second.

For me Revenge of the Sith delivers the goods on just about all levels. It gets a thumbs up from me.

But since this movie has been reviewed to death, let's take a look at the DVD its self.

It is set up like the other five in the series, with three different possible main menus. Mustafar, Upatpu, and Coruscant are the three options.

Since this was shot on HD this disc comes straight from the orginial HD source and of course it looks great. The Dolby Digital 5.1 EX sound track is in my opinion one of the best Dolby mixes out there. It is my hope that in future releases Lucas will add DTS tracks to these movies.

The DTS tracks though have been sacrificed for the audio commentary, which as usual is one of the best bonus features of the discs.

In terms of the second additional bonus feature disc this is the most dissappointing of the three prequals. The long form documentary on this disc takes us through the amount of personel involved in a 50 second scene on Mustafar.

I did not find this documentary that enjoyable, because it is only around 80 minutes long it really only gives you the absolute beginnings for any of the departments involved in the production.

The bar for documentaries was set with The Phantom Menace. The fly on the wall perspective from the beginning to the end of the production was extremely engaging, I think Lucasfilm missed the boat when they changed formats for the documentaries on Episode 2 and 3.

In terms of additional scences there is not much here. You get to see Grevious kill a Jedi and Yoda land on Dagobah, but again with Episode 1 Lucas went back and completly finished the cut scenes. They did not do that here with the Grevious scene, and that was a mistake. They used anamatics to finish the scene, and that is a dissappointment after Episodes 1 and 2 cut scences. And with the Grevious scence being the longest and most interesting of the bunch, I think Lucas missed something here as well.

Although the additional material here is weaker than past offerings it is still acceptable. The commentary is the best of the bonus features for this disc.

Overall between the presentation of the movie and the additional features I would recommend this disc for purchase into your collection.