Sony and Their Many Monty Python and the Holy Grails

Quick!  What's the difference between the Collector's Edition, Special Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition and Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?  It's a comedy classic and, apparently, money in the bank for Sony, who seemingly re-release this film on home video every year in a new edition.  And I bet even the people who worked on them couldn't keep them all straight.  Is the new blu-ray different than the old blu-ray?  Did some newer editions lose special features that were on previous editions?  Does the framing and picture quality change dramatically between them?  Are some editions actually exactly the same discs as others, simply released in new, gimmicky packaging?  The answers to all these questions are: yes, yes, yes and yes! And I've decided to get to the bottom of it all.

Update 7/1/18 - 8/10/26: Would you believe Sony has re-issued this film again since I wrote it?  To quote Sally Struthers: "sure, we all would."  But this last one's a bit more justified than usual, as we're kicking it up to a whole new generation of disc.  Previously, Sony had already given us a 4k restoration of the film, but only on 1080p discs.  Now we've got a fancy, new edition (limited edition steelbook BD/ UHD combo pack) on a genuine 4k format, with more extras and what-not.

Is Holy Grail the best Monty Python film?  The Pythons themselves have said that The Life of Brian seems to be their most celebrated film in their home country, and Grail is the most popular in America.  For me it's hard to settle on a single best.  They're all so fragmented, and there are segments in each of their films that that stand out as favorites.  Grail might suffer a bit more than the others in that their are lines and moments that are so iconic than a younger viewer approaching the films today may well have heard half the jokes out of context before even seeing the movie, so it can feel like corny, old material even though this is where it originated.  But there are certainly elements that keep it fresh and ageless, including terrific production values dedicated to presenting an authentic and dung-ridden medieval period, a fantastically frustrated straight man in via the performance of Graham Chapman as King Arthur, and the stylish score and animation.  So even if the humor doesn't always do it for you, it's still an undeniably impressive little movie.

So let's get into answering our thesis question: what're all these varying editions all about?  Well, I've found you can boil it down to to five different discs, starting with the original, barebones DVD from back in 1999.  There are more than five releases, even just limiting it to DVDs and blu-rays put out in the USA market; but only five editions where the content of the actual discs change.  So, first, let's just briefly talk about where they don't change:

*The 2003 Collector's Edition is the same 2-disc set as the 2001 Special Edition, except in limited packaging with a hard copy of the script and a collectible film cell.

*The 2005 And Now For Something Completely Hilarious collection features the same disc first disc as the 2001 Special Edition (and single discs of the other films), but lacking the second disc of special features.

*The 2008 Monty Python's Holy Trinity set, happily, fixes that by including both discs from the 2001 Special Edition, which also came with a book and T-shirt (as well as 2-disc sets of the other films).

*The 2015 Limited Edition Castle Catapult Gift Set just includes the same 40th Anniversary blu-ray disc, but with a whole, wacky playset.

So, that was all the editions that stayed the same.  Now, let's look at the differing editions.  First, there's the 1999 barebones DVD.  It's widescreen, but non-anamorphic.  Then there's the 2001 Special Edition, a 2-disc set which is now anamorphic.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition, which not only has new special features unique to this edition, but boasts an updated transfer with a new aspect ratio.  Fourth is the first blu-ray release, which of course gave the film its HD debut in 2012.  And then there's the 2015 40th Anniversary Edition, which added new, additional special features (and sometimes a catapult).  And now there's the limited edition 50th Anniversary BD/ UHD steelbook combopack, which has both stayed the same (the BD half is just the 40th Anniversary disc again) and changed with a brand new 4k restoration on a proper Ultra 4k HD disc.

1) 1999 DVD; 2) 2001 DVD; 3) 2006 DVD; 4) 2012 BD;
5) 2015 BD; 6) 2025 BD; 7) 2025 1080p UHD; 8) 2025 2160p UHD.

So, yeah, it's interesting to see how this film's come along over the years.  The original 1999 DVD is a non-anamorphic 1.76:1.  It's also a bit murkier, definitely softer, with detail smoothed away.  The 2001 special edition brightened the image - though they pushed it a bit red - made it anamorphic and definitely brought in more detail.  It's got a little dead space in the overscan issues, which it would've gotten away with in its time, presenting the film in the widest of all its aspect ratios: 1.81:1.  Don't be impressed by that, though, because it was accomplished by trimming the most off of all four sides, making it actually the most cropped edition.  The 2006 edition corrects that, bringing us to a taller 1.67:1 aspect ratio.  It doesn't add much more clarity, but does restore more picture around the edges, particularly vertically.  Coming to the HD blus, the aspect stops shifting around; it's 1.67:1 from 2006 'till 2025.  But the color palette is more natural (look at the historian's skin tones), and it's definitely clearer.  Even the best, 2006 DVD looks pretty soft.  It's pleasingly sharper now on the BDs, which are for all intents and purposes identical, with detail as clear as it's likely to ever be, and grain now highly visible and distinct.  Technically, the 2006 and 2014/ 2025 blus must be different encodes, but you can match each granular pixel between the two's screenshots.

And all that brings us to the 2026 UHD.  It actually has two versions on it.  Their new 4k restoration and the "Near-Theatrical Version Of the Film," which is the theatrical cut minus the "Get On With It" deleted scene removed.  The latter is only in 1080p, but it is the new 4k restoration.  If you compare it to the 40th Anniversary edition, you can see, for example, the highlights in the Black Knight scene filled in now, where they were blown out before.  The framing is 1.66:1, just a pixel or two's worth of difference from the older blus.  The color timing, brightness levels are essentially unchanged.  But if you compare the 4k remaster to any other version, even the 1080p version on the same disc, it's evident how much better rendered detail and film grain is.  What looks like a big pixelated line running up the historian's forehead, for example, is now properly displayed as rounded grain.  In short, it's not a huge revelation - both because the previous transfers were well done and the fact that the original film is already a bit rough and not always perfectly in focus - but it is this film finally displayed in proper 4k HDR with Dolby Vision.

Audio-wise, the original DVD just had the mono track in Dolby 2.0 with optional English, Spanish and French subtitles.  The 2001 special edition introduced a new 5.1 mix as well as a French mono dub to those options, plus joke subs "For People Who Don't Like The Film," which just plays text from Shakespeare's Henry IV pt 2.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition keeps all of that, and adds additional language options, specifically a Portuguese 5.1 mix and Chinese, Portuguese and Thai subtitles.  Then both of the blu-rays bumps the audio to lossless DTS-HD and adds even more audio options: a Japanese 5.1 mix as well as Japanese, Korean and Mandarin subtitles.

This new edition really goes all out in the audio department.  It still has the 5.1 mix in DTS-HD, plus French, German, Italian and Spanish 5.1 dubs, also in DTS-HD.  But it also has a new remixed Dolby Atmos track and, for us purists, the original mono in 2.0, also lossless.  And yes, it has a slew of foreign subtitle options, plus optional English ones, both HoH and pure.  And it still has the Henry IV ones.  Though this is for the theatrical cut.  The "Near-Theatrical" cut only has the English 5.1 in DTS-HD and optional subtitles.  And the blu-ray version, of course, is unchanged, as it's the same 40th Anniversary disc as before.

Now let's really dive deep and take a look at the special features.  We start off easy: the 1999 DVD only has a handful of bonus trailers, not even the Holy Grail trailer.   Then the 2001 Special Edition comes with almost all of the extras that have been on any and every subsequent edition: two audio commentaries, one by directors Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and one by the remaining Pythons: John Cleese, Michael Palin and Eric Idle.  Both of these maybe get a little cheesy at times, but are mostly both informative and entertaining, and I doubt any Python fan would want to skip them.  There's a really fun documentary called Quest for the Holy Grail Locations, where Palin and Jones tour the old filming locations, and there's a nice, 13-minute behind-the-scenes featurette made for British television.  There's a couple trailers, stills galleries, a trivia track and weblink kinda stuff... and then, if you thought those Henry IV subtitles were a bit silly, buckle in.  Sony has packed all these DVD and blu-ray editions with a plethora of silly, gag extras, that do little to add to the film experience, but are just jokes in and of themselves.

The film starts with a bluff, fake educational short called Dentists On the Job, as if you got the wrong disc or something, which plays for about two minutes before the real movie begins.  Michael Palin also does a spoof educational short on how to use coconuts as horse hoof sounds like they do in the movie.  There's a fake location scouting film where Gilliam and Palin narrate some old travelogue footage as if it was their real experiences.  There's a few short clips of the Japanese dub presented as extracts, clips from the musical numbers presented as sing-a-longs, and a pretty amusing Lego rendition of the Camelot scene.  It's more fun than the big budget Lego movies they release theatrically now, if you ask me, because except for the animated faces and fire effects, it's all real stop-motion photography of actual Lego pieces, not CGI cartoons in the Lego style.

a featurette only available on the 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition DVD

So then we come to the Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition.  Now, in 2006, the main reason to upgrade to this version would've been the updated transfer with the corrected aspect ratio.  But that can be tough to sell to the general public, so they had to spice things up with some new features.  But they also didn't have a whole lot to add, so there are a few new things here, but they're pretty thin.  First of all, everything from the previous special edition is carried over.  And it came packaged with a third disc - a CD of the soundtrack album.  But in terms of new, on-disc content there's: a new trailer, that starts out very serious and dramatically before revealing that it's for this silly movie, a little trivia question game and most substantially, a seven minute featurette called A Taste of Spamalot.  Obviously promoting the Broadway show, it features clips of songs from the films (not the full songs) set to Gilliam inspired cut-out animation.  Interestingly, these exclusives remained exclusive to this release, and were not included on subsequent releases, i.e. the blu-rays.

The 2012 blu-ray did include all the other special edition stuff, however, and added two decidedly better extras to the mix.  There's almost twenty minutes of extended scenes and outtakes with an intro by Terry Jones, and then about thirteen minutes of animation outtakes and unused clips, with an introduction and narration by Terry Gilliam.  Also, disappointingly, they lost the original trailer, which sucks because it had some unique jokes that are only in the trailer.  ANd the film no longer has the Dentists On the Job fake-out clip.  Oh, and it touts another big exclusive called "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen."  It's a direct connection to a website full of behind-the-scenes videos or something, but it doesn't seem to actually function.  If you go to the website, it directs you to a link in the App Store; but the app isn't actually in the App Store, despite their claim.  Their help page says the option to sync it up to the blu-ray is no longer available (I'm not convinced it ever really was), but the whole thing seems to no longer exist in any capacity, except for a false promising landing page.  So it boils down to being just a dead, useless weblink.

And now we come to the latest release, the 40th Anniversary Edition.  They've done away with "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen," naturally, but this disc includes an insert directing you to that same landing page with a link to the non-existent app.  Oh well.  Stupid tease.  Anyway, it includes all the content from the 2012 blu except for that, and adds a bit more.  First of all, they brought the trailer back, which is nice.  I assume the 2012's dropping of it was an oversight.  But really what the 40th Anniversary Edition brings to the table, what justifies its existence since it's otherwise the same transfer and same collection of features, is a new half-hour featurette.  It gives us two festival Q&As with the Pythons from Holy Grail screenings, one of which is hosted by John Oliver.  It's okay.  They tell a lot of the same anecdotes they tell in the commentaries and other extras, and they clown around a bit, but nothing especially funny.  It's certainly worth the watch if you've got the disc, but not worth double-dipping for.

this man likes the movie...

Speaking of special features not worth double-dipping for, we come to the 50th Anniversary edition.  First of all, it duplicates everything from the 40th disc (remember, it actually has the exact 40th Anniversary disc as part of the set), and still no Holy Book of Days Second Screen.  They've basically added one new featurette to the 4k disc, called 'Tis But a Tribute, which is exactly what it sounds like.  A bunch of celebrities (including David Cross, Paul Feig and a surprising number of people I didn't recognize even when they put their names on screen) offer brief testimonials to how much they like this movie and quote some favorite lines.  It's about fifteen minutes long and all shot on webcams.  I'm not really disappointed, because the existing documentaries and commentaries are already all this movie needs.  This is just one quick little extra thing you can watch if you get the new release, but nothing to go out of your way to buy the set just to watch.

So this new 50th Anniversary edition is a pretty satisfying, essentially definitive release.  The only content you're missing out on across all the past editions, really, is that little Spamalot featurette and Dentists On the Job.  It would be nice to see all that mysterious "Holy Book of Days" content put on a bonus disc so we can actually just watch like regular people, without trying to sync our blu-ray players up to our ipads or whatever other ridiculous broken idea they had.  And maybe a new featurette with more legit Spamalot content, like a little footage of the Broadway show and interviews with the cast.  They could even go back and recover that little animated featurette...  I mean, a 60th Anniversary is coming.

But in the meantime, we now have all the Python films in 4k; and.this 50th Anniversary Edition steelbook is really all any fan could need.