White Snake Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

White Snake Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf February 15, 2020

Taking the essential elements of “The Legend of the White Snake,” a Chinese fable (inspiring many interpretations, including Tsui Hark’s “Green Snake”), directors Amp Wong and Ji Zhao try to create an animated epic with “White Snake.” The picture delivers a lush realm of visual possibilities, dealing with towering offerings of fantasy and intimate moments of romance. “White Snake” is striking, but it’s always more impressive as spectacle, unable to connect on an emotional level.

The helmers put in an incredible effort to give “White Snake” scale and fury, but their labor is mostly displayed in the writing, which offers a slight Western-ish take on screen adventure, highlighting talking animals and broad villainy. The focus on making something crowd-pleasing is noticeable, giving the production a slight sense of desperation, and while the story isn’t compelling (a bit bewildering too), there’s bigness here to hold attention, presenting clashes between good and evil, keeping the landscape populated with all sorts of creatures and threats.

White Snake Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (2.38:1 aspect ratio) presentation protects the vivid animation of "White Snake," which deals with an incredibly varied palette, working with fantasy elements and human ones. Hues are lively and distinct, carrying with deep emerald greens and reds for monstrous encounters, while hearty blues, purples, and yellows are found with cultural clothing. Greenery is appealing, along with snowy mountains and blue waters. Detail comes through as intended, preserving creature textures, and nature and kingdom expanse stays dimensional. Delineation is comfortable. Compression issues are present, with banding a common occurrence.

White Snake Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix explores the rich soundscape of "White Snake" with appealing immersion, finding surrounds quite active, delivering sharp atmospherics and periodic separation and panning effects. Scoring is also circular, providing an appreciable sense of instrumentation for gentle string movements and pounding action beats. Dialogue exchanges are sharp, with the disc supplying both English and Mandarin tracks.

White Snake Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview (14:19, HD) is a brief chat with director Ji Zhao. Topics covered include initial development and interpretation of the Chinese legend, the Chinese animation industry, dealing with fantasy elements of the tale, creating action sequences, and managing the love story that carries throughout the movie.

• "'White Snake' Q&A" (26:30, HD), returns to Ji Zhao, who's welcomed as a guest during the 2019 Animation is Film Festival.

• Storyboards (4:34, HD) offer side-by-side comparison of several sequences from "White Snake."

• Music Video (2:53, HD) presents "Origin," performed by Zhou Shen.

• And U.S. Trailer #1 (2:19, HD), U.S. Trailer #2 (1:33, HD), and Original Trailer (2:29, HD) are included.

White Snake Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"White Snake" has its impressive moments, offering elaborate design elements and dynamic lighting, making the feature pure eye candy. Such sweetness helps to digest the viewing experience, which lacks thrilling characterizations and dramatic entanglements, keeping "White Snake" a bit unsteady when it tries to reach audiences through personalities. It's definitely more appealing when sticking with sweeping action and giant snakes.