When I received my review copy of ‘The Final Flare’, I was slightly nervous. How the hell was I going do justice to a 3-disc special edition version of one of the best skate films ever?

If you’re looking for a breakdown of the main feature, then the first thing to do is to go back and re-read the original ‘Fully Flared’ review here on Trashfilter. The bonus material – we’re talking SIX hours’ worth! – in this special edition is well worth a completely separate review, so I’m going to briefly break down each of the three DVDs in this box one-by-one.

Let’s kick things off and set the scene with one of the official ‘Final Flare’ trailers:

Looks good, huh? Read on homebones…

Disc One (SD DVD)

Contents:

Original Fully Flared Release
Fully Flared Trailer #1
Fully Flared Trailer #2
Koston Speechless
Fully Fished

I’m not sure if there was anything on here that I hadn’t already seen, whether it was on the original release of ‘Fully Flared’, on Crailtap or on Lakai‘s site. That said, if you didn’t already purchase the original release, then you’ve got your money’s worth right here already: the two extra discs in the box are just icing on the cake. If you did buy the first release of ‘Flared’, then just stick this disc in, remind yourself that this is the best skate film since ‘Video Days’ and ‘Questionable’ and re-watch the main feature again.

Disc Two (SD DVD)

Contents:

The Final Flare Documentary
Unused Footage
Beware Of The Flare
Alternate Edits
Photo Galleries
Commercials and Video Vaults
Battle Commanders (Koston and Mariano)
All Blu-Ray Features (from Disc Three) Converted To SD
Australia Promo
Canada Promo… and a few other bits n’ pieces

As I already owned ‘Fully Flared’, for me, disc two is where the full value sits. There’s a hell of a lot of extra footage on this DVD. The ‘Unused Footage’ alone is almost 25 minutes long – and has a lot of sections you won’t have seen before. Watching this just re-emphasizes the effort and work that the team went to on this production. It might have been nice to see it grouped and arranged by skater perhaps, but that’s just a personal preference and being picky – this footage is better than most other skate companies would put out as their final edit.

Everything on here is worth watching (alternative edits have never really appealed to me, but I liked them here), but the two killers come in the form of ‘Beware Of The Flare’, which documents the team travelling through Europe over a period of three weeks in March and April of 2002. I’d seen this before, but it’s a great bonus feature to own here. Biebel and Johnson totally annihilate the continent, while the French Connection (and my fellow Londoners Jensen and Brady) do themselves proud.

‘The Final Flare Documentary’ is a sixty-minute extravaganza showing you the behind-the-scenes point of view. If you thought making a skate video was simple, then you should educate yourself. The amount of time, effort and money that went into making ‘Fully Flared’ is unbelievable: gruelling tour schedules (seriously), injuries and stress (let alone the amazing filming and editing)… It’s amazing and inspiring to hear the team talk about the pressure they felt on making this the best film ever. For me – and probably many other 30-something skaters out there – it was Guy Mariano’s ‘comeback’ that resonated the most. Guy talks openly and frankly about where he was in his life before deciding to pick up his board again. To hear how Rick Howard and the Lakai guys embraced his return and helped nurture his desire to be back at the forefront of skating again is genuinely heartwarming – and reminds you that the supportive and involving nature of skating is well and alive. An amazing film that everyone should see.

Disc Three (HD Blu-Ray Disc)

Contents:

New Full Length HD Feature
Weekend At Biebel’s
Guy Medical Leave Of Absence
Vincent Alvarez commercials and Chocolate Introduction
Fully Flared Intro
Fully Fished
TWS Awards Interviews
Photographer Photo Gallery

For those of us fortunate to own a PS3 or a regular Blu-Ray player, this is a great addition to your DVD library. All the juicy visuals and grading from the original feature are shown as they should be in glorious HD quality – but it’s not the original version of ‘Flared’. It’s extra unseen footage cut to different music. Unbelievable… Just how much footage did they manage to collect? The intro sequence viewed in this quality will blow you away, if you’ll pardon the pun. Brandon Biebel is definitely one of my favourite characters on the team and I really liked the ten-minute ‘Weekend At Biebel’s’ documentary that they put on here.
Guy talks about his injury and subsequent surgery without making you squirm too much and the Vincent Alvarez ‘Welcome To Chocolate’ commercials previously only seen as web-quality clips are here in HD, which looks great. A perfect end to the trilogy of discs.

Mike Mo’s Easter Egg footage and Carroll’s section from TWS’s epic ‘Modus Operandi’ are worth seeking out if you can find them (try ‘cleaning’ someone’s ear on the second disc’s menu…) and the bonus 46 page booklet that comes in the box is a great read, packed with all kinds of old ads and giving you a real idea of the production timeline.

The Lakai guys should feel proud of this contribution to skating. This special edition set surpassed all expectations, even after everyone had seen ‘Fully Flared’. That’s not the kind of goal most sane people would set themselves.

P.S. For anyone who was hoping to see the ‘Slow Motion In Regular Motion’ section from the second disc, which had to be axed after the packaging was printed due to lack of disc space, the Lakai guys have put it as a free download on iTunes via their site for all to see. Thanks dudes. Or you can simply watch it here on Trashfilter courtesy of the official Lakai YouTube channel.

I’m a sucker for any Evan Hecox artwork, so this series of Chocolate boards caught my eye straight away. I’m guessing that this set was designed as a follow-up to one of the best series of graphics of all time: the ‘City Series One’, released in 1997:

(Image pilfered from www.bobshirt.com)

The new set has five boards that piece together, from five of Chocolate’s pro riders: Kenny Anderson, Devine Calloway, Marc Johnson, Gino Iannucci and Anthony Pappalardo. As always, the Hecox illustrations are spot on: nice tri-tone washes, bold pen outlines and slick attention to detail. Oh, and the ever-important Chocolate logo joins the decks nicely in the form of a hoarding above the stores.

Yeah, skateboards are for riding, but I needed a set of these to grace the walls in my house before they disappeared. You’ll be lucky to find them now, but if you see a set pick ‘em up. A good investment (I doubled up and sold my spare set for nearly £2k a month after buying them off eBay for $300), but most-importantly they look fantastic. I invested the profits into buying a couple more Hecox prints – and an extra Calloway model to use for its intended purpose. Nice.