Addendum to X-Men: First Class DVD/Blu-ray review
by Doc on Sep.12, 2011, under Video/DVD
Just wanted to follow up with some updates to last week’s review of the X-Men: First Class DVD, now that I have the [asin=B004LWZW4C]Blu-ray release[/asin] in hand.
I originally said that there were several instances where the video stretches horizontally somewhat suddenly, but it could have been an issue with the screener copy. Unfortunately, it is in the released version. For example, when Xavier brings the mutants to the castle that is to become the school, during a shot showing them, the video aspect ratio changes a bit. You can see the background stretch. It is very strange and could have been deliberate although I can’t think of why. But it only happens a few times that I noticed.
On the audio side, the Blu-ray steps up the English track to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, and the French and Spanish tracks are bumped up to Dolby Digital 5.1.
It also includes a number of additional extras over the DVD. The “Children of the Atom” specials include the following:
Transformation (10:06) – Transforming characters into mutants, especially Beast
Suiting Up (8:33) – Costuming for the 1960s X-Men
New Frontier: A Dose of Style (9:55) – How X-Men: First Class has a touch of 007
Pulling Off the Impossible (10:23) – All about the visual effects, led by John Dykstra.
Sound and Fury (6:29) – Producing the audio for the feature.
In addition to those featurettes, a number of shorter ones are also included as part of an “X Marks The Spot” feature, which allows you to cut to additional information about specific scenes with behind the scenes footage and discussion. You can also see all the information outside the feature via the menus.
14 minutes of deleted scenes are also included.
An interesting interactive feature is the “Cerebro Mutant Tracker”, which allows you to get information about the various mutants that have appeared across all the movies, including some of the more obscure ones that are only available via the BD-Live feature (which requires an internet connection). It’s neat, but after a while you’ll wish you could just got to a list of names.
Again, I like the direction this movie took better than X-Men: The Last Stand. Hopefully this serves as a good reboot of the franchise.