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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: 10/18/2011
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Cast: Tsuyoshi Ihara, Akira Onodera, Shinobu Nakayama, Akiji Kobayashi, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Mike Mizuno
Released: 1995, 1996, 1999
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The Movies:
Oft times dismissed as 'Godzilla for little kids,' the giant flying turtle known as Gamera came into his own in the 90s when director Shusuke Kaneko (recently of GMK: Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack! fame) gave the franchise a much needed kick-start and updated the series making him less of a kids franchise and more of a bad ass.
GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE
The first of the three films in Kaneko's trilogy, Guardian of the Universe finds the giant turtle back in Japan where, as usual, the military misunderstands him and launches an offensive against him. It turns out that Gamera's return has less to do with destroying Tokyo than it does with taking down Gyaos, a monstrous and man-eating prehistoric bird that looks very much like an evil pterodactyl, who has set up his headquarters at the highest point around, the pinnacle of Tokyo Tower.
GAMERA: ATTACK OF THE LEGION
In the second film, a giant meteor lands in the middle of Japan and unleashes mammoth amounts of "legion" creatures (they look a lot like the bugs from Paul Verhoven's Starship Troopers) that eventually start showing up in Tokyo. Of course, the military is unable to get the situation under control and it's up to Gamera, everyone's favorite space turtle, up to take care of business and save the world from the rapidly evolving space bugs.
GAMERA: REVENGE OF IRIS
Picking up pretty much right after the end of the second film, Revenge of Iris finds Gamera sparring off against the Gyaos again. While Gamera proved in the first film that normally this wouldn't be a problem, he finds a monkey wrench thrown into the works when he finds that they've teamed up with a flying giant squid with a temper problem named Iris who would love nothing more than to kick the crap out of everyone's favorite space turtle.
It turns out that not too long ago, Gamera accidentally squished the parents of a young girl named Ayana. Ayana has since found that she can focus her anger for Gamera through Iris and exact her revenge. What sets this third film apart is the characterization and plot development. The story comes together very nicely and you actually begin to care about the characters as the film progresses, which is more than you can say about most Kaiju films, which are more concerned with the action and the battle scenes. This film doesn't disappoint in those areas either and has some of the most intense fight scenes filmed in the entire series.
These three films are a lot of fun. They put aside the hokey 'friend of children everywhere' aspects that made a lot of the earlier entries in the series a bit too corny for my tastes (though I admit, I still watch them whenever they're on TV, even if it is mainly for nostalgia's sake). Gamera is pretty menacing in these films and it's a blast to see him holding his own against the monsters that always seem to threaten Japan.
What really makes the films work though is the effects. Gamera looks great here. While before he was maybe a little bit too cute, this time he's more primal looking and you can believe that if this giant turtle did actually exist, spinning around through space as he does, he would be more than happy to kick the crap out of giant bugs or evil pterodactyls should the need arise.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Mill Creek's Blu-ray presents these three pictures in their proper widescreen aspect ratios in completely respectable 1080p AVC encoded high definition widescreen presentations. While these transfers won't floor you, they're definitely noticeable upgrades from the previous AVD DVDs. There's a lot more detail, much more natural color reproduction and a lot more texture than has been noticeable in previous incarnations. Reference quality? No, but considering the price, the transfers on this disc are more than acceptable and the image quality of the new Gamera 3 disc is a notch or two above the first two films, showing a bit more detail and slightly better colors.
Japanese language tracks are provided for both films in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and in English in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. The Japanese tracks are the way to go and these mixes are pretty decent. There's some good surround activity present throughout and solid bass response keeps the low end tight and solid. Optional subtitles are available in English only - and here's where the set takes a hit: the subtitles for the third film are bad. They almost always only show one side of the conversation which can make following the dialogue tough. There are also lines that just flat out do not have any subtitles and plenty of instances of spelling and grammar mistakes. This problems spills over into the extras as well.
As far as the extras go, it's like this - the disc containing the first two films in the trilogy was originally released with no extras features and the disc in this boxed set is identical BUT Mill Creek have managed to finagle a few extras for each of the three films in this collection onto the disc that contains the third movie. So here's what you'll find broken down by film, keeping in mind that all of it is on disc two and that it's been assembled in a rather bizarre fashion in that it all plays as one giant movie (yup, bit goes into the next which goes into the next - but at least it all goes in the right order):
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe gets a Behind The Scenes featurette which then segues into a collection of footage culled from various camera tests and special effects test footage. Gamera 2: Attack Of The Legion gets a featurette called Action! On Location which is, as you'd probably guess, a look at the action that is taking place at a specific location during the shoot, and it's also got a segment called Creating The Legion which gives us some insight into how the second movie's monster was created. The third film, Gamera 3: Revenge Of Iris, gets The Awakening Of Iris Remix video montage, a handful of deleted scenes and some theatrical trailers. As far as the way you access this stuff goes, you're basically selecting chapters from the menu, but it should be said that a couple of those chapters are mislabeled. With that complaint aside, some of the material here is pretty cool and it definitely does add some value to the set, but those subtitles, ug. What a mess.
The Final Word:
Despite the BIG subtitle problem on the third film, it's hard to argue with this release when you take into account the ridiculously low price that it's being offered at. While the extras are laid out in a clunky manner at least they're there and each of the three films gets lossless audio mixes and 1080p HD transfers that mop the floor with the now out of print ADV DVD releases from a few years back. The movies themselves are a lot of fun and they do a great job of bringing Gamera into the modern age and putting him into a more mature context. But those subtitles problems are definitely going to be an issue for some people, no doubt about it.
Note: For those who already have the first Gamera Blu-ray double feature release and don't want to double dip on this boxed set just to get the third film, the third film is available seperately as a single disc release here. It's contents are identical to the disc included in this boxed set and it has the same pro's (great picture and sound quality, some cool extras) and con's (crappy subtitles) as the disc included in the boxed set.
Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps!
