Corpse Bride - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Corpse Bride



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Ummm, has it really been 20 years since Corpse Bride came out? I mean, it was released back at the beginning to the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format wars in 2006, so it can’t be tha…….waiiiiit a minute. Sigh, I’m getting old. Me coming to grips with being middle aged aside, Corpse Bride was one of the darlings of the original HD format wars for good reason. While most early adopter Blu-rays were rather mediocre with bad compression and poor DVD era masters, Corpse Bride stood out as a stunning achievement. It garnered 5/5 ratings across the board from reviewers (in terms of video quality), mostly due to how short the film was, looked amazing for the time. Fast forward 19 years and the original Blu-ray doesn’t look AS perfect due to maturation of the format and modern mastering processes, but it still looks dang good if you ask me. But seeing it come to life in 4K UHD is just breath taking. All of that yummy stop motion goodness in a brand new 4K remaster, and the addition of Atmos? Yes please!

The early 2000’s was basically Tim Burton’s oyster, with the man pumping out hit after hit while hiring his friend Johnny Depp and his (then) girlfriend Helena Bonham Carter. And lets face it, Tim Burton really needs no introduction. His style is what most would consider “politely dark”, and he has a unique Gothic flair to his films that you either love, or you hate. But 2005’s Corpse Bride is easily one of his most accessible and humorous films to date, blending his unique macabre flair into a PG rated children’s film that never really delves too far into the excesses Tim’s usually known for.

Set in Victorian times, Corpse Bride tells the story of young Victor (Johnny Depp) the day before he is supposed to be wed to one Victoria (Emily Watson), whose parents are marrying her off in hopes that the young man’s wealth will save them from the poor house (which of course is withheld from Victor and his parents). But the eve of the arranged wedding comes, and poor Victor can barely hold it together. Nervously retreating into the wilderness to practice reciting his vows, he accidentally enters into a marriage contract with Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a murdered woman who died on the day of her own wedding.

Desperately trying to get out of this particular marriage, Victor heads up to the land of the living, only to get sucked back into the land of the dead by his new “bride”. Simultaneously, Victoria’s parents decide to salvage the wedding (and hopefully their coffers) by marrying their daughter off to a mysterious lord who seems to show up out of nowhere. Naturally Victor finds out about the affair, causing the young man to rethink his direction in life and accept the fate that is laid in front of him.

Burton’s stop motion animated film is one of his best works, in my opinion. The film is charming and clever, with a few solid musical numbers and some amazing stop motion animation (one of the last of its kind). The colors are fantastic, with Burton opting to choose drab and lifeless hues for the land of the living, while infusing the scenes in the underworld with hot neon greens, reds and pale blues. I’m not sure what Burton is going for here, but you can definitely tell with whom he sympathizes with by the color palette alone. That being said, Corpse Bride is a charming little film that luckily doesn’t over stay its welcome with a bloated run time, instead going for a trim 77 minutes to get in, get out, and get on with it.

One thing that I must address is just how fluid Burton made the animation for this one. Stop motion has always been a personal passion of mine, but this is near digital motion vs. the choppy motion of earlier films. And the reason for this is a painstakingly long and arduous process where they took the original puppets and statues, capturing everything frame by frame with a digital camera, and then compositing it all together to make the final product. The end result is a movie that looks like it’s digitally animated in a way to mimic stop motion, even though it IS stop motion. Simply marvelous.




Rating:

Rated PG by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

As I mentioned above, the original Blu-ray was given AMAZING marks back in 2006 right at the start of the format war, and I still stand by my claim that it was one of THE best looking original titles back then. But time moves on and so does mastering capabilities, and of course the limiting factor of HD-DVD’s maximum 30 gig limit doesn’t have to be adhered to either. The old VC-1 disc looks good today, but not nearly as amazing when compared to more modern animated Blu-ray titles. But the 4K UHD (which was taken from a 2K digital master that was upscaled, as Corpse Bride was delivered to the theaters from a 2K master) looks head and shoulders better than the Blu-ray. Colors are richer, with the HDR adding some very nice highlights in the underworld (especially the blues and greens). Black levels are silky dark and full of revealing shadow details. But the most important thing is that the grim blacks and grays of the land of the living just look sumptuous. The fine detail boosts are moderate, but still there, and overall this is just a nice fine tuning of the Blu-ray with some added HDR benefits. Overall a fantastic looking image.





Audio:

Originally released in 6.1 in theaters and 5.1 EX on Blu-ray (5.1 EX expands out to 6.1 if you have the singular rear speaker) Corpse Bride gets a modest upgrade in the form of a new Atmos mix. Not gonna lie here, I was actually surprised that we got an Atmos track, as Warner USUALLY doesn’t do anything but port across the original 5.1 mixes for their catalog Blu-ray to 4K upgrades, but I’m not complaining. The Atmos track isn’t a night and day difference from the 5.1 EX track, but rather a fine tuning that adds some nice little nuances in, and of course the benefit of being lossless vs. lossy this go around. The dialog sounds fantastic, with a nice front sound stage that is filled out by Danny Elfman’s score. Bass is a bit light, but still sounds solid, and the Overheads actually get a moderate amount of use with said score. As I said, this isn’t a reinvention of the auditory wheel here, but rather a moderate upgrade with a few tweaks that elevates a good track into a VERY good one.








Extras:

• Digging up the Past: The Minds Behind “The Corpse Bride” – NEW
• ‘Til Death Do Us Art” A “Corpse Bride” Reflection - NEW
• Danny Elfman Interprets the Two Worlds
• Inside the Two Worlds of the Corpse Bride
• Making Puppets Tick
• The Animators: The Breath of Life
• The Corpse Bride Pre-Production Galleries
• Tim Burton: Dark vs. Light
• Voices from the Underworld
• The Voices Behind the Voice

Final Score: ​

20 years later I still enjoy putting in Corpse Bride to spin for the nephews, and frankly, I still enjoy it myself as well. It’s one of Burton’s lighter films and easily accessible to most people. The 4K UHD is a solid upgrade over the aging Blu-ray, and adds in some new extras AND a new Atmos track to boot (although the Atmos is more a fine tuning than reinventing the wheel). Warner did a great job with the new cover art (though I’m partial to the steelbook art a bit more) and I can thankfully give this a hearty thumbs up. Fun Watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman
Directed by: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Written by: John August, Carlos Grangel, Tim Burton
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), Japanese, French, French (Canada), German, Italian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin) DD 5.1 EX
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, Mandarin
Studio: Warner Bros
Rated: PG
Runtime: 77 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: September 23rd, 2025

Recommendation: Fun Watch

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