Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.5
Overall		3.5

Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 10, 2013

For hordes of baby boomers, Bruce Lee will probably forever be Kato. In the wake of the insanely popular Adam West Batman series, ABC greenlit another superhero in the hopes of lightning striking twice, but The Green Hornet had neither Batman’s campy sense of humor nor, ultimately, its popularity (though truth be told, by the time The Green Hornet aired, Batman was probably already at its all time peak in popularity and was soon to begin losing its audience, ultimately following its sibling into the purgatory of cancellation and endless reruns via syndication). Bruce Lee made such an impression as Van Williams’ sidekick in The Green Hornet that the series was actually known colloquially in many international markets as The Kato Show. Many Westerners at least were unaware that Lee had toiled in film for years as a child actor before his breakout role in American television. Though The Green Hornet was not in itself a success, it raised Lee’s profile to the point where he at least could find occasional work as a guest star in other American television series, but perhaps surprisingly it took a few more years until Lee’s tragically brief adult film career finally took hold. Over the course of a mere two or so years, Lee made only five films, but he established himself as the leading martial arts star of his generation and due perhaps at least somewhat to his untimely death at the age of 32 in 1973, Lee rather quickly became even more legendary, part of that cadre of stars who, rather like James Dean, experienced a post-mortem reassessment of their contributions that only grew with the passing years. The international market has seen several Blu-ray releases of Lee’s first films over the years, both singly and in deluxe boxed sets, but fans were overjoyed to hear of this new Shout! Factory set, which includes four of Lee’s five films (Enter the Dragon is a Warner property and has been released on Blu-ray by that studio). Joy turned to shock, however, when early recipients of this extravagantly packaged set started complaining that Fortune Star, who had provided the masters to Shout! for this release, had “cheated” viewers by supplying upscaled standard definition transfers rather than native high definition properties.

. . .and now, for the rest of the story. Paul Harvey used to tease his radio audiences with that famous introductory phrase, and it’s more or less perfect for “what happened next”. After comments from consumers who received early versions of the first release, and (if I might be less than perfectly humble for a moment) the original Blu-ray.com review, Shout! realized there was something wrong with the release. While they remained a bit circumspect on what was happening, with original reports seeming to focus only on the mislabeled discs I had identified in my original review, Shout! ultimately evidently uncovered newer high definition masters for three of the films and went back to the drawing board to recreate and reissue the set. There have been a lot of accusations flying around the internet (what else is new?) alleging all kinds of nefarious behavior, but I for one find this neither helpful nor ultimately of much importance. What matters is that Shout! has tried to address concerns and has probably gone to considerable expense to recall the first set and reissue this “new, improved” one. Their official statement detailing the differences in this new set reads:

Correct pairing of disc label art and media for discs 10 and 11, which had inadvertently been swapped on the original release.

New Blu-rays for The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon. Contrary to speculation circulating on the internet, the original set did contain hi-def masters of the first three feature films. However, after comments from fans who had received early copies of our set, we discovered that our sources were not the recently restored transfers used for the Blu-rays in Hong Kong and Japan, but rather the original masters done a few years ago in Canada. We therefore acquired the improved masters (the master for Game of Death was no appreciably different), and have included them on this new set, for a truly definitive Bruce Lee collection.

Some fans have thrown brickbats at Shout! for supposedly not “coming clean” about whether the first set contained upscales or not, and to them I’d simply ask two questions, the first of which is: what difference does it make, now that Shout! has corrected the problem? The second, perhaps tangential, question is whether this is simply a matter of terminology. As lovers of FUNimation anime releases are well aware, that label regularly lists releases as HD native when what they really mean is that they have been provided (pre-existing) upscaled HD masters of native SD content. That may in fact be what has happened here, but again, I find the brouhaha a relatively moot point, now that corrected masters have been provided.

The four films will be dissected in individual reviews (see the links below), while this review will concentrate on the bonus DVDs included in this 11 disc set (4 Blu-rays, 7 DVDs, including 3 DVDs of pure bonus content).

". . .no one will ever notice. . ."

For reviews of the four films in this set, please click on the following links:

The Big Boss Blu-ray review

Fist of Fury Blu-ray review

The Way of the Dragon Blu- ray review

The Game of Death Blu-ray review

Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For reviews of the video quality of these releases, please click on the links above.

Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For reviews of the audio quality of these releases, please click on the links above.

Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

For supplements included on the Blu-rays of the individual films, please see those reviews. The other supplemental material in this set is included here. The score above reflects the sum total of all supplements, including those on the individual Blu-rays, as well as the non-disc supplements including the packaging and book.

DVD One

• Bruce Lee: The Man, The Legend (1:22:40). The actual title of this 1973 film is Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend, made in the wake of the shock after Lee's untimely death. This Hong Kong documentary takes a rather detailed look at Lee, seen here mostly as an almost quasi-martyr for some undefined "cause", but it is unintentionally ironic at least a few times. The fascinating footage of Lee's Hong Kong funeral opens the film and as a portentous narrator intones about the "dignified rituals of the ceremony", Lee's widow is barraged by scores of paparazzi manically snapping pictures of her. The funeral scenes, while undeniably compelling, also seem on the exploitative side. It's heart tugging to see a very young Brandon, probably too young to really understand what's going on, ushered in to view his father's coffin, and to realize what awaited him as an adult. The documentary follows this up with a look at Lee's home and possessions and then veers into more traditional talking head territory, with interviews with a number of his friends and mentors.


• Bruce Lee: The Legend (1:25:59). This 1977 documentary is almost more of a hagiography than anything, beginning with a sort of quasi-mythological setting from which Lee emerges. But though the sanctifying of Lee is perhaps the documentary's single most salient fault, in other ways this is probably the most complete, Biography style, piece on Lee available, starting with his childhood and moving through his brief adult life. There's a ton of really interesting archival video here, including shots of Lee's family and even Lee himself as a child actor. Probably unavoidably considering the fact there's a finite amount of Lee footage available, this piece repeats some things that are found in the 1973 piece. Perhaps surprisingly, the elements here are in much worse shape than the 1973 piece, with lots of scratches and other damage, and jumpy video and audio at times.

DVD Two

• I Am Bruce Lee (1:34:00). It's a little odd that Shout! included this as a DVD on this set, since they only recently released this title on Blu-ray. While this is the most recent of the documentaries included in this set, it's in some ways the least relevant, with only the reminiscences of Lee's widow really hitting home in any meaningful way. While this has a lot of interesting archival footage, it lapses into self-serving talking heads segments way too often, with a glut of Lee wannabes, including a bunch of UFC stars, figuratively looking in a mirror and pretending they see Lee.
  
  The disc also contains these bonus features:

  Backyard Training—Bruce Lee's Personal Films (11:26)

  Inspiration—Bruce Lee's Global Impact (3:11)

  Bruce Lee in Action (4:50)

  Theatrical Trailer (1:41)

  Bruce Lee's Hollywood Audition (9:02)

DVD Three

• Bonus Features include:

  Game of Death Revised—Bob Wall Talks About His Experiences on Game of Death (28:46)

  Way of the Dragon—Bob Wall Talks About His Movie Debut (13:38)

  Master of the Game with Dan Inosanto (25:12)

  Legacy of the Dragon (46:48) is a British television documentary on Lee.

  The Grandmaster and the Dragon: William Cheung and Bruce Lee (54:37)

  Return of the Dragon in 60 Seconds (1:00)

  Bruce Lee Remembered (50:55) features interviews with Anthony Delongis, Bryan Mann, Dustin Nguyen, Director Gareth Evans, and Jason McNeil.

  Fist of Fury Interviews (43:21) include Nora Miao Riki Hashimoto and Jun Katsumura.

  Still Galleries features a huge assortment of stills from all of Lee's films and many of his television appearances.

Note: As indicated above, Shout! has now correctly labeled discs 10 and 11, which had been mislabeled in the original (now recalled) release.

Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When you were confronting a big decision as a kid, did your parents ever have you make a list of the positives and negatives in two separate columns, and then have you compare the two to see if that helped? So let's do that with this new release. The positives include a really handsome package (though it's saddled with cardboard sleeves that make extricating the actual discs very difficult), newly color timed video presentations, a surplus of bonus material, including a lengthy book included in the package, as well as lots of audio options. The existing negative in this updated set is that some of the audio options are lossy. So each consumer is going to have to weigh these attributes to decide whether or not they want to spring for this generously appointed but still fairly pricey set. I was on record as stating I really didn't find the first version's video quality to be the soul crushing abominations that many seemingly did, but that said, there is little doubt that these new masters provide an appreciable upgrade. Shout! is to be commended for having gone the extra mile here in order to satisfy its (and Bruce Lee's) fan base, and this set now comes with a hearty Highly recommended.