Tech Blog

[#1]

Jason Bourne is a weapon. From his initial recovery in The Bourne Identity to the final (perhaps) conclusion of The Bourne Ultimatum he laid waste to enemies both foreign and domestic in an effort to find out who he was, why he lost his memory, and who was responsible for why he is the way he is.

Matt Damon does a phenomenal job through all three films as Bourne, bringing Robert Ludlum’s most well-known progeny to life in a way I would have never thought possible. All three films instantly skyrocketed up the box office list on release, and sold extremely well on DVD.

The Bourne Trilogy has now come to Blu-ray, courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. The series first debuted in high definition on HD-DVD; those same excellent VC-1transfers have made their way to Blu-ray.

Video

All three films have made the jump to Blu-ray with extremely high quality, high bit-rate transfers. Though the action does become frenetic at times, it’s a much more pleasurable experience in HD; the DVD versions didn’t have sufficient resolution for the fast motion scenes and could leave some viewers feeling seasick, but the Blu-ray versions are much easier to watch.

The colour palette in the Bourne films dwells in earth-tones, with realistic colours and contrast. The video quality in the second and third film is superior to the first. All three films have a gritty feeling, so the video isn’t clean, but that’s by design.

Audio

Universal continues its tradition of pure, clean audio tracks with these three films. All three have been brought to Blu-ray with DTS HD-Master Audio. All three films have solid dialogue tracks, incredibly active surrounds, and LFE channels that offer significant boom, crunch, and crack. Bourne, as a franchise, lives and dies on the action, so it’s understandable that the sound mix should be incredibly active. While the picture quality isn’t necessarily something that you’d use to show off your system, the audio quality absolutely is. If you’ve got a DTS HD-Master Audio capable system, give it a work out with these three flicks. You will enjoy them.

Extras

The question, when it comes to the extras on these three discs, isn’t “what’s there?” but “what’s not?” and possibly “how much time do you have?”

All three films come with Universal’s U-control enhanced Blu-ray experience. This mode leverages the exclusive features available only on Blu-ray to create picture-in-picture experiences, as well as access to fully animated and interactive features like the Treadstone Files and Bourne Orientation. All three films have unique U-control content, so you’ll want to spend time with each.

The list of additional features is massive. If you’ve been through the Bourne DVDs or HD-DVDs you’ll notice that most of the special features are pulled from those previous releases. If you haven’t watched them, you absolutely need to: the world of Jason Bourne is filled out incredibly well by many features, and the insight into shooting these movies is immense.

I was a little disappointed with the BD-Live Bourne Card Strategy Challenge. I couldn’t connect to a single other user. I’m not sure that it’s much of an issue, as the gameplay seemed a touch shallow. I’d rather spend my time watching the movie and the documentaries again.

Conclusion

The Bourne Trilogy is an action film collector’s essential. If you don’t have this film, and you’re a fan on intrigue, action, explosions, and chase scenes, your collection is incomplete. The Blu-ray version of each is the best version available, with the most special features, and the greatest degree of interactivity. In short: you may have seen Bourne before, but you’ve never seen him like this. Get Bourne on Blu-ray, you won’t regret it.

[#2]

Hey Graham. Nice to see some Blu-ray reviews on here. There may have been more, but I  missed them.

One little critisism though. The Bourne Trilogy came out on Blu-ray back in January. Isn't this review about 3 months too late?

[#3]

January 19th, 2010. That's when these came out on DVD.

[#4]

Sorry, Blu-ray. (not DVD)

[#5]

It has been a while, but to be honest it takes some time to get around to these things sometimes. There were three movies and over 20 hours of extras to watch. I didn't actually pick them up until April, so on my own personal timeline I'm not that far behind Glad you liked the review though. I've got a few more coming this week.