"The Scorpion King" thunders onto a DVD that excels in the technical department, although the extra features are really only of the watch-once variety.

TECHNICAL FEATURES

Picture The clarity of the image quality is outstanding, with warm tones throughout and excellent sharp definition on offer.

Sound Whether or not the nu-metal styled musical highlights are historically accurate, they sure are loud thanks to a choice of both Dolby and DTS 5.1 mixes. Both offer plenty of enjoyably ludicrous effects, but the DTS wins in terms of clarity of detail.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Audio Commentary One Director Chuck Russell sits in for an informative commentary, dissecting what's going on throughout the movie with both technical insights and little anecdotes on the actors.

Audio Commentary Two It would have been better if The Rock could have recorded a joint commentary with Russell, rather than this solo effort. He certainly doesn't lack humour, but his chat mainly revolves around pointing out scenes he really liked, of which there are quite a few!

Enhanced Viewing Mode Footage from the alternate scenes section is linked to during the film through on-screen icons if you choose this option.

Alternate Scenes Twelve minutes of tepid alternate footage; some light comedy and a battle sequence are the highlights of otherwise throwaway material.

Gag Reel About a minute of mad japes'n'goofs are here for you to enjoy. There's more such material littered throughout the other featurettes if you're a fan of stars stuffing up.

Making Of The Rock is in no doubt as to the importance of his character, declaring, "I think this guy is the next action hero. You heard it here from me." The rock-like one has lost none of his WWF-gained selling skills, as you'll see from this 14-minute featurette, where he never misses an opportunity to pitch you with another great sale. "You really believe that this guy is the ultimate bad guy," he continues, this time chatting about his adversary, Memnon, played by Stephen Brand.

Behind-the-scenes footage is padded out with typical cast and crew comments on character and plot, although The Rock does bring some humour to the proceedings: he says of co-star Michael Clarke Duncan "he brings an OK presence to the movie".

Production Design This three-minute featurette takes a look at the Southern Californian locations, which include the cave used as the Batcave in the Batman TV series!

Shooting a Fight Sequence Two short featurettes take you behind-the-scenes of the rough and tumble, including the fire swords sequence, which turned out to be somewhat more dangerous than anticipated. Although some optical enhancements were applied, the flaming swords were actually on fire.

The Special Effects Another two featurettes await you here, this time on the special effects. Although CGI was used for the Fire Ants and some of the Cobra scenes, Chuck Russell was keen to avoid using as much as in "The Mummy" movies, letting it slip he didn't think all the effects looked quite right.

Costume Design This featurette is just long enough to establish that costume designer, John Bloomfield, loves doing films like "The Scorpion King", but little else.

The Rock and Michael Clarke Duncan The Rock and Michael Clarke Duncan spend six minutes sending one another up in a little orgy of buddy love. Bless 'em - they should do a mismatched cop movie.

Working with Animals This final featurette gives us a look at the menagerie of animals employed in the movie.

Additional Extra Features Also on the DVD are two trailers, a music video, and exclusive access to website extras if you insert the disc into the DVD-ROM drive of your computer.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
Region: 2
Chapters: 20
Ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic)
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 DTS 5.1
Audio Tracks: English
Subtitles: English
Captions: English
Menus: Animated with music

This DVD was reviewed on a JVC XV-S57 DVD player.