You might have noticed in the heading of this review that I put the word "deluxe" in quotes. That's because this is the terminology Pioneer uses on the disc jacket of this latest release, but this disc hardly qualifies for anything that meets my definition of "deluxe". If you haven't already guessed, this is one of those "good news, bad news" things. First, the bad news.
Pioneer has released what they term a "deluxe" edition of the 1994 science fiction epic, 'Stargate'. Many of you will recall Pioneer screwed up the first disc release of this film last year with a terrible audio defect that rendered it unlistenable in Dolby Pro-Logic. This time, the problems are not with the technical merits of the disc, but are no less infuriating. Specifically, there is absolutely nothing deluxe about this "deluxe" edition. There is no commentary track, no "making of" documentary, not even a lousy trailer (and the trailer for this movie is pretty darn good). What they do offer is a claimed 9 additional minutes of footage. I say "claimed" because the stated running time of this new disc is 128 minutes and the theatrical version was stated to run 122 minutes. My second grade teacher would be very disappointed in their math skills. The worst part is that Pioneer has the nerve to charge $60 this. Another error that should be pointed out is the stated aspect ratio. The notation on the back of the jacket says "1.85:1". The film was shot in anamorphic Panavision and the transfer is properly framed at 2.35:1. And this brings me to the "good news" part. The transfer.
The THX approved transfer on this new disc is a noticable improvement over the already good tranfer on the previous edition. The image is a bit darker (which looks better) with a more natural color balance. Colors are almost perfectly saturated and extremely clean. The image is very smooth with less of the over-sharp, over-enhanced look of the original disc. Shadow detail and overall image detail are excellent. This transfer was also approved by the director, Roland Emmerich, who has stated that he was never pleased with the first transfer. One assumes he is pleased with this one. Certainly I am.
The soundtrack is essentially the same as the the first disc, which is to say, all that anyone could expect. Some found the Dolby Digital track on the first disc to be somewhat harsh. I did not have a chance to sample the discrete mix on this new disc (I will soon, though) but the soundtrack did have some re-mixing done for this transfer to incorporate the additional footage.
So, what we have here is the classic "love/hate" relationship. On the one hand, I absolutely love the look of this new disc. I don't recall 'Stargate' looking this good in the theatre and I KNOW it didn't sound this good. On the other hand, I find Pioneer's crass attempt at "milking the high-end" terribly disappointing. The unjustifiably high price of this disc will undoubtedly keep it out of the hands of many of its fans. And that is what I call a shame.
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