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Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Anchor Bay Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (3rd April 2010). |
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The Film
 Translating old literature into film takes some real creativity to take it out of the doldrums of convoluted language and into a more entertaining and understandable form (well except for “Romeo + Juliet” (1996) that was great). Sure you will lose some big elements of the story in converting it to film, but you can’t expect to put all of the ‘Illiad’ or ‘Divine Comedy’ on film. But when you convert that classic literature of the ‘Divine Comedy’ into a videogame and then turn that video game into a film, I get worried that I may end up watching “Jackass the Movie” (2002) when it says “Pulp Fiction” (1994) on the cover. Yet with “Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic” (2010) everything seems to turn out for the best. Rather than creating a translation of Dante’s work onto the screen, they’ve played with the story to make it different and used the film to emulate the hack and slash nature of the game it’s based on. This Dante (Graham McTavish) is no longer an aged Italian writer, he’s an English crusader just come home from fighting under Richard the Lionheart, but he still goes through a dark wood and encounters three beasts. Yet this Dante is a brawler, and fights them off to return home to his beloved Beatrice (Vanessa Branch), only to find her and his father (Mark Hamill) murdered in his home. As Beatrice dies in his arms, he sees her soul ascend to heaven, only to have the devil come up and rip it out of the sky, dragging it down to hell. In order to save her Dante descends throught the nine circles of hell, guided by the poet Virgil (Peter Jessop) to return the soul of Beatrice to heaven and stop the devil from making her his wife. Along the way Dante has to battle through each circle, slaying demonic guardians and saving lost souls. What happens is about what you would expect from a movie based on the game based on the book, it whittles down the necessary elements to cliffnotes (Dante’s in a wood, goes through 9 circles of hell with Virgil) but turns it into some sort of brutal spectacular. It’s almost as if Dante’s son joined a metal band and wrote ballads about his dad’s works but added in all sorts of harsh and extraneous parts to make it more entertaining. Honestly, it’s a lot more up tempo and interesting than the full on Divine Comedy, lacking any of the political satire of Dante’s day or poetry, this animated epic based on a video game is all about toying with the idea of traveling through 9 circles of hell, but this time having to fight your way through each and every one of them. Yet what helps to keep the pace frantic and moving through the nine circles is the way the creators pulled an “Animatrix” (2003) and got 5 different studios to create segments of the film. It’s a little jarring to push through the narrative, but it’s a neat idea considering that each circle gets its own unique look and feel to it. Overall direction is credited to Mike Disa, who does a good job of bringing all the pieces together, while each unit director (Victor Cook, Sang-Jin Kim, Shuko Murase, Jong-Sik Nam and Lee Seung-Gyu) does a good job of bringing their own vision and style to the piece with each studio. From the creepy dead babies with scythes for arms that attack dante to the weird harpy things that attack Dante with their vaginas, the visual look of each unit and the style of the film in emulating hell is interesting. It’s pretty fun considering how Dante’s original vision was all irony in punishment, and these directors with screenwriter Brandon Auman have transformed it into just plain brutal. But of course what would an animated film be without the voice actors and they bring along a fairly solid crew. Of course Mark Hamill’s name on anything involving voice acting means a great performance and Hamill is good here, along with other video game voice acting alumni like Steve Blum, Kevin Michael Richardson and Graham McTavish. Every actor who was in the game took the few extra minutes to record their lines for the animated film and it all works out well with some good voice acting. Not inspiring, but good considering the material and format. Overall it’s a pretty fun adventure through the inferno and a twist on Dante’s vision that I’d like to see fleshed out into a full on film rather than just an adaptation of an adaptation. You can tell that the movie is based on a video game the entire time as nearly every scene involves a battle or some drawn out fight, doing its job of selling me on the game. But by selling me on the game so hard, it makes me slightly less interested in the film. The story isn’t bad and the direction on each animated segment adds some nice variety. I wasn’t always a fan of the animated style but I liked the thought they put into it and to see what each studio thought hell should be. Not a great animated film, but watch able if you’ve wanted to know what the game world would look like. The ending is a little hokey, little cheesy and not so great, but it’s a fun enough ride to tag along for a little under an hour and a half.
Video
Like other animated films on Blu-ray, “Dante’s Inferno” has a nice crispness and clean look in the 1.78:1 1080p 24/fps transfer with AVC MPEG-4 encoding. Some of the animated segments suffer more from the quality transfer as some of the line art gets lost in their other colors and you can see the minor flaws, while other studios that favored more digital animation with thicker contrast lines show up super crisp and nice. The colors of the film still show up pretty well and the animated segement slook very clean on the disc, it only seems like some of the studios may have not put a full effort into the production and moved through it quickly.
Audio
The English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track at 48kHz/24-bit is similarly nice bringing through the hack and slash sounds of hell with some operatic chant soundtrack with some big instrumental symphony sequences. The audio and the mouths don’t always match up, but still the audio transfer is impressive and I think it may more be a factor of the animation studios than the audio transfer itself since all the effect shit at all the right times. It’s not a bad sound transfer, but doesn’t quite have the same grand scale that it’s audio is suggesting it should have. However this is the only audio track, and only English and Spanish subtitles are included.
Extras
The disc is actually fairly clean of extras, including only a handful of animatics for different sequences and a bonus trailer. First are the list of animatics, most including the dialogue over the storyboards without sound effects or music so it’s a little plain. They are: - “Beatrice Chase” runs for 3 minutes and 12 seconds, depicting the scene where Beatrice is taken to Hell by Satan. - “Charon” runs for 2 minutes and 12 seconds, Dante battles Charon. - “Dante Stabs Farinata” runs for 1 minute and 21 seconds, Dante stabs Farinata. - “Fracesco Fight” runs for 2 minutes and 51 seconds, the scene where Francesco and other crusaders battle Dante in the seventh circle. - “Lust Minons” runs for 1 minute and 51 seconds, this is where Dante gets attacked by vaginas. There’s also an “EA Game” bonus trailer which runs for 2 minutes and 15 seconds.
Overall
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