Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Red vs. Blue: Season 11 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 19, 2013

Red vs. Blue is certainly one of the more unusual success stories in modern day entertainment, resulting from a bunch of guys sitting around and playing Halo while making fun of the cut scenes and the built in movie making ability of the game. Rather incredibly, this has spawned an enormously lucrative franchise with a rather rabid fan base, and the show continues to be rather enjoyably silly as it cartwheels through its eleventh season. Fans of the show were delighted when Red vs. Blue: RVBX: Ten Years of Red vs. Blue, the massive box set of the series’ first ten seasons, was released about a year ago, and Cinedigm has followed suit now with a standalone release of the eleventh season of the show.

For those unfamiliar with the wild and wacky world of Red vs. Blue, there is some general background on plot and characters which can be found in our Red vs. Blue: RVBX: Ten Years of Red vs. Blue Blu-ray review. The eleventh season follows much the same trajectory that has already been established, except that it sticks a bunch of the Reds and Blues together in an isolated environment where they need to figure out how to work side by side, or at least in closer proximity than usual. As tends to happen repeatedly in this series, the constant intramural and internecine bickering only lets up momentarily when there's an external threat, and even then not for very long. The show continues to be goofily amusing, with some fantastic voice work and a decided slacker ethos that gives some of the comedy a nice counterculture edge. Fans of the show will no doubt eat up this latest release, but neophytes will probably want to at least sample some of the foregoing seasons to get a flavor for what Red vs. Blue is all about.

Red vs. Blue: Season 11 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Red vs. Blue: Season 11 looks pretty much exactly the same as the previous seasons. There's only so much this kind of source can offer. Once again, the best aspect is no doubt the color, which is very lushly saturated and which offers some extremely nice, well gradated, hues. The biggest problem still rests with some of the rendering, which repeatedly creates stair stepping on just about every edge in sight, especially when the camera pans. Of course, the weird video anomalies are part of the charm of Red vs. Blue, and there's nothing here that will too greatly upset the show's fans.

Red vs. Blue: Season 11 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Yes, the audio continues to be lossy on Red vs. Blue, but it's actually fairly immersive quite a bit of the time, with good use of the side and rear channels for both ambient environmental effects as well as the various sounds of battle. Dialogue is always mixed nicely forward, even in the noisier sequences, and the track has no problems of any kind to report.

Red vs. Blue: Season 11 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary Featuring Miles Luna, Matt Hullum, Burnie Burns and Kyle Taylor


• Season Trailer (1080i; 1:41)


• Outtakes (1080i; 3:45)


• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 5:11)


• PSA: Voting Fever (1080i; 3:15)


• PSA: Blockbuster (1080i; 4:01)


• PSA: Game Changer (1080i; 2:25)


• Deleted Scene 1 (1080i; 1:15)


• Deleted Scene 2 (1080i; 1:29)

Red vs. Blue: Season 11 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Red vs. Blue is obviously an acquired (niche) taste, but it's actually one of the more consistently funny and weird offerings out there in the interstellar entertainment landscape. The eleventh season makes a few pretensions about offering something "new", but it's really pretty much more of the same, which isn't a bad thing at all. Recommended.