Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Mad Max: Fury Road 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Furiouser and Furiouser

As detailed by my colleague Martin Liebman, the road to playing a UHD disc in one's home theater is not an easy one at the moment—and I'm talking about actually playing a disc, i.e., sitting down to watch a film and become immersed in its world, as opposed to the endless tinkering with cables, connections, switches and settings that Marty's write-up captures so effectively. I have little to add to what Marty wrote except a cautionary warning: Unless you are one of those confirmed early adopters who absolutely, positively must have the latest technology, do not waste your money on a Samsung UBD-K8500 UHD player. The build quality is chintzy, the feature set is poorly implemented, and the player was released to market without any real-world testing on studio-produced 4K discs. Future players will have the benefit of being QC'd with the early roster of releases from Sony, Fox and Warner and will not be able to command the premium price that Samsung is charging as the cost of being on the cutting edge.

Having at long last succeeded in playing Warner's UHD screener of Max Max: Fury Road—the only screener received from the studio at the time of this review—I believe that the format has potential, but there's no way to know whether that potential will be well used. The film industry's shift to digital technology continues to expand the ability of both filmmakers and home video companies to control the presentation of their products in consumers' homes, but there's no guarantee that such control will be exercised with wisdom, taste or artistic integrity. UHD's implementation of High Dynamic Range, or "HDR", promises to "improve" the viewing experience, but the same has been said for previous digital alterations that turned out be curses (or, at best, mixed blessings).

Fury Road on UHD reveals some of the format's possible upside, but the disc also shows some of the potential negatives—and that's from a digitally acquired film that doesn't present the thorny issues accompanying translation from an analog medium to the digital realm. It's not an accident that the first wave of UHD discs is dominated by movies that were shot digitally. The real test of the format won't come until we see how it's applied to a variety of filmed sources, including those requiring extensive and costly restoration like Lawrence of Arabia or My Fair Lady. Will such films be transferred to UHD with respect for their original look? Or will HDR become the latest process applied to "freshen" old films for modern eyes?

Screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

Mad Max: Fury Road 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

My approach to evaluating Max Max: Fury Road on UHD was simply to watch the film from start to finish, followed immediately by viewing selected portions of the standard Blu-ray on the same system. The UHD was played through the Samsung UBD-K8500 player, while the Blu-ray image was delivered by an Oppo BDP-103. The display, a Sony XBR-75X940C, has been professionally calibrated for Blu-ray; professional UHD calibration is not yet available.

As a long-time fan of the franchise, who stood in line to see The Road Warrior on its initial release in 1982, I have already seen Max Max: Fury Road theatrically. It's also the rare movie that I made time to watch again on Blu-ray, even though I wasn't reviewing it. The UHD image, up-sourced from the 2K digital intermediate, was undeniably impressive. Perhaps because of the increased resolution, but I suspect more likely due to the HDR processing, the images had an improved definition and depth that was all the more noticeable as the frame became more crowded. In the opening and closing sequences at The Citadel, the elaborate patterns cut into the rock formations, the massive machinery controlled by Immortan Joe and his minions, and the crowds of young War-Boys above and huddled masses below all acquired a distinctive sharpness that rendered the image almost three-dimensional. The enhanced contrast and color intensity gave a new sense of immediacy to the monochromatic night scenes after the fugitives reach The Vuvalini; the blu-ish night is just as dark as on the Blu-ray, but somehow the figures of the younger and elder women stand out more noticeably from the frame. In the extensive chase-and-race scenes that dominate the film, I could more easily discern multiple activities occurring simultaneously, with various attackers leaping on and off the War Rig and its occupants cowering, leaping and crawling backward and forward along the hurtling vehicle. By comparison, the Blu-ray image was still impressive, but it did not convey the same sense of an alternate world that one could almost reach out and touch.

But the combination of HDR and enhanced resolution is not an unalloyed benefit. Anyone accustomed to watching classic films on Blu-ray should be familiar with the phenomenon in which such staples as matte paintings, rear projection and painted backdrops became obvious, sometimes distractingly so, with the increased sharpness and resolution of 1080p. Something similar happens with certain visual elements in Fury Road. The most common culprit is flame, which frequently accompanies the action, whether as weapon, decoration (notably the Doof-mobile) or the outcome of some spectacular crash. If you watch the extras on the Fury Road Blu-ray, it's obvious that the film's flame effects are a combination of practical and CG, but on the UHD almost every flame looks like a painted cartoon. Just as the enhanced depth and detail are pulling you into the film's ravaged wasteland, the artificiality of these effects pushes you back out. The same is true for the fierce dust storm in which Furiosa first loses her pursuers; in its theatrical and Blu-ray presentation, the storm was convincing and credible, but on UHD one is struck by the obviousness of the computer imagery.

Now, it's entirely possible that all Fury Road needs to overcome these issues is an HDR re-grading. This is, after all, an infant format. But these (to me) very obvious blemishes on an otherwise impressive presentation raise anew the whole question of what it means to revise a film with up-rezzing and HDR. Blu-ray afficionados have spent ten years urging studios to respect a film's original appearance and not to revise it for greater "pop". UHD and HDR present the same possibilities for post-release tinkering, and both the good and the bad points are obvious in Warner's treatment of Fury Road.

As an aside, I should note that, even before viewing the UHD release, I had already watched an extremely tactile and three-dimensional version of Fury Road, without the problematic elements of unrealistic flame and obvious CGI. The film was released in 3D both to theaters and on Blu-ray, and that version provides many of the UHD disc's benefits (though in a different form) without the accompanying negatives. (Of course, 3D has its own negatives.)

My video score for the Fury Road UHD has to be provisional, because there's so little with which to compare it at this early date in the format. As has been suggested by many, UHD should be held to a higher standard than Blu-ray, and for that reason I am giving the disc a lesser video score than the Blu-ray's 5.0, because of the issues described above. Still, it gets enough right to warrant high marks, as we continue to learn about UHD's potential.

Mad Max: Fury Road 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like the previous Blu-ray, the UHD of Fury Road features a Dolby Atmos soundtrack with a TrueHD 7.1 core. The latter received a 5.0 rating from Kenneth Brown, which gives me no room to grade the Atmos playback higher, but it deserves a higher mark. With the addition of Atmos "height" channels, the multi-Oscar-winning soundtrack's complex aural stew of colliding vehicles, gunshots, explosions, howling winds and voices from Max's past envelops the viewer from all sides. Director Miller jokes in the extras that Fury Road is almost a "silent movie", because of its minimal dialogue, but it is never a quiet one. An added bonus is that you don't need a UHD setup to hear the film's Atmos mix; it's included on the standard Blu-ray.

Mad Max: Fury Road 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The UHD disc contains no extras. The included standard Blu-ray is identical to the previous release of Max Max: Fury Road and contains the same supplements previously reviewed here.

Mad Max: Fury Road 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

All of these early UHD reviews are necessarily provisional, given the inability to calibrate viewing devices to an accurate standard and the questionable quality of Samsung's UHD player, which, like the company's first Blu-ray player, will no doubt be quickly surpassed. However, for anyone looking to dip their toe into the UHD waters, Mad Max: Fury Road is a worthy place to start. There's no question that its image differs from that of the Blu-ray; whether that difference is an unadulterated plus remains an open question.