Not What I Suspected…
The packaging of Blue Planet makes it seem like the video and overall production is just going to be outstanding. So when I realized how short the feature was, just forty-four minutes, that was strike one. Secondly, the video quality isn’t as pristine as I was expecting. In fact, it’s pretty bad in spots – you can literally see lots of speckles and other dirt, which I guess were artifacts left over from the original shoot that were never cleaned out. You can imagine the disappointment when you realize you just spent $20 on sub-par HD quality content, and not much of it at that.
Strike three for me was in how dry and random the feature was. There is certainly some very cool footage, like the red lake shown at the start of the feature and some of the space shots; but the feature felt rushed, and with only forty-four minutes, I can see why. There are segments on wildlife, natural disasters, and also a significant portion of time was spent on how humans are Earth’s worst enemy and how what we have been doing over the years is destroying it, etc. I thought this extended PSA (Public Service Announcement) seemed out of place and unnecessary, especially considering how short this ‘film’ runs. Then again if the goal here was to show how fragile Earth is and to try to make us all be a little more Green, then I suppose you could argue that the feature is at least headed in the right direction.
Blue Planet also includes a second, thirty-seven minute piece called “The Dream Is Alive.” This was also filmed with IMAX cameras and focuses on space missions and the like. Video quality here is nothing all that exciting, and I witnessed again a surprising amount of artifacting. A dry, male narrator leads up through this feature that also includes lots of radio chatter of space crews talking with ground control. Fairly interesting stuff, but not something I’d really care to watch a second time.