The Movie
Well, we certainly knew this was coming.
Even as the original release of James Cameron's monumental hit Avatar arrived on Blu-ray this past spring, a multi-disc special edition had already been announced for later in the year. As if to drive the point home further, an eight-minute-longer "Re-Release" cut was shown in theaters over the summer, in 3D, a taste of what we could expect in the deluxe home video package. But the resulting Extended Collector's Edition goes even further, offering the original theatrical, re-release and a "Collector's Extended Cut" with yet another eight minutes on top of that, yes, a full sixteen minutes longer than what audiences saw on the big screen in 2009.
The basic story is likely well-known by this point: Jake (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair-bound ex-Marine, gets more than he bargained for when he takes part in a fantastic science/cultural experiment with a strange race on a faraway world. The new extensions are a combination of entire scenes and little lines of dialogue, many centering upon a subplot about the school started by head scientist Grace (Sigourney Weaver). There's also a thrilling hunt sequence, a touching death scene following the climax, and for the Collector's Extended Cut an alternate opening on an a Blade Runner-esque Earth, among a few other changes.
As with Aliens and The Abyss, Cameron's longer cut of Avatar manages to deliver an even more involving, rewarding cinematic experience. A direct access mode can also take us right to the new pieces.
The Picture
I'm still going to give this Avatar four stars, but hear me out: The longer Re-Release version was created for theatrical exhibition and therefore completed to full quality standards, but I'm not sure if that's the case with the longest Collector's Extended Cut, and I found the blacks in the Earth sequence to be a little mushy, slightly harsh. Darks throughout the movie are detailed but the blacks could be more organic. I also noted a little noise in the new scenes, but nothing too tragic and certainly no abrupt transitions from original to extended scenes. In general, the incredible beauty and clarity of Avatar remains untainted by the changes.
The Sound
We are told in a menu pop-up that great effort was expended to make this disc's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel track as close as possible to the director's intended theatrical mix, and of course it shows in one of the most active, powerful and at the same time subtly engaging soundtracks we've ever heard. The additions are no exception to this high standard, including for example the insects and stingbats flitting around us at the abandoned school. Other than that, I was just reminded of why I liked the disc so much the last time I reviewed it.
The Extras
There's no real need to change the content of the most successful movie of all time, so this set--timed for holiday gift-giving--is mostly about the bonus materials, so conspicuously absent from the first release. Disc One might then come as a surprise to many fans, as the only feature listed as an "Extra" is that ability to jump to the new footage. No commentary of any kind, no picture-in-picture, and no BD-Live.
Really? Really.
Not an extra per se but worth mentioning is a Family Audio track in Dolby Digital 5.1 (original and re-release only) so that the whole gang can gather around the TV without the fear of any objectionable dialogue.
Disc Two is where it starts to get interesting, with 28 deleted scenes, about 45 minutes of "Never-Before-Seen" footage bolstered with enough helpful transitions from the finished film to make this section top out at a whopping 68 minutes. There's even a User's Guide, pointing out and explaining the strange look of typically unfinished special effects shots. The four-part "Capturing Pandora" documentary (98-and-a-half minutes) is driven, like the movie itself, by the passion of James Cameron. Despite the title, it's not just about the celebrated motion capture, but that essential, groundbreaking technology is the backbone of this story. It's all the more fascinating because Avatar represents a type of filmmaking that no one has ever seen before.
"A Message from Pandora" (20 minutes) is an attempt to apply the film's environmental lessons, particularly to a cause Cameron become involved with in Brazil. Listen for a minute and you know that this guy has really done his homework. From here it is an assemblage of video "Production Materials," including a closer look at some of the material only glimpsed in the larger making-of. The early "Brother Termite" test movie and the prototype scene starring Lost's Yunjin Kim--shown here two different ways--are especially captivating.
Disc Three continues the analysis of the visual effects, with Scene Deconstructions for 17 different sequences. The color buttons on the remote allow us to toggle between three versions of a scene, DVD-alternate-angle-style: the original capture, the "template" digitally animated storyboard, and the final version with a fixed picture-in-picture reference window. Next is a series of 17 brief, focused and fairly traditional featurettes, looks at specific aspects of production and post-production, with only a quick discussion of 3D. There's also an extensive still-frame section, with Cameron's screenplay and original detailed treatment, a "Pandorapedia" of terms, Cameron's song lyrics before their translation into the Na'vi language, and a total of 15 art galleries with manual or auto advance. All of the video extras are in HD.
The discs arrive packaged in a little hardbound book with cardboard slide-out pocket pages which I quickly found to be annoying and impractical.
Final Thoughts
Frankly, I'm a little torn by this Blu-ray. On the one hand, it's the movie that rocked the world a year ago, breaking some pretty impressive records along the way, and here it's even more of an "event" in our choice of three cuts. The game-changing behind-the-scenes story is finally revealed, in depth, but I still feel like there's something missing.
Where's the next-generation interactivity that really takes advantage of everything that Blu-ray can do? This is certainly an appropriate title for all the bells and whistles. Oh well, the good news is that there probably won't be another, more special-special edition down the road, as Cameron has announced that this and the Blu-ray 3D (following a one-year exclusive with Panasonic) are going to be his final releases. So buy with confidence, and I suppose that now most people will probably have-atar more Avatar than they know what to do with.
Product Details
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