We all know, I think, what an incredible achievement in movie-making TDK represents and of course on Blu-Ray it looks almost as good as it did in theatres, but as a take-home package it comes up a little short.
Picture wise the quality is of course flawless – every detail is recreated faithfully, even in the depths of the shadows and darkness. Sound-wise too, things are as perfect as you will get, the crushing volume of some of the set pieces never getting muddy or drowning out the dialogue.
So what's not to like?
Well, if you saw TDK in IMAX, the impact of those IMAX sequences on a home TV, no matter how large, is simply not as jaw-drop inducing and the necessary cropping of the square IMAX format picture into a 16:9 frame is sometimes noticeable and irritating. I don't know how else they could have addressed that (“windowboxing” the image, with vertical black bars would have been even more jarring) but still, the results are a little disappointing. But only a little.
And of course, if you didn't see the movie at the IMAX then you probably won't even notice (and if that IS the case, then I heartily recommend you make the effort to see it when the movie is re-released to theatres, including IMAX, in January 2009)
The real disappointment though is in the extras, or rather the lack there-of.
The menu interface – what little there is of it – is dull, unsurprising and uninteresting. This might seem trite and unimportant but when you see what is possible with Blu-Ray technology on other titles (e.g. “Prince Caspian”) to see a movie like TDK get second or even third-rate treatment in this department is very disappointing, especially when you consider the richness, diversity, depth and sheer effort that went into the viral marketing campaign for this movie.
The main disc of the 2 disc set contains the movie and a “Focus Points” extra which contains mini-featurettes that can be viewed either all at once as a “mini-making of” of just over 1 hour in length, or in segments at relevant points during the main feature, but this is achieved using the rather clunky and awkward DVD-style “press enter when you see the icon” style interaction, as previously seen with the “follow the white rabbit” feature on The Matrix DVD, rather than the more fluid and immersive interactive enhanced commentary style such as seen on the BluRay of “Pan's Labyrinth”, for example.
There are some interesting and even entertaining insights into the making of the movie, but the lack of a full crew or cast commentary is disappointing.
The contents of Disc 2 are even more disappointing, with a selection of material that is largely available online (trailers, photo gallery etc) and a handful of too brief featurettes and other rather pointless materials.
The single biggest omission though is the lack of BD-Live, as is available on the US version of the same Blu-Ray. A little bit of research on the net will reveal just what we are missing as a result of that (including the ability to access a commentary/notes session with director Chris Nolan).
But if extra's and interactive content are not of any great concern (and they do tend to be view-and-forget in the long run), having this tour de force of movie making and story telling in the very best possible current home-viewing format is enough to justify the price.
This is one of the view Blu-Ray's currently available that has a movie on it that is worth the price tag.