Ultimate Avengers Collection (Blu-ray/2 animated films)
Picture: B-
Sound: B Extras: A Film: B
Lionsgate’s DVDs of their first two Ultimate Avengers animated features have been critical and
commercial successes that have kept just about everybody happy. Even I liked them, but our critic Scott Pyle
liked them even better. Now that they
are out on one Blu-ray disc, we are revisiting them. To learn more about the actual films, you can
go to our previous reviews as follows:
Ultimate
Avengers One
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3514/Ultimate+Avengers+(Animation/Marvel
Ultimate
Avengers Two
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4103/Ultimate+Avengers+2+(Animated
That
leaves high expectations for the Blu-ray and though it is conveniently smaller,
does that mean it is better? It should
be, but the 1080p digital High Definition versions of both offer strange
trade-offs. Yes, there are shots that
are cleaner and clearer, yet there are also shots that looked strained, less
natural and hurt the overall presentation.
With 600 more lines, there are enough better shots to choose this over
the DVDs, but this should have been more of a homerun along the lines of
Lionsgate’s better discs.
When it
comes to sound, the DVDs only offered Dolby Digital EX and since Lionsgate has
been supporting DTS on their Blu-ray releases, you would think we would get DTS
here in addition to the Dolby. Instead,
we get the first-ever PCM 7.1 mix which spreads out the soundfield of the 5.1
mix and it is an interesting upgrade that is better than the Dolby overall, but
dialogue still sounds like the Dolby tracks and the full potential of the 7.1
mix is never totally realized. For a
Superhero genre work, you would think otherwise.
All the
same extras are also here and squeezing all of those with PCM 7.1 and having
two features on one 50GB disc might have just been too much even for all that
space. However, I think the Blu-ray
still out-edges the DVD-Video versions overall and if you have a Blu-ray player
is the better option.
- Nicholas Sheffo
