I recently completed my home 7.1.4 speaker setup and have been really enjoying digging into high-end Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision material. Playing around with nip23 long-form content to share this kind of niche nerd stuff that doesn't quite make sense as a regular nostr note.
tldr: A pretty good but not-really-Trek movie's presentation totally disappoints on this early-run 4k disc.
The movie
It's JJ Abrams doing Star Trek. Normie non-Trekkies should love the slick excitement. More hard-core Trekkies should resent the commoditization of Trek.
Abrams is a great storyteller; his generation's sorta-Spielberg. Well, a Spielberg whose artistry is happy to live within the sanitized confines of corporate mega-media. But Abrams does have much of Spielberg's lively camerawork (without being Michael Bay's swoosh-all-the-shots), expert tight pacing, clarity, and humor.
But my core conflict as a Next Generation-era Trekkie is that Trek was never about fast-paced, intense action. Abrams' Trek is good for what it's aiming for. It does have heart. But no matter how earnestly it tries to honor its Trek roots, it just isn't terribly Trek-like.
Minor side gripe: I have no clue why Benedict Cumberbatch feels the need to overplay Khan so badly. Even the way he mouths words is just so weirdly overdone (it's like he needs to fit a whole apple in his mouth between each syllable).
Video
Interesting โ and disappointing โ nerd issues here. This was one of the first 4k discs that Paramount put out. New tech, new processes, lots to learn. The disc was cut from a 2k master. 2k is basically the same as a standard HD blu-ray. That's half the resolution dimension-wise vs true 4k. Note that when you halve both height and width, you end up with 1/4 the total number of pixels. And it shows.
Surprisingly, it's less noticeable in close-ups. Those look detailed enough. But any shot where the camera is backed a little further away is just really soft. It's so bad that if a future "4k" disc I'm considering watching is actually a 2k transfer, I'm just going to take a pass.
I'm also already so spoiled by Dolby Vision that mere HDR10 (the baseline HDR standard that the 4k UHD disc format guarantees) is a let down.
This is an interesting case where the Blu-ray.com review linked above actually raves about the technicals here. I was super-confused at first given my deep disappointment. But their review was in the infancy of 4k discs, seven years ago. Since then there've been great leaps forward to get so much more out of this format. It was impressive for 2016. But unacceptably bad for 2024.
Misc notes: The HDR color grading makes Christopher Pine's hair look like it's dyed a slight orange in the opening, perhaps a consequence of over-cranking the colors to make the unique red foliage pop (though it's entirely possible that my system is to blame; HDR10 requires your system to be properly calibrated).
This is the IMAX version of the movie, meaning that the aspect ratio pops up to IMAX's taller format (fills the area above and below that would otherwise be letterboxed) and pops back down to the quite wide Cinemascope (2.40:1) aspect ratio. I've liked these combo presentations in the past (e.g. The Dark Knight HD blu-ray), but the aspect ratio changes here are just too jarring. I think there were even some scenes that were shot-for-shot alternating between the two formats.
Audio
Another consequence of being an early release, the Dolby Atmos mix just sounds amateurish to me. Yes, there are distinct audio effects as spears go whizzing by in the opening. But everything is just overdone. The mix is loud and harsh. Wait, if the mix is loud, just turn down the volume, right? Except the dialog is targeting a certain level. The loudest effects are just too aggressive relative to that dialog baseline level. A loud, deep rumble from the sub is one thing, but too often it's accompanied by a higher-end harshness that is just unpleasant.
The previously reviewed Midway Atmos mix puts Star Trek: Into Darkness' overcranked mix to shame and shows that it is possible to deliver intense sonic warfare without just being loud and painful.