Big Cats Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Big Cats Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Meow.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 2, 2011

Are you a dog person or a cat person? Wait—before you answer that, take into account the cats I’m asking about aren’t your semi-cute, standoffish little felines that will feign attention for a moment or two in order to get food from you. (Perhaps you’ve figured out I’m a dog person). No, the cats in question are the large, feral variety—lions, tigers, leopards, and the like. Even confirmed dog lovers like myself can appreciate the savage beauty and ferocious behaviors of these “big cats,” and National Geographic has assembled a collection of interesting, if often incredibly gruesome, NatGeo specials together in this two disc set that should satisfy animal lovers, whether they be feline or canine oriented. While the emphasis is clearly on preservation of several species that face extinction within some of our own lifetimes (especially for you 20-somethings), there’s a really nice variety of focal points to the offerings on tap here, and some equally unusual approaches to portraying the subject matters at hand.

Big Cat Odyssey

This is probably the most straightforward outing on this two disc set, a first person narrative by husband and wife environmentalist-photographer team Dereck and Beverley Joubert. As the two state, billions of people have seen their many documentary features and Beverley’s acclaimed still photographs. Big Cat Odyssey deals with their adventures in Botswana, following the Noga River in the Okavanga Delta to the Duba Island nature preserve, where big cats are protected from the ever increasing threats of poaching (a major sequence in this special deals with that nefarious practice).

The Jouberts live right in the heart of lion territory and are therefore witness to the cats’ stalking and killing behaviors, often shockingly up close and personal. Big Cat Odyssey includes several extremely disturbing sequences, some of them culled from archival footage the Jouberts shot as long as decades ago, including a “blood feud” between lions and hyenas, and entire prides of lions taking down both buffalo and, perhaps somewhat incredibly, an elephant. This is extremely graphic and unsettling footage and should certainly not be viewed by the squeamish or easily frightened children.

Big Cat Odyssey makes its points in the soft spoken but urgent tones of the Jouberts. Where once there were 450,000 big cats, the population has dwindled to less than 20,000 in a mere 50 years, and extinction seems but a heartbeat away. The Jouberts’ life mission has been to educate people about this impending feline holocaust, and their very personal involvement with these big cats gives Big Cat Odyssey an emotional heft it might not otherwise have.

Leopard Queen

This heartfelt special portrays a unique bond between one man and one leopard which is perhaps even more up close and personal than the more generic relationships shown in Big Cat Odyssey. Wildlife enthusiast and photographer John Varty stumbled across a rare unfrightened female leopard on his travels in 1979. Usually leopards are camera shy to begin with, but they are even more so when they are new mothers herding cubs, as this mother was. For some reason, this leopard didn’t seem to mind Varty filming her, and he in fact spent 12 years tracking her and filming a lot of her life with several litters of cubs. Unfortunately this mother took some prey to a too low lying branch in a tree where a lion, typically not that great of a climber, cornered her, forcing her to jump, where she was attacked and ultimately died from her wounds.

Varty then struck up a “friendship” with one of this mother’s daughters, a female leopard he named Tungwaan Female. Tungwaan was a much more aggressive cat which Varty had to keep his distance from, but he soon realized she had had a litter, and while she was out foraging for food, he managed to get virtually inside the cubs’ den and met the leopard whom he would spend the next 17 years tracking, a beautiful little 10 day old cub at that point whom he named Manana, the Shangaan word for Mother.

Though Leopard Queen certainly has its moments of viciousness as leopards stalk and kill their prey, this is a much more personal story and packs a surprising emotional wallop, especially as we see Manana grow, mature, and ultimately age to the point where she’s not really able to hunt or defend herself effectively. The last sweet scenes of Varty lying in the grass with Manana, who is obviously literally on her last legs, should bring a little tear to even the hardest heart.

Lion Warriors

Perhaps the most unusual all around offering on the slate of Big Cats Collection is this fascinating piece about the Masai. Though the Masai don’t really hunt per se and eat no wild game as part of their diet, they have a several hundred year history of hunting and killing lions as part of their ritual traditions inducting young men into the ranks of warriordom. This really intriguing special follows two brothers who are just coming up “through the ranks” as it were and are about to embark on their first lion hunt. Before they even get to that point, they have to endure an adult, public circumcision, one of the more disturbing sequences in any of the specials included in this set.

This is a really interesting look at societal and cultural norms that in one way make little or no sense, but in another way are so firmly entrenched that changing behaviors can be a struggle. A number of Westerners are on hand attempting to see if they can educate the Masai that their killing practices are decimating the lion population and will soon lead to extinction. But how then can warriors prove themselves? That’s the quandary at the crux of Lion Warriors.

While the special perhaps comes to too pat a conclusion, one that may not in fact “hold,” the unusual setting and focus of this special makes it one of the more unique and really compelling stories in this set. For hundreds of years, the Masai warriors have hunted lions to prove their bravery, and taking away that long held tradition leaves a gaping hole in their society which even the best intentioned Westerner may have to struggle to help fill.

Lions on the Edge

Probably the most “standard” offering in this set, at least in terms of typical National Geographic programming, is this special, which tracks the devastating effects of a long running drought on several species in and around the Ruaha River in Tanzania. While a pride of mostly female lionesses is one of the chief focal points of this special, a number of other species, everything from kudu to impala to elephants, are all suffering the effects of having little to no water to drink. When one considers that an adult male elephant needs up to 50 gallons a day to thrive, that dearth of liquid becomes alarming.

Lions on the Edge charts the slow trek of the lions, as well as the other attendant species, across the dry savannah in search of water. In fact they ultimately do find a section of the Ruaha which is still flowing beautifully and there is a brief respite as all of the species lap up water like there’s no tomorrow.

The happiness is short-lived, though, at least for the pride, because a nighttime buffalo stampede injures several of the lions, most tragically a beautiful little male cub we’ve been following whom the filmmakers have dubbed Junior. Junior’s pelvis is broken in the stampede and it is just heartbreaking to see this little cat dragging himself around, knowing that he’s not long for the world. As the narrator perhaps callously intones, though, in this kind of world, there’s no point in worrying about the weak.

Big Cats Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite most of these specials coming from the same relative era, there's a marked difference in image quality scattered throughout the four main offerings, all delivered via an AVC codec in 1080i and 1.78:1. The nicest looking overall feature is Lion Warriors, which sports a brilliantly sharp image with excellent fine detail and thrillingly saturated color. Lions on the Edge, perhaps due to its "dry" ambience, also has a nicely sharp and well detailed image. And while there's certainly nothing major lacking in either Big Cat Odyssey or Leopard Queen, they don't quite rise to the level of spectacular sharpness that the other two offerings do. Part of this is due to the fact that both feature older archival footage shot in smaller millimeter formats, which now look fuzzy and are further hampered by low contrast. Taken as a whole, though, all four of these specials certainly sport well above average image quality with abundant clarity and precision, sometimes shockingly so, as evidenced by the brutal killing footage which is part and parcel of all four specials.

Big Cats Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

All of these special sport very effective lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes. This is incredibly visceral sound mixing, full of rustling detail as predators move through the brush and attack their prey. Surround activity is fairly consistent and at times quite remarkable throughout all of these specials, and that immersion can be quite disturbing at times, as various attack scenes play out with some very unsettling sonic activity. Fidelity is brilliant throughout these specials, with everything from hyena shrieks to elephant trumpeting to of course the regal roars of lions captured with excellent ferocity. Narration on on screen first person accounts are all handled well and are very well mixed into the overall soundfield.

Big Cats Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Ultimate Cat (720p; 50:21) This National Geographic Explorer episode gets into the science of cats, namely the physics of their movements and the "engineering" secrets that allow them to do various things. While lions, tigers and leopards are the main thrust, there's a neat segment on a 900 pound liger named Sinbad. I grew up in Salt Lake City where the Hogle Zoo once had the only liger known in existence, a beautiful female named Shasta, and so this segment was very interesting to me personally.
• National Geographic Big Cat Initiative (720p; 1:39) is a set of promo videos for NatGeo's education outreach program warning people about the impending extinction of several big cat species.
• Trailers
• Big Cat Initiative Cause an Uproar Refrigerator Magnet

Big Cats Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm not ashamed to admit there were large swaths of all of these specials I had to watch through extremely squinted eyes, so graphic was the footage. If you're easily disturbed by seeing the real "call of the wild," you might want to steer clear of Big Cats Collection. If you can get by as I did, or aren't easily bothered by gruesome footage, there is a wealth of fascinating information in all of these episodes, as well as some really gorgeous all around photography. A number of totally compelling personal stories help to make this as much about the humans as it is about the cats. Recommended.