Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Icons Unearthed: Marvel Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 11, 2025

I had to look it up, but at time of writing (February 2025), we're currently sitting at 34 films in the Marvel Cinematic universe. 34! Since 2008's Iron Man (in this reviewer's opinion still the best in the MCU), the franchise has averaged two films per year and grossed somewhere in the $31 billion dollar range. And all of that is not even counting the upcoming films and it's certainly not counting the copious number of TV programs that stretch the small screen format into big screen territory themselves. So to say that this is a sprawling universe would be the understatement of all understatements, and it's this cinema sprawl that the Icons Unearthed series aims to explore in its latest venture, and righty so. Here is a franchise (er, universe) that has dominated the cinema landscape for going on two decades and broken all the "rules" for frequency of release, overexposure, all of that stuff, and the movies have taken an already iconic brand and amplified it to an unfathomable degree.

The Icons Unearthed programs can be a little tricky to review, because most of the fun is finding out the secret revelations and seeing the story of its subject and its movies grow and mature from usually simpler origins into the behemoths that they are today. Such was certainly the case for Star Wars, The Simpsons, and The Fast and the Furious, all of which may have predicted "hit" but likely did not foresee the longtime legacy, huge financial success, and cultural impact each has made over the decades.

Marvel is quite a bit different. It's based on a very well known brand and long established characters that enjoy rich history and wide cultural awareness and appeal. When the movies released, they were not selling "new" but "new ways" of presenting them on the screen. Icons Unearthed takes its time to explore the fairly checkered, at best, and laughable and bleak, at worst, history of Marvel on the big screen ahead of the MCU. There's also a significant studio of the entire history of Marvel in ink as well. It's all very in depth, and like most of the previous Icons entries, doesn't necessarily break new ground and reveal amazing and awe inspiring revelations, but its success is in putting the story of Marvel together in a coherent, structured, enjoyable, and oftentimes riveting narrative that blends together not just interviews but countless support elements that help audiences see the full story, from comic panels to toy commercials and everything else in between and around.

Though it goes beyond stating the obvious, it's necessary to say that the program takes things all the way back to the comic's origins, its creator, and the revolutionary ideas it introduced into the superhero comic realm (such as the idea of putting the superheroes together, something DC had not yet done in its popular franchises like Batman and Superman) and progresses towards the cultural phenomenon that the movies have become. This really offers the broadest, and safest, view of what the program is about without diving into the nuts and bolts, peeking into all of the nooks and crannies, and generally spoiling the program beyond offering a glimpse of its brand subject and broadest strokes about where it starts and where it goes. It's built on interviews with a number of people who are "in the know" in a number of different roles while also exploring the history of Marvel with a deluge of old comic book elements, behind the scenes clips, still photos, and more. It knows its stuff and presents the material with historical accuracy and compelling narratives that give shape to the most dominant force in movie history.

Icons Unearthed: Marvel Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mill Creek releases Icons Unearthed: Marvel to Blu-ray with a rock-solid 1080p transfer. The 1.78:1-framed transfer delivers excellent clarity across the various interview segments, which constitute the bulk of the content in the program. While there are certainly a number of comic book panels and pages scattered throughout, not to mention old and tattered photographs of varying quality and film reels of which the same can be said, the content for purposes of this review will largely focus on the newly minted video content. It looks quite nice, with good revelatory definition to faces and clothes, as well as background details in the various locales where subjects are interviewed. Viewers will be able to explore various facial features with ease, enjoy fabric and print details on shirts, and soak in support content with ease. Colors are brilliant and full and really bold. Some of the interviewees wear pretty complex and colorfully elaborate comic-style shirts, and the colors leap off the screen as the center of attention every time. Whether the shirts, book spines, artwork, anything, viewers will appreciate the overall richness and accuracy on display. Black levels depth is great, white balance is fine, and skin tones look natural. There is minimal noise and not much in the way of banding or other maladies. This one looks excellent.

Icons Unearthed: Marvel Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As an interview-heavy documentary, it's no surprise that Icons Unearthed: Marvel arrives on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The track is hardly what one would call "dynamic," but it's perfectly adequate for the material at hand. The bulk of the content comes by way of the interviewees discussing their projects, work, the franchise's technical merits, success, legacy, and all of the points of discussion throughout the episodes. The 2.0 track does image dialogue nicely to the center -- seamlessly, really -- and it's also perfectly clear and lifelike, so no concerns there. There are scattered additional elements, such as a little music which is nicely spaced and crisp, and the odd support sound from film clips and the like, all of which are handled with enough care to get the job done without any technical hiccups or obvious and significant lack of quality.

Icons Unearthed: Marvel Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Icons Unearthed: Marvel contains, like the other releases in the series, a prodigious amount of bonus interview content, here spread across discs two and three (the latter of which is dedicated entirely to bonus interviews). There are no extras on disc one. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Disc Two:

• Bonus Interview: Mark Millar (1080p, 1:01:07).
• Bonus Interview: Lou Ferrigno (1080p, 1:40:39).

Disc Three:

• Bonus Interview: Clark Gregg (1080p, 1:02:08).
• Bonus Interview: JJ Feild (1080p, 39:33).
• Bonus Interview: J. Michael Straczynski (1080p, 1:56:51).

Icons Unearthed: Marvel Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Icons Unearthed continues to delight with its in depth, its structure, and its endlessly engaging stories of Hollywood's most incredible franchises. Marvel is no exception, managing to assemble a great story that never feels overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content it necessarily has to throw at its audience to tell the most complete story it can in the time allowed (which is a lot of time) of a truly complex and legendary source that has spanned the full gamut of the entertainment industry. Mill Creek's Blu-ray release delivers terrific video and audio and a huge amount of bonus interviews that run hours in length. Recommended! Oh, by the way, next up for the franchise is James Bond.