6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A deep-sea submersible filled with an international research crew lies disabled at the bottom of the Pacific after having been attacked by a massive shark previously thought to be extinct. With time running out, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer to save the crew—and the ocean itself—from this unstoppable threat: a pre-historic 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon.
Starring: Jason Statham, Bingbing Li, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, Winston ChaoAction | 100% |
Sci-Fi | 68% |
Horror | 29% |
Nature | 9% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby Atmos
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
English DD=narrative descriptive
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Any movie with a giant shark for a villain has the impossible task of filling the big fins of Steven
Spielberg's Jaws, which is probably
why The
Meg kicked around Hollywood for decades.
Writers and directors came and went, and the project migrated from Disney to New Line to
Warner Brothers. The film eventually released to theaters in August 2018 was utterly
ridiculous—and that may have been the key to its surprise success. Under the direction of Jon
Turtletaub, who succeeded in making goofy entertainment out of improbable nonsense in the
National Treasure
series, The
Meg is mindless, formulaic fun, shamelessly stealing from—and even
directly quoting—a wide array of predecessors from Deep Blue
Sea to The Abyss to Jaws itself.
The film never pretends to be anything more than the PG-13 nonsense it is, and by not asking
itself or us to take it more seriously, it manages to create two hours of effective popcorn
diversion.
It helps that the film stars Jason Statham, whose appealing presence has effectively anchored
improbable franchises like The Transporter and Crank series. (No wonder the Fast & Furious
crew latched onto him as their latest frenemy.) With Statham at the head of an oversized
international cast, The Meg gleefully runs through every trope you've ever seen in a deep sea
creature feature going all the way back to 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea. It doesn't add anything
new, but it does find enough variations to hold your interest, and Turtletaub keeps things hurtling
forward fast enough that the tale's screaming inconsistencies retreat into the background. It's
more a theme-park ride than a movie, but at least the ride is a good one.
In recent UHD reviews, I coined the term "Stupid Disc Authoring" to describe Warner's
mastering of soundtracks. Well, SDA™ is alive and well on The Meg's sound options (more on
that below), but it has also spilled over into its video mastering as well. The film was captured on
Alexa by cinematographer Tom Stern, taking another of his occasional breaks from shooting
films for Clint Eastwood (starting with Blood Work
in 2002). The film is full of brightly lit
locations on seagoing vessels, in control rooms filled with TV and computer screens, and in the
submerged transparent circular rings of Mana One. Even the dark underwater scenes are typically
pierced by bright lights of various undersea vessels—it's the light that catches the megalodon's
attention, although you would think that a creature who has spent millions of years in darkness
would be repelled rather than attracted. And of course the climactic sequence at Sanya Bay is a
glittering holiday paradise.
All of this bright lighting, matched with equally bright production design, should make for a
fantastic Blu-ray, and in fairness the image on Warner' 1080p, AVC-encoded standard version of
The Meg looks pretty good, especially in closeups and medium shots, where the detail is well-rendered and the
sharpness and blacks
are superior. But get into longer shots (e.g., the panoramas
of cheerful swimmers and beach jockeys at Sanya Bay), and the detail grows fuzzy. Even more
troubling is the faint layer of video noise that is a frequent visitor, especially in darker areas
without the benefit of cold blue illumination (the opening rescue sequence has a lot of it). The
noise is fine enough and sufficiently brief that it may go unnoticed, especially on smaller screens,
but it's there all the same—and it shouldn't be. (It isn't on the UHD.)
The culprit is almost certainly a variation of SDA™ for which Warner became famous in the
early days of Blu-ray, when it was also supporting the competing HD-DVD format, with its discs
of lesser capacity and its more limited bandwidth. Warner would typically create a single disc
image for both formats, thereby failing to take full advantage of Blu-ray's capabilities, and the
studio was roundly criticized for it. After HD-DVD died off in 2008—killed by Warner itself,
when it discontinued support—this particular application of SDA™ continued like a bad
hangover, as Warner stubbornly insisted on squishing films onto BD-25s with low bitrates that
routinely resulted in weaker video images.
In recent years, Warner's theatrical department appeared to be getting away from this practice,
perhaps inspired by the example of the Warner Archive Collection, which routinely uses
generous bitrates to maximize picture quality. But SDA™ comes roaring back with The Meg,
which has a measly average bitrate of 19.02 Mbps, with peaks that rarely reach above 25 Mbps.
Compressionists have gained enough experience to work around these limitations without
generating the kinds of obvious errors that marred some of Warner's early efforts, but there's
only so low you can go, even with a digitally originated project, which usually compresses more
readily, before the image begins to deteriorate. The Meg, with its many frantic action scenes and
busy frames, is a case in point (although the water in the underwater scenes hides a multitude of sins).
But here's the real crime: Warner has given The Meg this treatment despite placing the film on a
BD-50 and leaving over 20 GBs of empty space on the disc. That's about 40% of the digital real
estate simply wasted (if you calculate in binary). It defies all rational explanation that Warner
continues to give some of its biggest box office successes the worst mastering, while lavishing
generous bitrates on lesser properties (if not outright bombs) like Collateral Beauty, Life of
the
Party, 12 Strong
and Geostorm. Even minor successes
like Tag and Game Night get better
treatment. The Meg looks fine on Blu-ray, but it could (and should) have looked great. My guess
is that someone decided to save a little money by slapping the film's streaming version onto disc
without reauthoring the uncompressed master for Blu-ray's more expansive capabilities. It's the
return of the same "lowest common denominator" mentality that gave us equivalent versions for
Blu-ray and HD-DVD—a classic example of Warner's SDA™ at its finest.
Warner's SDA™ strikes again! (That's "Stupid Disc Authoring", for those who haven't read the
Video section.) The Meg has a wonderfully entertaining and immersive Dolby Atmos soundtrack,
but it isn't the Blu-ray's default. Instead, the disc defaults to a redundant and unnecessary DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. Be sure to
select the Atmos track
before hitting "play". Even if your
equipment isn't Atmos-enabled, any system that can handle DTS's lossless format should be able
to handle the Dolby TrueHD to which Atmos automatically falls back. Warner remains the only
studio to routinely include a useless DTS Master Audio track as an Atmos alternative, and some have speculated that it's the
product of
a contractual obligation. If so, the contract must exempt catalog titles, because neither The Matrix
Trilogy nor Superman
features anything in DTS. (They default to Dolby Digital, which is just a
different implementation of SDA™.)
SDA™ aside, once you've got the Atmos playing, you'll be treated to a neatly organized and
expansive cacophony of water, wind, voices hollering from all sides (live and on speakers), the
occasional explosion and, of course, the whomping impact of the prehistoric shark ramming
various objects, from submersibles to boats to the Mana One research facility. The dynamic range is broad, and
the bass extension is deep, but not so deep that it overwhelms the rest of the chaos. Tiny effects
like the toy that little Meiying rolls ominously through the facility's observation deck—you just
know something bad is about to happen—are precisely localized and reproduced at just the right
volume to create the necessary effect. The dialogue is clearly rendered, and the action/adventure
score by Harry Gregson-Williams (The
Martian,
among many others) is neatly folded into the
mix. Gregson-Williams finds ways to hint at John Williams' famous Jaws theme without calling
attention to the moment. It's a welcome touch of subtlety in a film that otherwise doesn't know
much in the way of "subtle".
One of the reasons why Jaws has never been equaled (or even approached) is that Spielberg
understood then, and still does, the importance of creating three-dimensional characters, even in
the most buttery of popcorn entertainments. Where would Jaws be without Sheriff Brody's
dinner table scene with his kids or the long conversation among Brody, Hooper and Quint that
builds to the tale of the Indianapolis? Those are the kinds of character moments that create
genuine stakes when the action kicks in, and they're tough to achieve, because the writing has to
be good, the acting first-class, and the director has to know how to shoot routine human
interaction in a way that sustains visual interest. It's a tricky formula, and most films don't even
attempt it. The Meg certainly doesn't, but at least it's honest about being nothing more than dumb
entertainment, and that in itself is a refreshing change. Jason Statham centers the film with his
ability to remain serious in even the most ridiculous of situations, and Turtletaub keeps things
moving fast enough that The Meg skates over its many plot holes. Successful on its own terms
and recommended for what it is, but if you have the requisite hardware, get the UHD version, which doesn't suffer as much from Warner's Stupid Disc Authoring (SDA™).
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with Godzilla: King of the Monsters Movie Money
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Reissue with Lenticular Slip + It 2 Movie Cash
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