Customer Reviews

Fearless Planet

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The crew who put these shows together must have been hired from the MTV music video crew. The nauseously 'stylish' shakey cameras; the antiquated, jerky, strobe, 1980's "Max Headroom" effects; the "Matrix" speed-up flying camera effects; and the constant, hyperfast changing edits; allows little or no room to truly enjoy the High-Def scenery pulsated before your eyes! This kind of pace may be good for a 3 minute music video, but not for a 50-some minute documentary. They are trying way too hard to be 'cool'. Perhaps some prefer this style.
This is no "Planet Earth" series by any means. The small selection of CGI clips are repeated over, over, and over agian, many of them reapear in all 6 episodes. Spiced with sand and water-surfing, bicycle-riding, rock climbing (with climbers who always manage to drop-a-rock every climb) to add 'action' to the documentary. There are and will be more truly jaw-dropping, scenic and informative documentaries in HD to enjoy. Go for those. I have, and enjoy many documentaries of all types, these are the worse of all.

Good idea shame about the direction!
The films look fantastic but the director decided to show large chunks of the scenery at very fast speeds leading to a combination of bewilderment, motion sickness and real disappointment. The director/producers are idiots.

There is little enough material of substance appearing on the new and much
lauded blu-ray medium, so as a fan of documentary and "Natural World"
video in High Definition, I was delighted when "Fearless Planet" was announced, and the summary suggested it was just what the video doctor
ordered. I added it to my "must buy" list without delay.
What a bitter disappointment! I can only say that this offering must
certainly qualify as the very worst DVD I have yet endured, in any medium
and in any degree of definition. It is so bad that neither my wife or I
could watch it for more than a few minutes at a time.
Film quality and definition are obviously superb -- on the very odd occasion when the hapless viewer is permitted to view any frame or topic for more than a few brief milliseconds. The poorly constructed commentary
is delivered in a leaden monotone. The mindless zooming in and out of
focus, accompanied by maddening "swooshing" sound effects, becomes totally irritating after a few minutes.
One for the garbage bin, I fear. An immediate refund would be the next logical requirement!

Don't know what's up with the other reviewers claiming vertigo - felt I had to write a review just to counteract what I consider bizarre criticism. I am not a teenager - in my late 40's - didn't think this had an MTV look at all. The panoramas are gorgeous. I believe their criticism is based on some sequences where they digitally recreate the evolution of, say the sahara desert, over millions of years. In those cases, they use something that looks like time-lapse photography - I guess they thought showing a multi-million year process in real-time might require too many disks. ;)

Watch an episode on Science channel first if you are worried - it would never have occurred to me that someone would criticize this technique so viciously. Wow...

I agree with the reviewer who calls himself Stark that most reviewers have been unkind to Fearless Planet. Granted, it is not BBC's Planet Earth. But it is a fascinating blu-ray, though obviously not 24p. The photography is superb and so are the graphics. The commentary can sometimes be dull, but if you do want to cut him off, mute the sound and put the subtitles on. The concept is intriguing to say the least - at least one scientist and one adventurer combine forces to explore various places on the planet (Sahara, Great Barrier Reef, Grand Canyon etc) and probe their origins. There are some repetitions and some material overlap, but it could have been necessary I guess, if someone were to watch a particular episode on its own. I learned a lot about Earth by watching this four-hour series. It is a treat for your telly and your eyes.

This is an excellent series, it really get's into the history and talks more about the land then the animals. I found out more facts about certain places that I never knew. I would highly recommend this collection.

Fearless Planet is an exceptional set of videos on our Earth's geology, formation, and the way our Earth changes. I teach Earth Science (geology) for middle schoolers and this video ties in so well to my curriculum. Each episode is chock full of information that I spend weeks teaching in my classroom!

This would be awesome...if Discovery spent less time trying to cover so many places,and give a little more time to each individual fearless place. Either cutting a few out---and focusing deeper on the ones in front of the viewer-- OR by way of making the entire doc...a tad longer. Not great-but not bad~~~~~~