Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn 3D Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 14, 2016

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and so one assumes George Miller and the entire Mad Max and The Road Warrior cast and crew were properly complimented when Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared- Syn appeared some four years after the first Max outing and around two after the second. While the three films have manifest differences, there’s little doubt that Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn owes at least some of its general concept, tone, style and even execution to the iconic Miller films. As with the Mad Max franchise, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn takes place in a barren, desert like dystopian future where vigilantes of a sort roam the dusty environments in vehicles cobbled together out of what look like spare parts from other vehicles. There’s a lot of leather in the costuming, and the entire enterprise has a kind of punk-goth ambience that may strike younger viewers as positively hackneyed, but which is very much in line with the overall look of the Mad Max films. In other ways, there are distinct differences, including the fact that Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn is a little more overt in its science fiction elements, though those aspects will probably strike other viewers as quaint in a kind of old Flash Gordon serial sort of way. The general plot of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn deals with a ranger named Dogen (Jeffrey Byron) who is on the hunt for a nefarious arch villain named Jared-Syn (Michael Preston), who has designs on (yep, you guessed it) world domination (for starters). There’s a lot of patently silly hoohah (a technical term) about powerful crystals and a subplot involving Jared-Syn’s nasty half cyborg son Baal (R. David Smith), as well as a required romantic angle for Dogen involving a pretty blonde named Dhyana (Kelly Preston). It’s all resolutely ridiculous, but for those willing to set the expectations bar at an appropriate level, the film offers decent amounts of fun and action, albeit often in a pretty lo-fi manner.

The opening shots of Dogen tooling around a barren wasteland in a souped up armored vehicle could frankly have been lifted whole cloth (leather or otherwise) from any given Mad Max outing, at least that is until a bad guy in a kind of flying motorcycle shows up to hassle our intrepid hero. It’s here that Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn starts plying its kind of goofy Flash Gordon-esque material, with “special effects” that will probably strike those raised on the blandishments of CGI as positively in-effect-ive (sorry). Meanwhile a brief sidebar introduces Dhyana and her prospector father as they discover a mutant sized crystal in a cave, something that Dhyana’s dad is overjoyed will make the pair rich. Unfortunately for them, Baal and his henchmen show up and dear old dad ends up dead in the process (what exactly happens to those killed by Baal and/or Jared-Syn is kind of nutty and open to various interpretations).

With Dhyana eager to avenge her father’s death and Dogen wanting not just Baal but Jared-Syn as well, the two set off on a quest of sorts, one that has a salient clue in one of the glowing red crystals that Dogen has pried off the dead body of that flying motorcycle pilot he engaged in battle with earlier. That leads them to a sort of shaman type, as well as (if you’re in the right frame of mind) pretty hilarious exposition giving background into this planet’s history and its bifurcation of species, not to mention certain rituals that have cropped up in the interim, leading to one sect’s kind of ghastly appearance. It is much more in line with silly Saturday morning serials of yore than more high falutin’ science fiction films (including Mad Max, it should be noted), but, again, for those in the right frame of mind, it’s all goofy fun.

As the new featurette included with this release makes clear, director and co-producer Charles Band was a “showman” in the old time mode, financing this project largely through hubris and perhaps just a bit of subterfuge. There are no pretensions here either toward grander narrative arcs or frankly even to production “wow”, and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn simply has to be accepted (or not) on its own distinctly B-movie merits. The acting is all over the map, with Byron doing some pretty weird stuff with his already weird eyes, and Richard Moll hamming it up deliriously as Hurok (Sol?), one of the nomads. Kind of surprisingly, Road Warrior alum Michael Preston is at least somewhat subdued as Jared- Syn, offering menace instead of flat out craziness. The "other" Preston in the cast is basically used for eye candy here, an assignment she fulfills quite winningly.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with AVC (2D) and MVC (3D) encoded 1080p transfers in 2.35:1 on separate discs. There's quite a wide disparity between the 2D and 3D viewing experiences, as evidenced by this warning which is given at the beginning of the 3D presentation:

While we took great effort to preserve the best 3-D presentation for you, the source film elements had some unresolvable issues.

We cleaned it up as best we could, but you may notice minor dark spots on certain shots of the 3-D version of the film.

The 2D version has generally excellent color saturation, if occasionally things tip very slightly toward the brown side (something that's probably exacerbated by the film's dusty setting to begin with). There's rather fluid clarity and sharpness levels throughout the presentation, though, with some scenes looking distinctly better than others (contrast screenshot 13 with screenshot 1, for just one example). Grain is also somewhat variable throughout, looking pretty gritty a lot of the time, but getting over into chunky territory with some compression issues at some other moments (see screenshot 11 for the kind of issues on display). There is also one really odd looking sequence at circa 41:13 where things just go completely haywire for a few seconds in what would look to be misalignment of elements in the 3D version, except that this section looks at least a little worse in the 2D version than in the 3D version (see screenshot 19). The film is awash in opticals and old school composited VFX, and grain understandably looks coarser in many of these sequences.

I had something of a "Goldilocks" reaction to my 3D viewing experience, with a "too much" reaction when I watched on a 50 inch screen through my PS3 and a "not enough" reaction when I decided to check this out on my 4K equipment on a 65 inch screen upscaled to 2160p. I'm not usually very prone to visual cortex responses when watching 3D (in fact right after this viewing, I watched Wonders of the Arctic in 3D with absolutely no issues whatsoever), but this particular release in its "too much" runthrough was really hard for me to view for any length of time, somewhat similarly to how I responded to Comin' at Ya! 3D, which was almost too much for me personally to be able to handle for reasons I can't fully explain. Therefore, at least some of the following should be seen within my personal experiential context. I personally seemed to be experiencing something that suggests some kind of misalignment in some shots (there's quite a bit of inconsistency here, with some shots completely unafflicted and others that were for me almost unwatchable). When things aren't looking aligned, elements like backgrounds clearly (to me anyway) look out of synch compared to foreground objects, at least at times. The first time I noticed this was in the first sequence with a shot of Dogen's dashboard, where some of the dials further into the frame just looked "fringed" or doubled and out of alignment. The "darkness" alluded to by Shout afflicted me pretty strongly if I shut my right eye, at which point it looked almost like pronounced flicker along the lower left side of the frame, something that again to me suggests some kind of alignment issue. Kind of weirdly, then, when I popped the disc into my 4K UHD player and viewed it on the larger 4K monitor I have, I was surprised to see at least some of these anomalies fade, though at the expense of actual depth. In fact, I saw very little difference in depth and dimensionality when I watched with glasses and then took them off for a moment or two, and interestingly there was very little of the blurriness that usually accompanies watching a 3D release without glasses.

All of this said, some of the 3D effects are pronounced in a typically goofy way. From the opening credits sequence (where again even the Universal logo seems slightly unsteady) to moments like Baal shooting his green goo directly at the camera, "in your face" moments are regularly exploited. Grain is quite a bit more pronounced in this version, giving an even grittier texture to much of the imagery.

My bottom line is that my experience here may well not be duplicated by others with less sensitive eyes and or cerebral cortex "processing" issues, and my score is probably reflective more than usual of a personal experience rather than some objective standard. For those interested, one of our helpful members uploaded a really interesting article from American Cinematographer about this 3D shoot here.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both versions of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn offer both DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. The 5.1 mix sounds a bit artificial to my ears at times, though it certainly increases low end activity in several action sequences and provides a nice spread for the "epic" score by another Band, Charles' brother Richard. Things occasionally sound just slightly "phase-y" on this track, especially with regard to some of the sound effects, but there's some good use of discrete channelization nonetheless. The 2.0 mix is solid if less spectacular on the low end. Both tracks offer excellent fidelity and wide dynamic range.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Note: All of the supplements are included on the 2D disc. The 3D disc has no supplemental material.

• High Noon at the End of the Universe - The Making of Metalstorm (1080p; 42:13) is another really well done Scream Factory supplement, with lots of great interviews, including some especially amusing ones with Charles Band.


• Still and Promotional Gallery (1080p; 10:26)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:23)


• Radio Spot (00:30)

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm old enough that my childhood was filled with actual trips to a movie theater on Saturday afternoons to watch old flicks, often with preludes of cheesy serials like Flash Gordon being screened as well. That may make me a bit more tolerant of fare like Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared- Syn, a film that has no overarching ambitions but which delivers a goodly amount of goofy fun despite a modest budget and a physical production that isn't exactly luxe. My 2D viewing experience was more enjoyable than my 3D one, but I'm completely open to the possibility that my eyes simply "can't handle the truth", or whatever 3D visions Metalstorm is proffering. With my personal reactions to the 3D set aside, technical merits are generally strong, and as usual Scream has assembled some winning supplements. Recommended.