Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 1, 2018

Who woulda thunk that something as innocuous as Shark Week would be playing into the political discourse of the United States? Not your humble (no, really) reviewer, but there you have it — and for anyone who is wondering what I’m talking about, simply use your favorite search engine and enter “Shark Week” and the name of our current President and prepare to sit back and revel in that unique combination of “news” and “gossip” that seems to be a mainstay of many cable television networks these days. Shark Week may therefore be back in the news in a way that Discovery Channel never intended, but this 30th Anniversary set assembles ten episodes (five on Blu-ray and a DVD copy, five on a bonus DVD) that prove that the show has been a mainstay of viewers' schedules even if they're not a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Blu-ray included in this three disc set (see the Supplements section below for more information on the DVDs included) features the following five episodes which are branded as "fan favorites":

Monster Mako (2015). Lest you think Shark Week is lowbrow entertainment suitable only for an adult film star and her "date", think again: this episode begins with a high-falutin' homage to none other than Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea. There's a lot of pretty interesting information imparted about Mako sharks, including the fact that they can zoom at over 80 miles per hour, be thirteen feet in length and weigh over 1000 pounds. The episode devotes some time to researcher Joe Romeiro who uses the wonderfully named "chumsicle" to entice Makos to fly out of the water to ambush their prey.

Monster Hammerhead (2014). This episode begins with a disclaimer that it features tales from fishermen (and you know how those can go), before embarking on an obviously fictionalized dramatization of another "old man and the sea" escaping an attack by a hammerhead. The bulk of the episode focuses on a humongous shark first seen off the coast of Florida during World War II (when spotters were on the lookout for U Boats), and which was dubbed Old Hitler. There's another giant hammerhead lurking off of Bimini that locals there have dubbed the Harbo(u)rmaster, and the episode seeks to discover whether they're one and the same. There's some pretty nifty underwater photography of researchers trying to "laser tag" hammerheads to discern their length.

Great White Serial Killer Lives (2017). The episode following this one which is devoted to Jaws may well remind some fans of why many folks shirked going into the ocean after 1975, but this interesting episodes brings that idea home, so to speak, by detailing two deaths that occurred almost exactly two years apart off the California coast, when two surfers were attacked and killed by a mysterious shark. Surfer Brandon McMillan is the focal character here, as he tries to figure out if it was the same shark attacking both times, and what led to the aggressive behavior. His search takes him all the way to New Zealand.

How Jaws Changed the World (2012). This will probably be the most generally interesting and accessible episode for generalists who are also big film fans, since it features copious clips from the Steven Spielberg classic, along with interviews with the likes of Peter Benchley's widow Wendy. This episode does a really good job of capturing the zeitgeist of what might be called "the Jaws effect", and gets into the perhaps ironic fact that the film ultimately sparked a wave (sorry) of protective efforts to keep sharks from being slaughtered or at least maimed by the practice of "finning".

Ultimate Air Jaws (2010). The Air Jaws episodes have evidently been big favorites of fans of Shark Week through the years, though I must admit I had never even heard of them before this set arrived at my doorstep. As is actually discussed quite a bit in the first episode on this set, it's a fairly new realization that great whites "breach", i.e., jump into the air to catch prey. Shark expert and nature photographer Chris Fallows is the focal character here, as he uses a one man sub and, later, an insane contraption called a "seal sled" to get some amazing slow motion footage of sharks in action.

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and Discover with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is probably unavoidably heterogenous looking at times, since various episodes utilize stock footage intercut with newly filmed sequences. The newly shot work is almost always sharp and well detailed, with the caveat that a lot of the underwater material is understandably murky and often lacking in much detail. The above the ground footage generally has nice fine detail levels and a commendably suffused palette. Some occasional moments tend to look a bit noisy, and there's even some minor macroblocking and pixellation in some isolated moments, but on the whole fans should be well pleased with the look of this release.

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sorry, I just don't get it. Not only does this release not feature lossless audio, insult is added to injury by having "only" a stereo mix in Dolby Digital. As someone who has admittedly not made Shark Week a "must see tv" event in my own household, I'm not sure if Discovery ever broadcast any of these episodes with surround sound, but even a lossless stereo track could have arguably upped the energy of the sounds of marauding sharks whacking into cameras and the like. That said, while I'm scoring this pretty low as a kind of "protest vote", the fact is the sound design of these episodes is fairly small scale, built mostly out of voiceover and on screen talking heads, so all but the most ardent audiophile will probably be satisfied, if not overly impressed, with the sound quality here.

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Lionsgate and Discovery have packaged this set a little weirdly in my not so humble opinion. The Blu-ray disc offers the five episodes detailed above, with no supplemental material. The first DVD in the set is simply a standard definition accounting of the same five "fan favorite" episodes. However, the second DVD has the ostensible "supplemental" material in this set, namely five more episodes which in this case are branded as "vintage":

• Prehistoric Sharks (480i; 43:23) deals with the prehistorical antecedents to modern day sharks, known as megalodons.


• Sharks in a Desert Area (480i; 43:50) is a bit of a misleading title, since in reality this episode deals with areas like the Sea of Cortez that have large bodies of water but are arid in terms of rainfall or the land masses surrounding them.


• Air Jaws: Sharks of South Africa (480i; 43:01) is evidently the first in what has become a running set of episodes for the series.


• Diary of a Shark Man (480i; 49:28) profiles Manny Puig.


• Bull Shark: World's Deadliest Shark (480i; 49:08) begins with a tease that "something horrible" happened during filming, but you don't get to the "good part" (if that's what you want to call it) until toward the end. The footage of the "horrible" incident is a bit discomfiting, but the rest of the episode is a good overview of the bull shark.

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Shark Week: 30th Anniversary Collection struck me as frankly kind of so-so. There was certainly some interesting information imparted, but why this phenomenon is, well, a phenomenon kind of escapes me. My personal recommendation for fans is to look over the ten episodes that are included in this collection to see if they strike your particular fancy. Video is generally fine, but I'm once again disappointed by a major label releasing a Blu-ray with lossy audio.