Solo: A Star Wars Story 4K Blu-ray Review & Comments

Casimir Harlow

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When I heard Ron Howard took over I worried for Star Wars...have to admit, I was so wrong. I loved this movie, very much felt like Willow. Best new one after Rogue one for me, and sadly didn't do very well due to TLJ.
 
Watched this on Friday night, quite enjoyed it but started to get bored and restless towards the end.

I think 8 for picture quality is generous though, it was REALLY murky, almost as if the cameramen forgot to take the protective film off the lens!!

Some the of the scenes are better than others, but you can see they were purposely trying to keep it dark to hide some poor special effects.

Thanks for the review Cas.
 
great review cas,watched this last night and enjoyed it a lot more than i expected,could have been a little shorter as did drag a bit in places.
 
Ahh - I wondered whether that happens when you preorder.

Does it usually get to you before the release date if you preorder?
depends,zoom pretty much all the time,zavvi i normally get on saturday most of the time,hmv i think have always been on release day.
 
depends,zoom pretty much all the time,zavvi i normally get on saturday most of the time,hmv i think have always been on release day.
Doh - I didn't realise.... Wish I'd pre-ordered now.

Desperate to see it as it's the first Star Wars movie that I didn't get to see at the cinema.

I'm tempted to Sky store it but as I hadn't seen it I really want the best quality..... Think I'm gonna wait......although I know it'll be calling me tonight!

Just hope it's good after all that!
 
Not wanting to weigh in any more on the history and pros and cons of this movie, the review sums these up very well, and I mostly agree with the overall conclusion and score... But....

... And @Casimir Harlow is far from isolated here...

Why the continual dismissiveness of Ron Howard's calibre as a film director, and the 'safe pair of hands' prefix. This suddenly bothers me, and I challenge anyone to checkout his list of movies on imdb, and not be thoroughly impressed, their are bona-fide hits, Oscar winners, genre classics, and actually quite a diverse interesting catalogue.
 
i enjoyed this much more than I thought I would after all the bed reviews, the PQ wasnt great for me, too many under exposed scenes even in space which should be ink black.
 
Looks and sound great in 4K with atmos
@Casimir Harlow That sorts of sets the bar very low for greatness and leaves little room description wise for those UHDs which really do look and sound great.

Disney are taking the piss with this one. £26.99 for the UHD vs £15.99 for the blu (amazon prices, I paid less).

And what does that extra £11 get you? A dim murky PQ which looks no better than the blu-ray most of the time. After spending 45 minutes trying to adjust settings to see something in the gloom I gave up and just stuck dynamic contrast on high. A return to more normal light levels at 1.30 mark finally gave the UHD a more UHD look but needed yet another journey into settings to get everything back to normal.

After watching the UHD I tried a cued A/B comparision of the UHD on one player and the blu-ray on another (both at the default settings) and the blu-ray (albeit in forced DV) was to me a better picture (or at least no worse). As @mb3195 notes above the gloom seemed to be there only to hide the shortcomings in the CGI which was poor at times, a bit hard to understand where the $300 million costs to make the movie went.
And as the atmos on the UHD is nothing to write home about either there seems little to be gained by the extra £11 between them.

Save your money, get the blu-ray or just wait and stream it on a Play £0.99 deal and hit Disney where it hurts.
 
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Cas, does this have raised blacks throughout? Have read that blacks are not black......
 
@Casimir Harlow That sorts of sets the bar very low for greatness and leaves little room description wise for those UHDs which really do look and sound great.

Disney are taking the piss with this one. £26.99 for the UHD vs £15.99 for the blu (amazon prices, I paid less).

And what does that extra £11 get you? A dim murky PQ which looks no better than the blu-ray most of the time. After spending 45 minutes trying to adjust settings to see something in the gloom I gave up and just stuck dynamic contrast on high. A return to more normal light levels at 1.30 mark finally gave the UHD a more UHD look but needed yet another journey into settings to get everything back to normal.

After watching the UHD I tried a cued A/B comparision of the UHD on one player and the blu-ray on another (both at the default settings) and the blu-ray (albeit in forced DV) was to me a better picture (or at least no worse). As @mb3195 notes above the gloom seemed to be there only to hide the shortcomings in the CGI which was poor at times, a bit hard to understand where the $300 million costs to make the movie went.
And as the atmos on the UHD is nothing to write home about either there seems little to be gained by the extra £11 between them.

Save your money, get the blu-ray or just wait and stream it on a Play £0.99 deal and hit Disney where it hurts.

Just following on from this, I’m currently watching King Kong on channel 5. The picture on this is better than Solo UHD!!!
 
Watched this on Friday night on the projector. I knew there were issues with the picture being dark but I have never had that problem using the projector, however with this film it really struggled and it was murky but not in a good way. As I write this I a really trying hard to recall what went on in this film. It was a something and nothing of a film. I think the who subplot of crime syndicates sounded far more interesting that what we got. I fairly generic film that was way to long, but added absolutely nothing. I would say there was no tension so what did it matter... This is always going to be a problem with prequels and the like... I won't do spoilers but they seemed to nick some ideas from Rogue One which I felt was not funny and fell very very flat indeed... I suppose given is troubled production it is better than one could expect, however the question is why? other than the obvs Cash Cow!!!
 
On a 2nd watch with forced DV on the UHD tonight it wasn't as bad as it was, to my eyes, in HDR10 on first viewing a couple of days ago. Everything apart from the very earliest most murky scenes were then OK to very good.

With picture sorted it gave time to pay more attention to the soundtrack. And the force definitely isn't with this one :(

For me it needed 5db volume setting to make it equivalent to my usual 20db atmos soundtrack setting i.e. a +15db increase in volume required (the worst I've yet seen for a Disney atmos track). Then a -7.5db cut on the center channel (as the mix has the vocals so pushed forward) to restore a better balance and let the music/effects breath. It's all very well saying "cranking it up significantly" makes it sound OK, but what if doing that risks pushing the AVR into clipping...:eek:
 
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I found the sound, picture quality and story all very disappointing.
 
Thanks for the Review, Cas.
We did see this at the Cinema & for us it was an enjoyable enough Movie. I personally hated the start scene,
(To me the "Let's show this character as a rebellious kid right from the start" was done much better in the Star Trek reboot with Chris Pine stealing his Step-Dad's vintage Car, than this "Dial-A-Car-Chase)
And the end reveal WAS such an obvious set-up for a sequel that I found it annoying. On the other Hand,
the scene where Han Solo is an infantryman on Mimban worked really well, with the darker overall hue & with the sense of Chaos, shouts heard from every direction & mere glimpses of other Soldiers through the smoke I thought it was the most "realistic" rendition of Ground War that a Star Wars Movie has done.
Will watch this again on Rental, but definitely it will be a "Full Black-out" viewing! :)

Edit: Sorry, On posting the above looks really messy with all the "Spoilers" in place, but I didn't want to reveal these plot pieces for everyone who hasn't seen it yet!
 
Add my 2 cents on the digital copy I manage to get hold off.
Thought it was ok, we all hear about the poor reviews and we all have seen films way way worse but when the name *Star Wars* is attached you expect quality.
Was it good, NO.
Was it bad, NO
Somewhere in-between.
Think the film was unnecessary made tbh.
There are more interesting characters in the Star Wars universe then Han Solo.
Not in the league of Rogue One either, Gareth Edwards masterpiece set the bar quite high in the modern era of Star Wars.

Ok, word on the picture, I have seen better, too dark was too dark (you could not tell what was going on and the grey in some scenes was very light.
I don't have Atmos but the 7.1 Master was awesome.
I am coming across films now that the soundtrack is actually better then picture on screen.
Sound studios are doing a better job.
Would I watch it again.
Probably not but I would watch Rogue One again, for sure.
Enjoy either way.
Peace!
 
4K UHD is clearly better than the Blu-ray (scientifically)

Comparison video here:

 

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