Thursday, November 14, 2013

Thor : The Dark World Review... and Why You Should See it in a Theatre Equipped With Dolby Atmos


I've seen last monday Thor: The Dark World and it's by far the best Thor movie ever released and an excellent sequel too. Disney is gonna make a lot of money with this one and, by the way, at the date of today the worldwide box office is already $342M which is excellent considering the movie was released less than a week.

One of the reasons why the film is good is that it was treated like they did with The Avengers - i.e like a "big" movie , a kind of E-Ticket movie if i can say - and not like a "D"  ticket sequel as it is unfortunately sometime the case. That said, the script looks sometime a bit too close to the one of The Avengers - instead to try to retrieve the Tessaract cube, the villains try to put they hands on a weapon known as the "Aether" and you have the same intra dimensional worlds travel - whether it's Thor or the villains - between Asgard and Earth. Asgard recreation looks great, although a bit less "stylized" than in the first movie which was directed by the great shakespearian actor Kenneth Branagh. 

Thor: The Dark World is less good on the plan of "emotion", and there is two or three scenes where i wish they would have "take their time without losing it", but the script is well written and if you accept the plot like it is you should have a good time. For me i found that sometime there was a bit too much of "noise and furor" in all these battles but, after all, it's a super-hero movie so i suppose we can't ask too much, right? One last thing about the casting as i always find Chris Hemworth and Tom Hiddleston absolutely perfect in their roles - not too mention of course the great Anthony Hopkins always playing Odin, King of Asgard and father of Thor.

Now, if you decide to watch Thor: The Dark World try if possible to watch it in a theater equipped with Dolby Atmos, Dolby's new sound system, which is fantastic. Dolby Atmos was introduced two years ago - the first theatre being equipped was the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood where each year take place the Academy Awards Ceremony, and the first movie to be released in theater with Dolby Atmos was... Pixar's Brave! Since, more and more theaters around the world have theaters equipped with Dolby Atmos so you might have one near you without knowing it.

What is Dolby Atmos? Well, this new sound system supports up to 128 discrete audio tracks and up to 64 unique speaker feeds all around the theater including some on the ceiling (!) And the system gives each loudspeaker its own unique feed, thereby enabling many new front, surround, and even ceiling-mounted height channels for the precise panning of select sounds such as a helicopter or rain.

The best to understand why Dolby Atmos is a sound system revolution is that you have a look to this Dolby video which explain perfectly how it works and what are the major changes from the previously used 7.1 sound system. And to find a theater near you equipped with Dolby Atmos just go on THIS page. If you find one, try it, the sound is fantastic!




Picture: copyright Disney - Marvel

Video: copyright Dolby

1 comment:

Jones said...

I´d rather the theatre owners invested in decent projection systems (2K,the standard today, is about the same resolution as my TV set!) instead of expensive sound systems none of the 17 year olds who are in charge of the sound controls (after they have sold enough popcorn,that is) can handle... after all, movies are meant to be *seen*...