For the fourth time in Undertaker's long career, WWE has released a DVD "chronicling" his career and while none of the four achieve the task in any way, shape, or form, this one naturally comes close. Why naturally? One simple answer: it is ten freaking hours! No, I didn't stutter or make a typo; Tombstone: the History of the Undertaker is really ten hours long. It will undoubtedly be one of the longest DVDs in your library if you choose to buy it. Three discs and ten hours later after buying it though, I must say that you definitely should choose to buy it, whether you are a casual fan of the man known as the Phenom or a full creature of the night.
First things first, the style of the DVD was kind of odd to me. Basically, they had a narrator talk about Undertaker, recapping his career, and then showing a big match he had. Now, my fist inclination after finding this out was, "Cool!" I'm no expert. I didn't know what to expect at all and I figured it would just be his matches and promos. You select one, hit play, and then watch them one by one. That was not the case. It runs like an actual movie...err...documentary...err...whatever you want to call it. Now, that was a definite plus to what I thought it would be, but still. Let me give you a perfect example of what I'm dancing around here. The first disc alones skips from his debut to a year later with Hogan. It pretty much skips over his title loss and jumps right into his feud with Roberts. Then it skips about 2 years and enters his feud with Yokozuna or the first match of the feud rather. Then it skips another two years and here we are with Diesel in one of the matches that definitely should have been left out of the set. After this though, the DVD seems to settle into some nice history telling as it gives ample explanation of his feuds with Foley, Hart, Michaels, & Kane. However, after Kane, it definitely goes right back to where we started. It goes from the Inferno match in April of 1998 to a random title defense with Rock in June of 1999. The DVD then goes to an Austin defense a month later, but then it amazingly skips here. It mentions his tag team run with Big Show and then enters his absence. It touches down on his Judgment Day 2000 return but uses that as its introduction into the Triple H match at Wrestlemania X-Seven. Yes, you read correctly. The DVD uses the end of a match in May of 2000 as an introduction into a semi-main event match in April of 2001. Perfect sense, right? From there, it shows his title win with Hogan in 2002 followed by his feud with Lesnar. Then it basically throws another odd-ball like Diesel by showing his match with John Cena in 2003. I guess they have to sell their champs even on other people's DVDs. It then ends up with the Vince McMahon Buried Alive match and the Wrestlemania XX match with Kane. So basically, they skip over the debut year of Taker, 1992, 1993, 1995, and 2000. Even more, the DVD really on gives an in-depth look at 1996 through1998. Everything else is just Taker's career on extreme fast forward. Kind of sad, isn't it? I mean, I know most of the years they skipped over and barely touched on were not that great in the career of Taker, but some of those feuds and matches were pretty important. Get my point?
Ok, let me check my bitch list. All right, DVD documentary done, match listing next. In all honesty, the official list of nineteen matches is pretty good. Wait a minute, nineteen? The DVD is advertised as twenty-one! Well, just wait, folks! We will get to those extra two in a minute. As I was saying, the official match listing (meaning the matches in the actual movie/documentary) unfolds like this:
Vs. Hulk Hogan - Survivor Series 1991; Vs. Yokozuna - Royal Rumble 1994; Vs. Diesel - Wrestlemania XII; Vs. Mankind - In Your House: Buried Alive; Vs. Mankind - In Your House: Revenge Of The Taker; Vs. Bret Hart - Summerslam 1997; Vs. Shawn Michaels - In Your House: Ground Zero; Vs. Shawn Michaels - In Your House: Badd Blood; Vs. Kane - Wrestlemania XIV; Vs. Kane - In Your House: Unforgiven; Vs. Mankind - King Of The Ring 1998; Vs. Rock - King Of The Ring 1999; Vs. Austin - Fully Loaded 1999; Vs. Triple H - Wrestlemania X-Seven; Vs. Hulk Hogan - Judgment Day 2002; Vs. Brock Lesnar - No Mercy 2002; Vs. John Cena - Vengeance 2003; Vs. Vince McMahon - Survivor Series 2003; and finally, Vs. Kane - Wrestlemania XX.
Phew, sorry for that, but being in-depth is my style! Anyway, taking a look at that match list, it's really not that bad. It's got some of the best Taker matches ever like his match with Hart, matches with Michaels, matches with Foley, his first two matches with Kane, his first PPV match with Triple H, and his very brutal match with Lesnar. Most of the bad/average matches included on this disc makes a lot of sense; so even though they are basically snore fests, they still hold some importance. By those matches, I naturally meant his last match with Kane for his final return, his match with Vince to set up his final Kane match, his matches with Hogan for the title win, and the casket match with Yokozuna to show that famous match ending. So out of the nineteen matches, fifteen are amazing or are just there for pure posterity or perhaps both. However, those last four. What can I say? Someone in Stamford must have been smoking some awful nice cheeba to put those in. The matches with Diesel and Cena were pretty good matches, but completely random! They weren't big matches or feuds in any way, shape, or form, and really, I would have rather seen the Boiler Room Brawl instead of Diesel and the Wrestlemania match with Ric Flair than John Cena. Then we have the 1999 matches with Rock and Austin. Utter crap. Let me say that again for emphasis: utter crap. As far as the Austin match goes, this one is really an odd-ball. The two have had like five or six matches together in their careers on PPV and every last one of those matches have been better than the one they picked to be put on this DVD. I really am wondering just why they didn't put his match with Austin at Summerslam 1998 on this one because that was a great chemistry match between the two of them. Then we are left with Rock at King of the Ring. This match is by far the oddest selection on this set. The match with Diesel I can somewhat understand for its Wrestlemania importance; the Austin match since it was a huge part in a storyline; and then Cena's match because naturally he's on top right now; but Rock? What the hell? Not only was it a crap match, but a crap storyline with crap build-up and absolutely no importance to it whatsoever. Coming from a die-hard Taker fan, you know it's got to be bad if he says that. There are countless, and I do mean countless matches, that WWE could have put on this set that would have made more sense than the Rock match and would have been miles better. Overall though, the match listing is great with only 4 hiccups that you can easily sit through since they really aren't that long and two of them aren't really that bad.
All right, match listing and movie down, what's left? Ah, yes: the extras! This is where those two extra matches come into play, by the way. The extras on this set are great. Simply great. WWE gives us thirteen Undertaker segments and two amazing matches which I had never seen before. Now, naturally, some of the segments they select are less than desirable, but they have a place on the disc and Undertaker's career. For example, Undertaker's last promo in 2002 about Hulk Hogan was probably the worst promo of Undertaker in that year, but it made sense with the match selection and the importance of that match. Like it or not, that match was pretty important for Taker. Then we have the two extra matches which are his match with Bret Hart at One Night Only and his match with Kurt Angle on SmackDown! in 2003. I had never seen either and both were great, especially the Angle match. In all honesty, that Angle match was one of the best Taker matches I've ever seen, as well as one of Angle's best! It was phenomenal, just like the moniker of Taker suggests. These matches were a great addition and definitely added an extra kick to the two lackluster discs (one and three). One weird thing was that the Angle match had commentary before and after the match by Kurt Angle. He basically talked about how this match was one of the best of his careers and how he considers Taker the best ever. You don't really hear many people talk about Undertaker, so it was nice to get that. The only thing is I wish they would have had more people talking about Taker on the DVD like Foley, Austin, Rock, Michaels, Kane, or McMahon. I would have loved to hear all their comments on him. However, this definitely does not take away from the great extras.
At last, time to finish this review up! So we have three things: documentary, matches, and extras. As I said, the extras are great so they definitely get an A. Good for you, extras! Match listing is basically great except for the four hiccups, and since I really can't ignore those, let's go with a B+. Weed out the garbage next time, matches, and you will definitely get a better grade. Finally, we have the documentary itself. The pure fact that there is a documentary is great, but to be honest, the delivery of it as well as the so-called "timeline" it gives us is horrible. I hate to do this, documentary, but you get a D, and you're lucky to get that. Now, let's use our brains and average out the three, and we get what? B! Good grade, I would say considering a lot other WWE DVDs don't even come close to that.
In all honesty guys, this Taker DVD is great. If you go to WWE Shop Zone, you can get the thing for about 20 dollars with a free t-shirt and shipping and handling included. You can't beat that price. That is practically 2 bucks an hour, as opposed to your normal 3 hour event for twenty bucks. The price of the DVD is great, the DVD itself is great, and if you're a Taker fan, hardcore or casual, it is definitely something for you. The only reason you shouldn't buy this DVD is if you have his other three. However, even if you do, this DVD is still something that has more than all of those and is presented in a much better way (if you think this one was bad in terms of skipping, watch the other ones). Tombstone: the History of the Undertaker is a great DVD set brought to us by WWE and a great way to chronicle Undertaker's career, even if it does skip over a few years and throws a few oddballs at us here and there. Take my advice, and pick this one up; however, I strongly advise not to watch all ten hours at once! Well, that's all that this creature of the night has to say, so this is "Squared Circle Reviews" signing off and hoping you enjoy what you watch!
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