Avatar: Extended Collector's Edition Review (2/5)

As if that title weren't hefty enough, this DVD/Blu-Ray set features a whopping three discs of content based around 2009's hit science-fiction epic. The aformentioned flick got 5/5 here upon its release, so how is it this release drops down in quality so steeply? Basically, all of the much-hyped extra scenes that form a 16-minute longer film (taking the running time up to 3 long hours) are unnecessary inclusions that were stripped from the original for good reason- remember when Tsu'Tey was shot off the human ship, a slow panning shot following his fall towards the ground? Now we see that he survived that, only for Jake to find him after the battle and be forced to kill him instead of making him endure a slow end. Imagine what an anti-climax that would have been for viewers with the Navi having just won a battle miraculously, only to have a tragic death scene ruin the sense of victory, and worse still anyone who went to see the extended (8-minute longer) cut in August at cinemas would have seen just that. As if these jarring additions weren't enough, the 45 minutes of deleted scenes held back from the original DVD and Blu-Ray releases don't fare any better, looking utterly fake as they had not yet been completed in terms of animation and backgrounds (and boy, did the Avatars look atrocious before the CGI was done!), so you'll get most of the fun simply out of laughing at the hilarity of just how rubbish the animations look. 'Capturing Avatar', an hour-long documentary showing how the human actors were transformed by computers and programmers into blue aliens, isn't nearly as extensive or detailed as we might have hoped the extra months before this release would allow it to be, and even the Blu-Ray's somewhat extended version doesn't do much to compromise. That the DVD version was given so little extras when box-sets such as those of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have proved digital versetile discs can store A LOT of special features adds further insult to injury, but no matter which version you choose it'll be hard to shake the feeling that the original disc (containing just the original cut) was much better value. What a wasted opportunity!