Pacific Rim [Blu-ray] [2016] [NTSC]

Product Information

Like I mentioned up above in the video section, the below audio score and critical comments of such are based solely upon my viewing of the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation of Pacific Rim. Unlike its lesser counterparts, Del Toro’s beast blends some element of consequence into the mix, putting human lives at the heart of his skyscraper-sized creations and pitting them against increasingly dangerous monsters that are remarkably hard to kill. The screen is continuously showered with a variety of background activity fluidly moving across the three-front channels and convincingly into the front heights, generating a highly-engaging and awesomely broad half-dome soundstage. While there is some variability in the resolution and color quality depending on the equipment used (for example, some of the deep sea scenes were obviously shot on lower resolution equipment), it's obvious that much of this was shot in 4+K and the digital intermediate was in 4K.

We reviewed the UK Ultra HD Blu-ray release of Pacific Rim on a LG 55B7 Dolby Vision 4K Ultra HD OLED TV with an LG UP970 Dolby Vision 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player. From the welts and rivets in the Shatterdome doors and on the mech warriors’s suits to the individual stars, snowflakes and beads of water, this track is like a Kaiju, live and kicking! Pacific Rim', however, looks noticeably clearer and sharper and weighted than the Blu-ray and even the VUDU UHD version with Dolby Vision.Starring John Boyega and Scott Eastwood, the sequel is pure popcorn escapism, placing more attention on the robot-vs-monster pandemonium than on character development or a thoughtfully engaging plot. But overall, the absolute resolution again looks the same; there's really not much more you can see "into" the 4K scene. Much starker contrast between the darkness of the sea and the light-colored evac pod through the madVR conversion. But despite this limitation, the image still looks very good because the movie utilized HDR well for eye-popping contrast, brightness, deep blacks and of course a wider potential color gamut with stronger saturation.

As proven by the box office numbers, the majority of the moviegoers in North America felt the same way.Taking more of an influence from the great Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise - no bad thing - this time around, the story picks up a decade after the events of the first movie, with the now-peaceful land rebuilding after the devastation of the preceding Kaiju assaults, but facing an all-new threat in the dual issues of a new remote-controlled Jaeger robot drone program (which is just begging to go wrong) and the appearance of a seemingly gone-rogue super-Jaeger.