I wish I hadn't been disappointed with Universal's Blu-ray of Spartacus from the opening frame, but this one is a burn. The opening shot contains so much edge enhancement that I honestly thought I was watching a DVD. I'm still rather shocked that Spartacus turned out this badly.

What was so bad about white letters over black? Did they need to make this key art for the opening bit of the Overture?

There's so much visible de-graining that it's like Universal added a "botoxify" button to the machines that do their masters. The Blu-ray horror show I'd compare it to the most is Fox's Patton, which suffers from similar digital plastic surgery. There's a shot here and there that looks...all right I suppose, but this is a movie that should transfix you on this format, not make you squint or shrink back.

Robert A. Harris, who supervised a very expensive restoration a couple of decades ago, weighed in with his thoughts a few days ago. I agree with him on every point, especially that this rush-job does considerable damage to the brand and reputation of the Blu-ray format. Set aside the fact that as with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and others, Universal chose not to license the extras created by the Criterion Collection for their DVD edition. Anyone with the Spartacus Criterion DVD should keep it. Forget about this release completely, since it really has nothing of note to offer.

Remarkably, DVD Beaver gives this release a pass in spite of the consistently redder-than-it-should-be color palette and other glaring issues. Yes, the audio is improved, and yes, the picture is better in some respects in some places, but overall this is a burn, baby, burn from scene one.