Back to the Future - 1, 2 and 3 [DVD]

Of all the 100+ blu rays I own, this has to be the best. Amazing picture quality, fantastic extras, plus the limited edition posters etc are a nice touch.

Everyone knows the films so no point in reviewing them. But just to add, they look amazing in HD. You'll see finer points that you missed in the older versions, the colours are so intense.

In the first film Doc says he wants to go 25 years forward in time to see the progress of mankind... well this is as good as it gets :)

*** A REVIEW OF THE 2010 BLU RAY REISSUE OF THE "BACK TO THE FUTURE" TRILOGY ***

There's little prepares you for the quality of the print on this Blu Ray reissue - it's absolutely gobsmacking. I've seen great restorations before ("Goldfinger", "North By Northwest", "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", "The African Queen", "The Italian Job". "To Kill A Mockingbird" - see reviews for them all) - but this is exemplary.

The full run of extras is dealt with in detail in Amazon's thorough description above, but it's worth highlighting that among the superb new extras is Michael J Fox not afraid to show his present-day medical condition in the 6-part making-of that is spread across the whole set. There are contributions from almost all of the cast, Director Robert Zemeckis, Producer Steven Spielberg etc - and great on-set footage too. It's also been pitched at a reasonable price. In short, this is properly good value for money for 3 hugely entertaining films that don't seem to have dated at all.

I can only add to the chorus of approval for this - a fantastic presentation.

Onwards and upwards to the "Indiana Jones" Trilogy and the remaining Bond films (which were all Lowry Digital Restorations and look as awesome as this)...

VIDEO: 1080p High-Definition 1.85:1
AUDIO: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, German DTS Surround 5.1, Turkish 5.1 and Japanese 2.0 Master Mono
SUBTITLES: English SDH, German, Japanese, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish

You likely don't need to be told how wonderful the Back to the Future trilogy is (I know some people aren't so keen on the second and/or third, but personally, I love all three to bits), and it'll take more qualified eyes & ears than mine to really tell you about the Blu-ray (though to me it looks and sounds great, and other reviews have been very positive on this aspect). I also haven't had a chance to dig into the special features properly, but (as best I can tell) all the excellent content from the first DVD release is here, plus an extensive new documentary. Super.

So what's the point of me reviewing it? Well, this is why I'm posting this on the Limited Edition Collector's Tin and not the regular BD release. The DVD Description lists some of what's included but not all, so here's my attempt to be more thorough. Should you wish to discover all the goodies for yourself, stop reading now. If you'd like to know what you're getting for your extra cash, read on...

The tin itself is nice enough -- taller than a Blu-ray but not quite DVD size -- with a rather shiny front, though the rest of it is just a plain purple (a card slip has the blurb, etc.) Inside are all the goodies as listed:

A little OUTATIME number plate (complete with packaging that notes "This item is not a toy, for adult collector's only"!) It's both neat and, of course, entirely useless. The lenticular photo of Marty's family is even nicer: tilt it correctly and the characters fade out one by one. Naturally it's still something-and-nothing, but as lenticular cards go it's one of the most effective I've seen. There's also a glossy reproduction of the photo from Part 3 of Marty and Doc Brown by the clock face, which is disappointing low-res -- it looks like it's been captured from the film itself.

Next are four reprints of prop newspaper front pages, two alternate versions of the Hill Valley Telegraph from November 7, 1955, and two alternate versions of USA Today from October 22, 2015. What these allow you to see is how much -- or, in some cases, little -- effort went into creating the actual articles on the page: the headlines and pictures may vary, but the news stories are just copied-and-pasted from goodness-knows-where. I'm sure no one in the props department ever imagined fans would have a chance to read this 25 years later! The Sports Almanac, meanwhile, is labelled "extract" and contains 8 pages of baseball stats, presumably the pages that were actually produced as a prop for the film. Like most of the rest of this stuff, it's nice but you're not exactly going to read it.

There are two double-sided A2 posters. As per the picture, the painting of Marty and the "Back to the" & "Future" numberplate ones are back-to-back, and the original release and 25th anniversary re-release posters are back-to-back. The blueprint of the Delorean is also A2, with hand-scrawled text that is just about legible. There are also two sets of art cards, 11 in total, printed on nice heavy card. One set is of hoverboard designs, the other of Delorean art, including a labelled diagram of what all Doc Brown's additions actually are.

Finally, the Blu-rays themselves are in a digipack that includes a 4-page booklet which simply lists the special features. (Sadly the booklet has a few slight inaccuracies -- for example, it says Part 2 has a music video, which it doesn't, but fails to mention the theatrical trailer it does include. Nothing major, then, just an oddity.)

Whether or not this set is worth the extra money over the regular release is obviously down to the individual buyer. To some this will just be a load of pointless junk, to others it's a treasure-trove of memorabilia. I can't imagine much more that Universal could have come up with to include -- for those of us who like a little bit of extra 'stuff' with our DVD box sets, it's bang on the money.