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Thursday, December 1, 2011

BD impressions: The Lion King

4:18 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

Image quality: This is a difficult one to rate because, while this is technically a superb presentation - a flawless one, even - it differs in some key ways from the version of THE LION KING that was released in cinemas in 1994. This is nothing new: when the film was first released on DVD in 2003, it featured a different studio logo and replaced credits, as well as numerous animation tweaks, some more obvious than others (the one people are most likely to remember is the completely redrawn shot of the singing crocodiles from the "I just can't wait to be king" musical number). These animation changes have been carried over here, and the studio logo and credits have been redone AGAIN, this time bringing the latter slightly more in line with the original release (the bulk of the closing credits now scroll once more rather than being static), but they still contain differences in placement and typography, and in addition, the dedication to former Disney chairman Frank Wells has been moved from the start to the end of the film.

On top of that, the aspect ratio has changed. Theatrically, the film would have had a ratio of 1.85:1, while the DVD was presented in the film's "intended" 1.66:1, the ratio that was native to the CAPS digital ink and paint system. This new version represents a compromise at 1.78:1, losing a little picture information at the top and bottom compared to the 1.66:1 DVD. What makes this particularly bizarre is that captures of the 3D version show thin black bars on the left and right of the image and more picture information at the top and bottom, bringing its dimensions a little closer to those of the DVD. (But at the same time, the 3D version contains numerous changes of its own, including the removal of depth of field blur and the seemingly accidental loss of certain picture elements). The colours have been tweaked too, with a tendency towards oversaturation, particularly during the Morning Report scene, the "Hakuna Matata" number and the "Circle of Life" coda at the end of the film. By comparison, the "Circle of Life" sequence at the start actually seems DESATURATED compared to the DVD.

So how to rate this? Ultimately, I feel inclined to assign it a score based solely on its technical rather than artistic attributes, which are pretty much peerless. And in that regard, this is a stunning presentation. Detail is spot on, compression is never an issue, and the banding effects that often afflict digitally-sourced animation are nowhere to be found here, which is a relief because they are fairly prevalent in the clips of the film used in the bonus features on the disc. In certain shots, such as this one, artificial grain/noise appears to have been generated, and I would be inclined to suspect that this was done to eliminate banding (the encoders seem to really struggle with perfectly smooth colour gradients but have a much easier time of it if some random noise is introduced). All in all I really can't fault the disc itself in any way, so I'm going with a 10/10.

The Lion King
label: Buena Vista; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.78:1 (theatrical 1.85:1, intended 1.66:1)

5 Comments

 
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