The build up to the final confrontation is a spectacular emotional and visual roller coaster, complete with explosive battles and plenty of little poignant personal moments. As the final chapter closes, you’ll likely need a tissue or two.
The entire impact of the film is heightened via the beautifully-done Blu-ray rendering. The 1080p transfer provides a near cinematic experience. The picture is pristine: crisp sharp, perfect in every way. Blacks are very black, and the image is so fine, that even in the darkest scenes everything is amazingly clear. But not so intense that it harms the visual image. The colors are saturated, without overdooing it. There is incredible detail and nearly no visible grain. The transfer lends a 3D quality to the film, from the Warner Brothers logo that Voldemort conjures at the start to to intricacy of the castle-fortress of Hogwarts. Exposions and other big effects scenes are vivid, but so are the small personal moments.
The audio is also perfect with dialogue absolutely clear using a lossless 5.1 audio, and making full use of the surround, obvious even on a smaller home theatre system like mine. It would have been even nicer to have seen this release come with a 7.1 audio track.
The movie has been released with several purchase options, but if you have Blu-ray capability, the three-disc Blu-ray release is certainly the way to go, and includes not only the Blu-ray disc, but a standard definition DVD, as well as an option to stream the movie from a variety of connected devicies via UltraViolet digital copy.
What, you may ask, is “UltraViolet?” This new, cloud-based technology allows you and five other others to access the movie under one “household” account. The content can be accessed from numerous other devices, including game consoles, smart phones, tablets, computers, and more.
The set comes with several special features, including “Maximum Movie Mode.” This is novel take on the ubiquitous commentary track, and far more informative! Actors, makeup people, producers, effects folk, etc. break into the movie talking on camera about specific scenes, elaborating on production points, deleted footage, emotional beats, and sound effects. So instead of litany of separate little featurettes and bland commentary, 80 minutes of bonus extras are all integrated into Maximum Movie Mode, putting it all in more context. Obviously, watching the film this way is a bit disruptive, so don’t watch it this way first unless, of course you’ve already seen the movie enough times to go straight this piece of fandom dessert. Otherwise, save Maximum Movie Mode for your second go through.
Article comments