How Much More Detail Do We Need From the ‘Team America: World Police’ 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Re-Release?
This summer, fans of Team America: World Police will get to watch a puppet shit on another puppet’s in more pixels than ever before.
Twenty years after Team America: World Police practically killed Trey Parker and Matt Stone on the way to an uninspiring return at the box office, the cult classic political puppet comedy is coming to Blu-ray with a super-powered, ultra HD, 4K re-release. This year marks two significant anniversaries for the South Park creators – one quarter-century of South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut and Team America’s 20th birthday – who are celebrating the staying power of their films by rolling out a smattering of products and events just for the superfans, including singalong showings of the first South Park movie and the physical media ultimate editions of both films complete with yet-unseen extras and an upscaling in picture quality that, frankly, seems a little excessive for two movies that were never supposed to be visual epics.
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Seriously, I highly doubt anyone watched the original version of Team America and thought to themselves, “Man, this movie would be perfect if only I could see my own reflection in Matt Damon’s glazed-over eyes.”
Along with the ultra HD 4K version of the film, the $29 physical re-release of Team America will include a digital copy of the movie and a number of behind the scenes featurettes that will demonstrate how the grueling process of creating an entire feature film using stop-motion puppetry caused the two creators to swear off ever working with another marionette for as long as they lived. Parker and Stone famously had to work 20-hour days right up until the film’s premiere to finish Team America in time, and Parker would later say of the experience, “You could threaten to kill my family and I would not make another puppet movie. If my mother would die if I would not make another puppet movie, she'd be dead. I'm totally serious.”
The titles of the extras included in the Blu-ray re-release of Team America include names like “Crafting the Puppets,” “Pulling the Strings” and “Up Close with Kim Jong-Il.” In the behind-the-scenes content, superfans will likely get the closest look we’ve ever had of the infamously taxing production process that saw the creation of 270 unique, painstakingly crafted and carefully controlled marionettes that included the likenesses of every sanctimonious, politically-minded celebrity of the early 2000s. Hopefully, the extras will capture the exact moment Matt Damon came out of the kiln and Parker and Stone realized they had to make some re-writes to accommodate the puppet's limited mental capacities.
Ultimately, a super-hi-def cut of a movie featuring puppets made out of foam latex is an unnecessary advancement, but for fans who have stuck by the movie for two decades, the new Team America Blu-ray will likely to be a welcome collector's item – and it's still better than a 4K UHD re-release of Pearl Harbor.
