| Classic Media's Rodan, the only Toho title
from Classic Media in 2002 which had not been
previously released by Simitar in 1998, unfortunately
ends up being just another inadequate DVD. Like
Classic Media's other Toho releases of the time,
the Rodan DVD lacks in nearly every aspect: poor
video presentation, insufficient audio quality,
and no memorable extras. |
| Video: |
 |
| To put it bluntly, Rodan's video presentation
is horrendous, and manages to do just about everything
wrong. The print used for the disc is, sadly,
in very poor shape. Following a decent presentation
of the film's title sequence, the print's flaws
become instantly noticeable as numerous scratches
appear and the colors look noticeably faded.
For the most part, the movie appears overly brown,
as daytime skies become an ugly yellow. It's
safe to say that the colors are far from vibrant
on this DVD, but the brightness becomes a problem
as well. A lot of the scenes on this disc have
their brightness turned too low, while other
scenes, such as when the two Rodans first appear,
have the brightness turned up so high that details
are hard to make out. Artifacting is present
through out the DVD, as the film appears blurry,
and pixilation is seen everywhere during the
day scenes. The only good aspect of the video
presentation is that the film's original 1.33:1
aspect ratio is maintained, which ends up being
meaningless praise seeing as how that aspect
ratio is full screen.
It should be noted that this video track was, more
or less, later re-released as the US version for
Classic Media's
Rodan and War of
the Gargantuas release in 2008. One can compare
the two here with a shot of the 2002
release and
the 2008
one, noticing there is a difference but only
slightly and that the same source material was utilized.
|
| Audio: |
 |
| The sound quality, while certainly better
than the video presentation, still leaves much
to be desired. The film here is presented with
only the US dubbed audio track, which also means
a 10 minute shorter run time with a missing Akira
Ifukube music cue and added US military stock
footage, and has no subtitles to go along with
it. The US dubbed track itself needs some work
as well, and its faults can be noticed right
away as Rodan's roar in the title sequence sounds
scratchy, and the subsequent theme by Ifukube sounds
like the levels were played with (which is taking
into account the original mono presentation of
the theme). This trend follows through out the
movie, but ends up being the most noticeable
during the opening sequence. That's not all though,
although it probably should have been, as Classic
Media went the "extra mile" to include a "surround" presentation
of the film. The "surround" audio
track is even worse than the mono one, though,
as it's plagued by an annoying "echo" type presentation
of the film, as this feature was obviously slapped
together and hardly simulates the "surround sound" experience.
|
| Extras: |
|
| Extras on this disc are nearly not worth
mentioning, as the only extra, which also appears
on other Classic Media Toho releases of this
period, is a trailer of Godzilla:
Destroy All Monsters Melee for the Gamecube.
Chapter breaks are also few and far between
on this release and given noticeably cheesy titles
such as "Mr. & Mrs.
Rodan".
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| Overview: |
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