Extras:

Transfer:
A perfect anamorphic transfer without any major faults, except for the presence of grain, that didn't bother me at all. The varied colors of the scenes comes through beautifully, be it green, red, grey, or blue. This transfer does Christopher Doyle's cinematography proud. If all HK releases looked this good, we'd all be in heaven. Amazing. This is pretty much Superbit quality folks, with a bit rate that hovers nicely between 7.6 and 8 MBPS.

Sound:
This is what DTS was invented for. We're treated to an absolutely amazing DTS track here. The music sounds incredible. Every swordslash can be felt, and every sound effect is done brilliantly. The bass kicks in at all the right moments, which is always a good thing. No unnecessary bass here, folks. The first fight scene's water dripping sound effects come through the surrounds with stunning realism. The arrow scene will have your neighbors thinking a fullscale battle is occurring within your house. This is the most impressive DTS track I've yet heard on an HK release, and one of the best I've heard, period.

Extras:
This section will be broken up into five separate sections as the extras are.

The Heroes:
The "Characters" section includes character info (in English or Chinese) and an option to view the characters' costumes and weapons. Pretty neat.

The "Cast" portion is what you would think it is...the cast's filmographies. On each individual filmography page is also a brief interview with whoever's filmography you're viewing. Donnie Yen's and Maggie Cheung's interviews in this section are done in English, but don't fret, there's English subtitles for the Chinese-spoken interviews with Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Tony Leung. Unfortunately, Chen Daoming doesn't have an interview on his filmography page.

Going to the "Crew" page gives us the same stuff as the "Cast" page. Here we have interviews with Zhang Yimou, costume designerEmi Wada, composer Tan Dun (in English), but nothing here from Tony Ching Sui-Tung or Christopher Doyle, sadly.

The Journey to Hero:
This section shows us the locations that were used in filming Hero in static pages with motion clips of the locations as seen in the film. It tells us the shooting date in the locations and which scenes are from the locations. Not very interesting.

Something About Hero:
First up here is the "Heros Behind Hero Seminar." The first choice is "Cinematography" and has Christopher Doyle talking (in Chinese) about, I assume, his work as cinematographer on the film. The next choice is "Music" and has Zhang Yimou talking about the film's music. Next is "Action," which is spoken about by my man Tony Ching Sui-Tung. Finally, we have "Acting," with Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung speaking about what they do so well. Sadly, NONE of this has subtitles.

The next feature in this section is called "Colors Behind Hero." In this featurette, the cast and crew talk about the film's vivid use of color. Christopher Doyle (he of the crazy hair people) talks (for once) in English. Everyone else speaks Chinese, without subtitles of course. After the short featurette, we're treated to a nice montage of the many colors of the film starting with red (standing for passion), the moving to blue (romance), green (memory), and finally white (truth). This is quite an interesting little feature.

Behind the Hero:
There's a lot to work with in this section. First up is a making of broken into 6 chapters. There's no English subtitles again, but for some reason there are Chinese subtitles (as if that's necessary). Skimming through these, nothing really stuck out as interesting except for the bits that show the making of the fight scenes. Other than that, it's not gonna hurt to skip this portion of the disc.

Next are the always-fun NG (no good) shots, known in the US as outtakes. These include many a wire-fu flub and a lot of the cast goofing off, which is always good to see. This featurette is set to music, so the lack of subtitles doesn't hurt here.

"Behind the Scenes" is next. This feature kicks off with Donnie Yen rehearsing his fight sequence then shows the making of many other scenes, and even goes into the music being recorded. This feature isn't as painful to watch as the making of because it contains, you guessed it, behind the scenes footage from the set. There's no unnecessary cast and crew interviews here to deal with, so the subtitle issue isn't a problem. All-in-all, this makes for an interesting watch at least once.

"Storyboards" is exactly what it sounds like. There are four choices within this menu and those are "Golden Forest," "Library," "Ring of Iron," and "Lake." Storyboards typically bore me, but the way this feature is done makes it much better than others. They show the storyboards (with Golden Forest even being in color) on top with the scene playing underneath. Cool.

Selecting "Drafts" brings us to another menu with a few more options: "Weapons," "Costumes," "Vehicles," "Props," and "Settings." Picking any of those will display a series of artwork of whatever selection you made. Not entirely exciting, but nice nonetheless.

Hidden Menu:
This section, which I pathetically tried to access but couldn't, contains the usual DVD extras. Those being theatrical trailers and TV spots (two that focus on the film, and four others that focus on individual cast members such as Jet, Zhang, Maggie, and Tony), photo galleries, artwork, and merchandise. Would probably be neat if I could get into it, but I can't, so I must now cry like a little girl. :(

Overall: ...The film is very tight in its 98 minute cut and that makes me very curious to know how the two hour director's cut is going to be. In whichever form it's viewed, HERO is a film that must be seen. I just suggest that you get the HK 2 disc set over any other version currently available. It's one of the best 2 disc sets I've ever seen come out of Hong Kong.