These screen captures are from the Blu Ray edition of Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.
A lot of people don't care for Kevin Costner as Robin Hood and this may be due to the accent.
Costner says he wanted to use an English accent but he had too much trouble learning it and fired his voice coach. I don't have a problem with his accent in much the same way as i don't have an issue with Sean Connery's accent in almost every movie he has ever made.
I think Costner does just fine in this role and it's an enjoyable movie. Mel Gibson was reported to be the original first choice for the role but he turned it down.
I much prefer this type of film to something like the BBC television series where Robin Hood is played by someone far too young for the part, how can i believe that the guy was away for years fighting in the crusades when he looks so young that he probably doesn't even shave. In fact i will stop right there before i start discussing ageism in the British television industry.
It's worth noting that director Kevin Reynolds was not at all happy that Costner as producer of the film sacked the original film editor and obviously had final say on the finished product. The extended edition which is on Blu Ray restores a couple of scenes Reynolds wanted in the film.
I have seen numerous complaints regarding this film's transfer to Blu Ray and some of that has just been typical Warner bashing. This film will never look eye candy no matter how much restoration is done to it but it does look like film.
Warner have resisted the temptation to use low bitrates and the film takes up over 38GB of disc space. The natural grain structure is intact.
I have seen too many ignorant comments saying the transfer is no better than DVD quality but i think this transfer is representative of the original film elements and it's much more detailed than the DVD edition of the film.
All medium to long distance camera shots on the DVD edition were blurry and lacked detail, the Blu Ray edition restores all this lost detail. In my opinion even with a new state of the art transfer using the best film elements this will not look significantly better than it does here.
I consider this a fabulous transfer and to me this is a beautiful looking film.
It's on the Blu Ray Reference List which you can view by clicking here.
This disc is the North American release and is not region coded.
Once you open the image you may need to click again to see the Full HD frame.
I must confess I'm slightly surprised you're championing this transfer when you came down so hard on something like The Silence of the Lambs, which in my opinion is streets ahead of this. It's clearly not an upconvert but it really doesn't look all that much better. If indeed it does look substantially better than the DVD, then it must have been one hell of a bad DVD.
The opening moments after the title sequence in The Silence Of The Lambs just looks far too processed for me, it does improve and while the transfer isn't a disaster i think they could substantially improve it and i think they will improve it for a future 20th anniversary edition.
I think Prince Of Thieves is superior as far as presenting the film on disc as it was filmed. Of course that's just my opinion but i think this looks like film to me and that's what i want from my Blu Ray discs.
Screencap 5 was added to show that there is some detail in the distance of Costner crossing the stream ( or his body double ) but in the DVD edition he is just a messy blur. The belt around Morgan Freeman has detail on the buckle which is totally missing from the DVD edition.
I think any issues people have with this film is due to the way it was filmed and the lenses and film stock used mean it will never look that much better than it does now.
I may be proved wrong on that last point and if so i'll be the first to re-post and admit it.