Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

San Andreas 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Big movie, little difference.

The future is here! Warner Brothers has released its first wave of UHD Blu-ray (4K/3840x2160p resolution) discs. We've posted a companion article detailing the UHD upgrade experience here. Watch for more reviews of WB's UHD Blu-rays in the coming days and, of course, Blu-ray.com will be covering every UHD release in the future.

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

San Andreas 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

According to IMDB, San Andreas was shot at 3.4K and finished at 2K, presumably the source for this 4K UHD release.

Of the releases included in this first wave of UHD Blu-ray releases from Fox, Sony, and Warner Brothers, San Andreas has to be the most frustrating of the bunch. Whereas the best UHD releases so far, like Pineapple Express and The Smurfs 2, have demonstrated a pronounced refinement of their wares and while others like Chappie have held firm with incremental, but obvious, improvement, it's difficult to really say which version of San Andreas just flat-out looks better. On the UHD/HDR release, colors aren't deeper or more refined. Instead, contrast simply seems heavily altered. The 1080p Blu-ray looks creamy, while the UHD is much darker, offers much less color punch, and features a slightly warmer look to skin tones. Shadow detail is improved on the UHD, and stands as probably the single biggest area of immediately noticeable improvement. Darker background details are easier to see and distinguish without raising black levels. There's also a palpable flatness to the image. Switching between any given scene yields the same results, whether in Daniel Riddick's white-infused and sun-drenched home or amongst ravaged building interiors later on where only the natural light pouring in through broken windows lights the frame.

What's also more disappointing, and equally confounding, is the decided lack of greatly, or even mildly, improved detail and texturing. Other digitally sourced UHD releases, even those supposedly finished in 2K and upconverted like Hitman: Agent 47, manage to reveal an immediately obvious boost in raw detail even if differences are very subtle. Here, it's hard to find a detail that's noticeably more crisp. Not skin textures or droplets of water on skin, not grime and wear, not the clean furniture lines in Riddick's home, not vegetation and grasses, not CGI buildings and shipwrecks. In fact, there are times when, maybe due to the contrast and the 1080p Blu-ray's brighter image, details actually look a little firmer and more robust on the old release. Maybe the single most obvious improvements on the UHD come in the most extreme close-up shots. Skip ahead to chapter three and pause at the 18:56 mark, a shot featuring Gaines looking at a text message on his phone. The improvements on both the case and his thumb are pretty striking, but such are the serious exception to the rule.

The UHD essentially just looks like someone fiddled with the TV's settings. Knocking the contrast setting down about 30% seemed to get the 1080p Blu-ray more in line with the UHD. The UHD looks great on its own merits, but there really doesn't seem to be more than negligible-at-best improvements.

San Andreas 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

San Andreas' original Blu-ray release was reviewed without the ability to include coverage of the Dolby Atmos track, but things have changed since then, and this review will factor in that part of the presentation.

Chaos. Whether controlled chaos, uncontrolled chaos, or somewhere in between, San Andreas tosses the audience right into total sonic bedlam for each and every one of its prolific moments of destruction. Buildings collapse, helicopters crash, tidal waves spill into the listening area, people scream, and so on and so forth. It's a laundry list of the most eardrum-punishing, speaker-testing, limit-pushing sounds, and each of them are presented with a distinct sense of purpose, a purpose that's meant to literally drop the listener right into the terrifying mayhem, to not just hear a sound but almost literally feel a building careening down towards the head. Pretty much everything from the original soundtrack review, which was written without the added height channels in consideration, holds true: the bass, the surround usage, the definition. The Atmos track adds in another layer that helps create a more distinct sense of imminent danger from all of those highlights listed above. The challenge it faces is that the soundtrack is already so busy, so aggressive, so demanding, so bass-heavy, that one wonders if it can successfully, not just adequately, add in enough discrete overhead effects to make a difference, or if it's just too darn loud to really make much beneficial use of it.

The answer is somewhere in the middle. Of the admittedly limited Atmos soundtracks heretofore sampled, the best of them are able to create a specific sensation that stands a bit apart from everything else. Other good height channel additions come in creating a fuller, richer, more noticeably immersive, essentially seamless sound not only at 360 degrees but above the listener as well. But when the speakers are literally being pushed about as hard as a movie will ever push them, the sub is thumping, and eardrums are screaming for mercy, is there really any room to feel, and more importantly appreciate, a more aggressively immersive listen? Rarely. San Andreas is just too much of an assault on the senses that even those moments where the height speakers engage, they just become another sound source added to an already punishing experience. Collapsing buildings and all of the movie's thunderous highlights remain prodigious, and the sense of immersion in the madness is subjectively a little more palpable. But most the track's best uses of the Atmos configuration come in quieter moments where, rather than large sections of concrete collapsing or huge waves of ocean crashing, the little things make a difference, little things like bits of dusty debris dropping from the ceiling or water dripping off a surface. Perhaps the best "overhead" sound effect comes after Gaines' chopper crashes into the strip mall. Oil leaks from overhead, and it literally sounds like it's plopping right into the middle of the listening area. Indeed, the track's ability to better differentiate its overhead sounds when they have room to actually make an individual audible impact are more welcome and pronounced than when the soundstage is already overwhelmed. Of course, that could be trained bias speaking, where the ears are simply more in-tune with picking up movie soundtrack sounds that emanate from front and behind rather than above. With more height channel soundtracks on the market, chances are in the future their absence will feel just as empty as listening to a two-channel track does today.

San Andreas 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

San Andreas contains no supplemental content on the UHD disc. The Included 1080p Blu-ray disc carries all of the extras. For a review, please click here. A UV digital copy code is included with purchase.

San Andreas 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

San Andreas is arguably the quintessential modern Disaster movie and a hallmark of modern digital effects. Its UHD release, however, is really quite confounding. It looks fine on its own accord, but there's practically no serious, or even incremental, boost in detail or clarity and colors seem only a turn of the contrast knob different from the Blu-ray. Don't mistake the 3.5 video score for a mediocre, fledgeling, or bad UHD transfer. The movie still looks sharp, well defined, and colorful. It just doesn't appear to be a large enough step above the Blu-ray to make a difference. It's more like a lateral move with an incremental forward movement in the same motion.