Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: A&E Home Video
• DVD Release Date: October 28, 2008
• Run Time: 250 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001FXG1VI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,960 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 10/28/2008

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Too much drama, December 9, 2009

By 

CGScammell (Cochise County, AZ) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: China's First Emperor (DVD)

History Channel is known for its colorful re-enactments, life-like costumes and talented actors. This two-disc set has both. For viewers who like re-enactments, this is a good set. I am more into archival maps, letters and place settings without all the drama.

However, I found the first disc overdone on drama. Although the history of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Haungdi obviously would have little archival documentation, I found the long segments of re-enactments, much of that in Chinese with subtitles followed by dramatic music, a bit overdone. The first disc could have been told much faster without all the drama. But this sort of re-telling is the forte of History Channel productions.

Having said all that, for people who like Chinese history this isn't a bad production. It goes into great detail not on just the young Qin Shi Haungdi and his torturous reign, but on China's prehistory of marauding nomads across the Chinese steppes and the six smaller kingdoms of Zhou, Qin, Chu, Yan, Han, We that he united after bloody conquests.

Chinese and American historians and archeologists are interviewed for this production and explain parts of the history before a lengthy re-enactment follows.

Many mysteries of ancient China and the battles of Qin Shi Haungdi's armies were revealed when the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors and cross-bow triggers were unearthed in 1974 in western China and subsequent diggings of other ancient graves of the time. However, under the current Communist regime sharing the information with westerners has been slow. The few achival photographs in this video are from the unearthing of this vast collection of statues. Much of the new information on ancient China came to light after finding these Terracotta figurines. The use of bronze metals and "advanced warfare" for the time is truly amazing. It all gives a new light to China's real history.

The second disc deals with the building of the Great Wall of China under this emperor, meant to keep the kingdom united. Leonard Nimoy's narration is at times sonombulous, but the aerial footage of this great human construction is quite phenomenal, especially knowing that among that wall are remains of humans.

What brought down the review for me were the lengthy re-enactments and the often-repeated scenes in this production.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, February 26, 2010

By 

JNagarya (Reality) - See all my reviews

This review is from: China's First Emperor (DVD)

Of the several productions about China's first emperor, this is one of the best -- essentially a full-lengh docudrama which includes much important detail omitted from the shorter efforts.

Thoroughly recommended.

The second DVD -- "China's Wall of Doom" -- though a bit shorter is also excellent as compared with others.

All in all, as a two-disc set a superior bargain.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "My rule will be harsh and cold like the flowing waters, but will also nourish the land that bows to its power.", January 13, 2012

By 

Annie Van Auken (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: China's First Emperor (DVD)

This review is specific ONLY to the History Channel documentary, CHINA'S FIRST EMPEROR. Note please that wherever else it may show up at AMMY, my review is posted on a page with product details for ONE DISC only. Details also list a running time of 250 minutes, as does the snapcase that my copy is housed in. This is incorrect. The program is only 137 minutes in length.

"China's First Emperor" features costume re-enactments (in Chinese, with subtitles), plus authority commentary, to tell the story of a man who conquered more land than Alexander the Great, united the seven provinces of ancient China by taking six of them through force of arms, and ruled despotically for 13 years.

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In 238 BC, Zheng, aka Qin Huang, the 21-year-old king of Qin (pronounced: Chin) province, foiled a murder plot hatched by his own mother, her lover and several others. He spared his mother's life but had her two out-of-wedlock sons beheaded and the other conspirators executed, saving a special death for her lover. The man's family was also slain.

A few years later, Qin Huang raised an army of a half-million. Armed with triggered crossbows and extra-long chrome-coated swords, innovations the West wouldn't see for numerous centuries, Zheng's forces defeated the armies of other provinces one-at-a-time, until the last little state surrendered in 222 BC.

To solidify unification, he relocated 120,000 aristocratic families from defeated states, building them mansions deep inside Qin province. Qin Huang, who now called himself Qin Shi Huang Di, roughly Supreme God King from Chin, standardized weights, measures and currency and mandated a unified script for all his subjects. For protection against northern Hun invasions, existing small walls were ordered linked into a 4,500 hundred mile long Great Wall. This was accomplished with nearly a million conscripts, 10% of whom died during construction.

With increasing public unrest and following an assassination attempt by a musician he'd previously had blinded, Qin Huang grew paranoid. Acting on some bad advice that he should eliminate comparisons to previous dynasties, Huang had most books in the empire destroyed, thus obliterating hundreds of years of Chinese history and thought. His many spies turned in dissidents, who were quickly executed. It was a time of terror equal to or greater than any seen later.

As he advanced through middle age, Qin Huang, who hoped to live forever, sought a magic youth elixir from alchemists. One of these mercury-laden formulas may have hastened his death at age 49. Qin Huang's legacy is the unifying reforms of his early dynasty, which live on in modern China, a nation named for this very first emperor.