6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
After Raiders of the Lost Ark was released 35 years ago, three 11-year-old boys from Mississippi set out on what would become a 7-year-long labor of love and tribute to their favorite film: a faithful, shot-for-shot adaptation of the action adventure film. They finished every scene...except one; the film's explosive airplane set piece. Over two decades later, the trio reunited with the original cast members from their childhood in order to complete their masterpiece.
Starring: Ernest Cline, James Donald (IV), Rob Fuller (V), Chris Gore, Jayson LambDocumentary | 100% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The documentary Raiders! (subtitled "The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made") is about
two types of film fans. The first consists of a group of misfit kids, who, in 1982, undertook to
make a shot-by-shot remake of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. They drew
storyboards from memory, shot with early-vintage Beta and VHS cameras, made their own props,
sets and costumes and miraculously escaped injury, even when one "actor" was set on fire with
gasoline. The gang stuck with their project for eight summers, ultimately completing what came
to be called "The Adaptation", with the exception of one sequence: Indie's rescue of Marion
Crane from a Nazi aircraft known as "the Flying Wing", for which the requisite props and
pyrotechnics were more costly (and dangerous) than even this inventive group of fans could
re-create.
The second type of film fan in Raiders! is a creature of the digital age. Long after the makers of
The Adaptation had grown up and gone their separate ways, their work was discovered on
bootleg cassettes by a group of film fanatics that included Harry Knowles, director Eli Roth and
Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League. In 2002, The Adaptation was screened as part of
Knowles's annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon Festival, and the crowd went wild. Suddenly this exercise
in extreme fandom became a hot property. With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, The
Adaptation's creators were inspired to reunite and complete the project.
Tim Skousen and Jeremy Coon, who made the tongue-in-cheek documentary That's So John
Rad! for Drafthouse's release of Dangerous
Men, followed the process as this group of adults
sought to complete the unlikely project they began as kids. Now available on DVD and Blu-ray
from Drafthouse Films, Raiders! is their story.
Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala
The image on Drafthouse Films' 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of Raiders! varies widely according to the source. New footage captured digitally during interviews and production of the "Flying Wing" sequence is sharp, clear and detailed featuring a rich but realistic palette. Archival material varies from mediocre to awful, according to the quality of the original source. Among the weakest are excerpts from local TV station broadcasts, which aired interviews with The Adaptation's creators at various stages of its production. The disparate sources were harmonized on a digital intermediate, on which presumably the images were made as presentable as possible. Except for source-based issues, the Blu-ray is free of noise, banding or other interference. Drafthouse has mastered Raiders! at an average bitrate of 31 Mbps.
Raiders! arrives with a 5.1 mix encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, but as with most documentaries, the sound is weighted toward the front with the emphasis on interviews and events happening in real time. Spoken words are almost always clear and are subtitled when ambient noise drowns them out. The dynamic range is broad enough to lend authority to explosions that accompany the finale of the Flying Wing sequence, but Raiders! doesn't aspire to sound like an action film. Underscoring is supplied by Anton Sanko (Alpha House).
The Adaptation is one of those "believe it or not" phenomena that make great documentaries.
Producer Scott Rudin is reportedly trying to develop a fictional version of The Adaptation's
creation, but the real story is so remarkable and the personalities so engaging that I doubt they
could be improved upon. Skousen and Coon have done a fine job of organizing and presenting a
long and complicated history, and Drafthouse's Blu-ray reproduces their efforts faithfully. Highly
recommended.
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