Ring of Fire Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Ring of Fire Blu-ray Movie Review

. . .just in case 'Dante's Peak' didn't quite do it for you.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 10, 2011

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal came in for some blistering critiques in several Pacific Northwest editorial pages after he gave an infamous antebellum set response to a Presidential address, a response where Jindal excoriated federally funded programs like volcano monitoring. As many critics pointed out, without volcano monitoring thousands who live in volcanically active regions would have perished in the many eruptions in places as far flung as Washington, my home state of Oregon, and the Hawaiian islands. These critics also wondered about whether Jindal would be similarly concerned about hurricane monitoring expenses, especially after the devastation delivered to his state by Katrina and other epic storms. Ring of Fire, an impressive IMAX offering from 1991, actually addresses the volcano monitoring issue and credits successful monitoring with saving thousands of lives in the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1981 just taken on its own. I was living in Portland that sunny late Spring Sunday of 1981 when St. Helens unleashed its savage fury across the Pacific Northwest, and I can tell you from personal experience there is absolutely nothing like living through—even from a safe distance—a volcanic eruption. Portland, some 60 or so miles south of St. Helens, was literally covered in inches (in some places, feet) of ash. The city was shut down for days and it became de rigeur for people to wear surgical masks outside to help them filter the ash-filled air (in a kind of funny side effect, local banks had warning notices posted on their doors that masks had to be removed before entering the institution to do business). In fact in the fall of 1996, a full five and half years after St. Helens erupted, when I purchased my first home and was cleaning the gutters, I found a good inch to two inches of encrusted ash caked onto the bottom of all the gutters, just one small indication of the lasting effects of such a huge eruption.

As might be expected, Mt. St. Helens provides a major segment in Ring of Fire, though despite this IMAX outing’s typically brief (38 minute) running time, St. Helens is only one of a global assortment of locations the documentary visits. The initial sequence is a brief overview of the entire Ring of Fire, the huge array of volcanoes which dot the Pacific Rim, from Chile and the Andes to Meso-America up through the Pacific Northwest to the Aleutians, Japan and Indonesia. A look at Hawaiian volcanoes is used as a rather visceral symbol of what the geologic activity was like for over two billion years, as massive spews of magma burst forth to literally help build the Earth. But volcanoes didn’t just create solid matter out of this liquid molten material; they also created the atmosphere and even the oceans from the gases they emitted. There are more than 600 active volcanoes scattered throughout the Ring of Fire, and while Ring of Fire the documentary might be faulted for not delving more deeply into the actual science of these incredible geologic features, the piece certainly can’t be criticized in terms of its visuals and some historical anecdotal information it imparts.

While footage of St. Helens erupting, or even of Chile’s Navidad volcano doing similar duty on Christmas Day in 1988 is engrossing, it’s also somewhat expected in a feature like this. What might strike some viewers as being at least a little unusual is the emphasis on the sort of sibling relationship between volcanoes and earthquakes. Both are effected by huge tectonic shifts in the plates of the Earth’s crust, and Ring of Fire spends quite a bit of time with some riveting footage of the 1989 earthquake which destroyed huge swaths of San Francisco. This sequence features some very nice looking fish eye lens aerial photography of the City by the Bay, with a kind of picture in picture look at the massive destruction which was visited on the city by the incredible force of the earthquake. The amazing thing about this devastation is that the earthquake eonly lasted a bit less than 15 seconds and yet it still managed to kill 62 people (most of them in the horrible collapse of the tiered freeway skirting San Francisco’s urban core), while it injured thousands and left over 20,000 buildings and homes completely destroyed. But even that laundry list of horror pales when Ring of Fire points out that this San Francisco earthquake was a mere 1/30th the power of the 1906 quake in that same city.

Across the ocean, another culture has learned to live in relative peace with its active volcano neighbor. The name Sakurajima might not be all that familiar to Western ears, but it’s a really active volcano which regularly drops huge plumes of ash on the cities surrounding it in Japan. Japan is home to more than 50 active volcanoes and it suffers more than 10,000 earthquakes every year. Ring of Fire spends some time talking about Japan’s efforts to be prepared for a natural emergency due to volcanoes and/or earthquakes, and it makes the case that no people is more prepared for such natural disasters than the Japanese. Of course recent events have shown that even the best prepared people can still suffer horrible calamities when faced with the awesome fury Mother Nature can visit on more or less helpless humans.

Like many IMAX outings, Ring of Fire probably works better as an admittedly somewhat disturbing travelogue than it does as an informational horn of plenty. There’s no really deep exploration of any of the scientific facts presented here—and to be fair, there are certainly a lot of scientific facts dotting this documentary—because there simply isn’t enough time for in-depth exploration. But as with so many IMAX pieces, the visuals here are simply jaw dropping a lot of the time. Some of the vistas of Indonesia are among the most gorgeous ever caught by an IMAX camera, and this entire piece, though filled with scenes of outright destruction as fingers of lava creep across various landscapes, are truly inspirational, at least in terms of helping us to understand the incredible energy nature has at its disposal. This documentary is best seen as a starting point, rather than an encyclopedic description of its subject. Though some of Ring of Fire is now a bit out of date, other, perhaps more meaningful, parts of this documentary show how timeless and eternal these geologic events really are.

Ring of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ring of Fire is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Most of this outing looks quite splendid indeed, with the San Francisco and Indonesia sequences looking particularly amazing. Colors are brilliantly saturated, fine detail in abundant, and the overall image is sharp and extremely clear, with amazing depth of field. A lot of Ring of Fire features plumes of smoke, wisps of mist and other similar items which never fail to resolve correctly. It's especially impressive in the Indonesia sequences, where clouds and mist intermingle over some really amazingly gorgeous mountain vistas, with everything looking brilliantly alive and vibrant. Problems do crop up a time or two, specifically with regard to some flicker issues, especially noticeable in the fish-eye lens footage of skies over San Francisco. Some very minor aliasing issues also crop up a time or two on some of the San Francisco skyscrapers and lush foliage segments.

Ring of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ring of Fire features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that has both positive and negative elements. On the negative side, Robert Foxworth's narration is strangely distorted in the opening moments of the documentary, with weird volume fluctuations and what I can only describe as a mildly phased sound. That problem improves as the documentary moves past about the five minute mark. On the plus side, this is a very bombastic mix, with some really fun panning effects in the opening sequence depicting the formation of the Earth. The lugubrious bubbling of molten lava also sounds really thick and impressive in several segments of the documentary, and several scenes offer some nice, rumbly LFE as the roar of volcanoes build. The score an on screen musicians also offer some great moments, especially in the Japanese sequence, which utilizes a haunting shakuhachi for underscore and has onscreen Taiko drummers providing some exceptional low end. Fidelity is excellent with the exception of the opening narration, and the overall mix is also very good.

Ring of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As is typical of these IMAX Blu-ray offerings, no supplements other than trailers (which I refuse to give a score in the supplement rating above) are offered on the disc.

Ring of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ring of Fire is yet another IMAX documentary that's long on visual amazement and a bit short on actual information. To be fair, there are quick overviews of everything from what makes a volcano erupt to what makes earthquakes quake, but everything is just kind of glossed over in the mad rush to get to the next sequence. Therefore, anyone wanting in depth information about any of the subjects or locales featured in Ring of Fire may be disappointed, at least partially. What Ring of Fire does very well is present a whirlwind tour of several places which have had devastating eruptions or earthquakes, and it shows both the relentless activity of nature and Man's indomitable spirit in trying to coexist with these epochal events. Recommended.