Blu-ray

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader finds the fantasy franchise setting up a new home at 20th Century Fox after Disney dumped it following the disappointing box office performance of Prince Caspian. Sadly, this third film in the saga doesn’t offer a bright new beginning for the series. What should be a rip-snorting adventure concerning Lucy (Georgie Henley), Edmund (Shandar Keynes) and annoying cousin Eustace (Will Poulter) helping Caspian (Ben Barnes) rescue the seven Lords of Narnia, proves to be a fairly dull and episodic slice of fantasy hokum dripping with heavy-handed Christian overtones. Yawn.

Picture: While you’d be hard-pushed to call this a good film, you’d have to be blind not to notice that it’s a spectacular looking Blu-ray. Colours are robust, blacks are rock solid and the fine detailing evident in elements like Reepicheep’s fur is nothing less than staggering. Add to that a technically flawless AVC encode, and there’s not a single problem… right? Well, there is the fact that the film is framed (presumably open matte) at roughly 1.78:1 on Blu-ray, while everything I can find about the cinema release claims it should have a 2.40:1 aspect ratio (something borne out by the deleted scenes, which are framed in that way). Why this has happened, but I have a feeling that some people are going to be rather upset.
Picture rating: 4/5

Audio: This DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix makes full use of your entire speaker setup to deliver a thrilling and incredibly involving soundscape. Whether it’s the roar of a dragon echoing around behind you in Chapter 16, voices whispering from out of the mist in Chapter 21 or the epic battle with the sea serpent in Chapters 22 and 23, this lossless track never misses the chance to delight your ears with a ready supply of sonic thrills. Great stuff.
Audio rating: 5/5

Extras: As you begin checking out the contents of the Narnian islands that litter the virtual map that unfolds when you select Extras from the menu, you’d be forgiven for thinking that …The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is packed with goodies. And, indeed, there are quite a few extras, but only a handful that are actually worth visiting - a commentary track by the director and producer, two short behind-the-scenes featurettes, a visual effects reel (with optional commentary) four deleted scenes (with optional commentary). The rest of it consists of numerous sub-one-minute guides to characters and islands, seven music videos for different songs used on the end credits around the world, an interactive guide to the Dawn Treader, an illustrated history of recent events in Narnia, a quartet of short Fox Movie Channel interviews and a set-top game.
Extras rating: 3/5

We say: It might look and sound pretty great on Blu-ray, but this film is more Yawn Treader than Dawn Treader

20th Century Fox, All-region BD, £25 approx, On sale now
HCC VERDICT: 3/5