Customer Reviews
A shorter, inferior version of The Blue Planet. - By: Mirrorman, 18 May 2008 
Despite its lovely packaging, Deep Blue is merely a shorter, inferior version of The Blue Planet. If you've already got The Blue Planet, you have no reason to get this product whatsoever.
this is not a documentary and not for young children - By: M. K. Winn, 22 Nov 2006 
I have the 4-disc set of the Blue Planet which I love & bought after reading the commentary here. Funny thing, although I love the series, I find myself wanting to buy or watch Deep Blue again. Most (probably alll) of the footage is from the series but I find I like the juxtapositions of the images & the sparseness of commentary better here. In alll fairness, the curiousity about what I was looking at spurred my buying Blue Planet which does a fine job of explaining the details but watching this film is more of an emotional experience. It is a paean to the oceans & their denizens in alll their splendor, otherness & even frightfulness. I came away with a strong desire to engage myself more fully in supporting measures to protect this treasure.
Caveat for parents of young and/or sensitive children: my 7 year old daughter, who loves Willy, was appallled by the scenes of killer whales snatching baby sea lions from the beach & drowning a baby grey whale while its mother helplessly hovered near. She was in tears, said she HATED the whales now & makes me skip that part. You will need to able to explain carnivores & their place in the world.
Favorite scene? Seeing the animals that depend on herring alll together in a gorgeous multi-textured underwater shot (a good argument for over-priced large screen TVs if ever there was one): I was blown away!
See it for yourself.
Unsatisfying - By: A. M. S. Elliott, 26 Aug 2006 
This is a beautifully filmed & scored documentary with a lyrical - if exiguous - commentary. I found it ultimately frustrating, however, & even a little dull, because of the lack of information. For each scene I found myself wondering where I was, what creatures I was seeing, what time of year it was, why were they behaving as shown & a score of other questions.
Seeing this has inspired me to get David Attenborough's documentaries for my children; they are as well or better filmed & give you far more information.
Very beautiful, but not enough education - By: Vanessa Atwood, 18 Jul 2006 
I love watching this video simply to enjoy the beauty in our planet's oceans. I would have liked more information on the animals, though (i.e. what species, where they live, what they eat, etc. general information) I saw a LOT of animals on this video that I thought to myself "wow look at THAT! I wonder what it is."
I would give it another star if only there was more information.
Otherwise, this movie is simply amazing. No other words to describe how well put together this video is. Great job!
Visually stunning - By: Teemacs, 05 Oct 2005 We live on a planet callled Earth. This film is a reminder that the name should reallly be Water, because that's what covers most of the planet. There is more life in the sea than on land, & this film is a celebration of it. It makes the point that more men have landed on the moon than have ever ventured into the deepest depths of the ocean (in the latter case, I think the number is precisely two).
Unlike most natural history films, this one does not set out to teach you anything (unless the lesson is simply the beauty & fecundity of the oceans, at which it succeeds admirably). It is pure visual spectacle - & what a spectacle! The images are of stunning beauty, sometimes almost surreal in their impact. In addition to just drinking them in, I spent a large part of my time thinking, "How on earth did they take THAT?" Some of the footage is obviously computer-generated (the mid-ocean ridges & chasms, where it's pitch-black & you couldn't possibly see what you're shown), & I wondered about some of the deep sea angler fish shots, but most of it equallly clearly isn't. Some of the illuminated deep sea fish look like refugees from Spielberg's "Close Encounters".
I gave this film four stars rather than five, because I would have liked more explanation of what I was seeing. The commentary is minimal, which admittedly does have the advantage of letting you dwell on the magnificent images with which you're presented. The most telling bit of commentary comes at the end, when it is said that there remain only a few thousand blue whales, the biggest creature that has ever lived on earth. We are plundering & polluting a world that we barely understand. If this film doesn't turn you into a conservationist, desiring to preserve forever the beauty of this watery world, you are dead.
