Bond 50: Celebrating Five Decades of James Bond [Blu-ray]

Context:
I had started to buy the previous collection of Bond films in blu-ray when they were originally released and was frustrated that the order of movies were not chronological and that the packaging, while I liked the leathery booklet feel of the volumes, was rather poor. Then when it stopped at volume 3. I was slightly disappointed that I could not complete the collection up to present day (or at least up to the last Pierce movie). When I saw that the Bond 50 was announced, I was happy to find out that most movies (all the canon one I guess) were part of this collection. I quickly sold my previous collection to people who were interested in acquiring these classics. And I pre-ordered this version of the collection. I like movie posters.

The packaging:
Great, I love it. Inside the box, you have two books and they split the movies from a certain date to another. Each book has a little picture of the "Bond girl" for that specific movie right next to the disc as well as some pictures on the page next to it. In the last book, they leave some room for Skyfall. The books are nice and heavy as well as glossy. I rather enjoy the look of it. Although it won't fit in a conventional DVD case. You'll have to display it proudly somewhere else. Or find a bookshelf with enough room.

The movies:
The classic movies have a nice sharp image, I believe it's the same remastered movie from the previous collection (the one that had 3 volumes in it). The audio for the old movies isn't very good but I imagine that must be a limitation from the source material. You'll often have loud sound effects while the voice track isn't as audible. I am basing this observation mostly on Dr.No.

The book:
It's a small book, it does have quite a few pages but I would have loved to have more full pages for posters. I would have also enjoyed to have larger pages. But all in all, it's a nice book and you get to see the poster style evolve through the ages.

The DVD releases of these films (the 4 volumes) with the individual thin cases, even with the stupid mixed-up ordering of which movies were in which sets, were far better.

What you get here are two beautiful hardcover books with cardboard pages. Each page (verso/left) contains a collage of imagery from the two films/discs on the opposite (recto/right) page. It's odd having a hodge-podge of two films... it definitely would have been nicer if each film got it's own artwork. Also, like another customer mentioned, we don't get any fact-sheets... or any text besides the film's name printed on the discs. I really miss my brother's DVD sets.

Also, I'm disappointed that they didn't bother to re-author the Blu-rays. All of the movies that were previously released on Blu have identical discs. The major problem here is that the video compression was, and still is sub-par. If you have a great TV, you'll definitely be able to see the compression artifacts on the majority of these films.

Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace stick out because their disc content match that of their previous one-disc releases... they didn't bother to re-author the discs to give us a unified experience. Overlookable, but worth mentioning.

Quite sadly, all those movies that were previously unreleased on Blu-ray didn't get the full upgrade to HD... in terms of special features. All of the classic films have amazing making-of documentaries. The ones already released had upgraded HD documentaries. The documentaries featured on the discs previously unreleased are all in SD at 4:3, so all the footage they show from films are letterboxed & pillarboxed on widescreen TVs. It's a shame.

They left a slot with a fake cardboard disc for Skyfall, which is cute, but impractical. If they release Skyfall on a one disc, they'll be making a huge mistake. Not having a second disc dedicated to bonus content would be ridiculous... but a two disc set would render this slot, essentially useless.

If you haven't bought any of the films yet, or you've bought them and you're considering replacing them with this, I'd honestly consider just recommend waiting for the previously unreleased films to be released individually. If you like Casino Royale, buy/keep your 2-disc special edition!

So, overall good, but would have been perfect with better packaging highlighting each individual film (and possibly trivia), with re-encoded videos of higher quality.

Great moveies but pick them up at Costco for $179 Cdn. I was hoping for a good Black Friday deal but this doesn't do if for me.