This review is from the Blu-Ray version of the film. The only difference between the two is that the HD-DVD version comes with a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack
The Phantom Of The Opera is one of the most popular musicals of all-time. People in the original Broadway and London productions, such as Michael Crawford and Sarah Brighton, are now internationally famous. However, the musical is based on an older story, which has seen a few movie remakes, including a silent film back in the 1920s. However, 2004 marked the first time that Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical was brought to film.
The musical takes place in the late 1800s in a Paris opera house. The opera has just been sold to new owners, when a message from a mysterious "phantom" is delivered to them, with rules stating who is to play which roles in an upcoming opera, what his salary is, and that there is a box seat which is to always remain empty. Of course, the new owners think it is a hoax, and disregard all of the commands, and soon strange things start happening, including the diva loosing her voice. They replace her with Christine, a chorus girl, whom we later find out has been taking voice lessons from a mysterious teacher that she has never seen, only heard.
At the same time, Christine is reacquainted with an old childhood friend, Raoul, and they start getting "friendly". About this time, the Phantom reveals himself as Christine's teacher (gasp, surely no one saw that coming), and he is madly in love with her, and carries her away to his underground layer. Raoul then goes off to try to save her.
Lucky for us, very little has changed between the original Broadway play and this musical. The settings are beautiful, and the music memorable. This is a true joy for anyone who loves musicals.
This was the first movie I picked up with my original PS3, and I absolutely love this movie.
Video quality
This was both one of the first movies to be released on HD-DVD and later when Blu-Ray came out. Surprisingly, the transfer is VERY good. Colors are vibrant, details are sharp and clear. The opening scene, which is made to look like old film, has a very nice B&W look, the film grain is clearly visible, and the flicker is beautiful. Blacks are inky, and contrast is great. No compression artifacts or color bleeding is visible. There appears to be no film grain or noise or dirt in the color portion of the film (which is most of it).
The Phantom of The Opera is an absolute beautiful feast for the eyes, and really shows off the higher color pallet of the HD format spectrum. This reason alone is enough to buy this movie
Sound quality
To my surprise, the HD-DVD version has something that the Blu-Ray doesn't - a high resolution Dolby TrueHD audio track. It is usually the other way around. I attribute this to the possibility that the HD-DVD version was released on a dual layer 30 gig disc whereas the Blu-Ray version was released on a single layer 25 gig disc, so there is the possibility that there just was not enough disc space on the Blu-Ray for the high-res audio track. This was one of the first Blu-Ray releases, and no one was pressing dual-layered discs at that time.
That being said, The Dolby Digital track available on the Blu-Ray version is VERY good. Most Dolby Digital tracks have a flatness to the sound and have the subwoofer channel muffled. You have none of that here. The subwoofer channel is fairly active, especially with the organ that is the main Phantom Of The Opera theme song. Dialog and music both have amazing depth to them, and the music is full and true. Rear channels are used heavily, and there are some 360-degree sound pans that sound absolutely amazing.
The inclusion of a Dolby TrueHD, DTS Master Audio, or Uncompressed PCM track would probably have forced me to give this movie a perfect 10 on sound - and I may have done such if I had the movie on HD-DVD. However, the audio track is VERY good, and I doubt you will be disappointed.
Bonus features
A lot of the early HD releases on both platforms had a lack of any bonus features. This disc surprisingly gives us five bonus features, some of which are quite good. Sadly, these seem to be ported from previous DVD releases, and as such are presented in 480i and 480p. I wish they would at least give us an HD transfer of the deleted scenes. Still the bonus features are decent, and fairly entertaining.
Final Word
This movie should be a reference movie for HD - it is gorgeous and it has an awesome pumping soundtrack. Sadly, Warner fell short on the audio track for the Blu-Ray version. My recommendations - HD-DVD owners pick this up. Blu-Ray owners - this movie was originally released two years ago on Blu-Ray, so I would assume that Warner will do a re-release soon with an upgraded audio track, and I would wait for that.