A/V Nerds: "Midway" on 4k UHD Blu-Ray
_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: I came for the state-of-the-art A/V experience but was happily surprised at how good the movie is!
See [Blu-ray.com's 4k review](https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Midway-4K-Blu-ray/256916/#Review).
### The movie
I'll be honest, I picked up this disc mostly because the above rave review of its A/V technicals. Newly completed 7.1.4 speaker setup was begging for a top-notch Dolby Atmos mix.
But the movie was more than just a rah rah boom boom spectacle. Not quite on par with the spectacle aspect of Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor", but โ thankfully โ director Roland Emmerich is an actual grownup, which makes this movie easily better than anything Michael Bay can put out (Bay's movies are sumptuously slick and sexy but are mostly terrible if you set aside the visual candy).
There are some cringe Bay-esque proudly dumb testosterone moments (every scene with Nick Jonas) and there are way too many characters for any of them to get sufficient development. Expected consequence of it being built around a selection of real people who played pivotal roles in the actual events; this is not a single hero narrative (though it sorta tries). It's not bad character development, just diluted. And, yeah, sorry, but at some point every white guy with a '40s-era haircut and mustache all start looking the same...
Worse, Emmerich fails at the most important aspect of a movie about a crucial battle: you can never fully appreciate the strategy, the physical positioning of the warships, who's being lured where, how a trap is set up and sprung, how the enemy's reaction does or does not play into the plan.
But mostly it was just surprisingly good. I vaguely knew that the Battle of Midway was a thing but not really anything beyond that. The aftermath of Pearl Harbor and the military's need to land a counterpunch make for a pretty fascinating slice of history. "Midway" is emotionally engaging and entertaining enough to be well worth the time.
### Video
Ironically, I said that I came for the A/V technicals but I have the least to say about them.
The Dolby Vision video presentation is simply perfect. Period. In previous tech eras, if you were really savvy, you might review a disc to be "as good as the DVD format can provide" or "as good as a 1080p blu-ray can provide"; i.e. laud the current achievement, but realize that it could get even better via some future format.
But at this point with 4k HDR displays, any future 8k or 16k or 100k display won't have noticeably higher resolution unless you project it on a huge wall. And the dynamic range (min-to-max brightness, more intense colors) is already beyond fantastic. We are at peak 2D video technology.
Barring a move into a whole other storytelling medium (e.g. fully immersive VR worlds), 4k UHD blu-rays of this quality are the apex.
### Audio
This is the most active Dolby Atmos presentation I've heard yet that really engages the rears with distinct effects (in a 7.x setup you have center, front left/right, side left/right, and rear left/right): bullets whizzing by, chaff exploding behind you.
Atmos (and/or my more careful approach to calibrating my speakers) yields incredible, sumptuous subwoofer integration. My ceiling speakers can't play deep at all but they sound like they do, the sub seamlessly supporting them to perfection. Absolutely amazing what good content + tight calibration can get out of relatively inexpensive speakers.
The movie's audio is whizz-bang flashy, but there's just so much going on (it's supposed to be max chaos) it's not what I'd reach for if I wanted to demo distinct surround and/or height sound effects.
Zero complaints about the technicals of it, though. It's incredibly immersive (orchestral score coming from everywhere, fully 3d ambient sound and effects, yet consistently clear dialog throughout) and yet it doesn't try to show off too much and call attention to itself. The mix also manages to be as big and boomy as you'd expect but never feels like it's overly loud or brash or harsh. Can't emphasize enough just how impressive that is.
It's nice to find myself just being engrossed in the content rather than constantly analyzing the technicals or thinking about other minutiae of the presentation.
