Flash Gordon 4K Blu-ray Review & Comments

I watched this in my early teens, when it first came out in the cinema and thoroughly enjoyed it. However having watched Superman The Movie, a couple of years earlier my biggest disappointment was the tongue in cheek approach and how the subject matter wasn't taken seriously. I largely blame this on it's English director. I thank god, another English director, Guy Hamilton, backed out of directing STM, because from all accounts, he wanted to approach Superman's first feature length cinema outing in a similar silly fashion. As for Flash, it's a fantastic piece of cinema, far more entertaining than many of today's blockbusters and has one of the most famous lines in cinema history.
 
Very true. But I can already see a little problem for me. I can put up with skeleton stories, good enough CGI and SFX and great "spectacle movies" which are poor "films". This film has an OK story for what it is so no issue there and the costumes and sets look amazing. I can put up with the dodgy laser beams and the retro space ships look great too. But it seems I'm not very good at getting past really dated flying SFX unless maybe I'm watching in black and white. To me they look like cardboard cutouts against a colourful backdrop.

Bottom line, if you love this movie and the dodgy flying doesn't bother you, this will be for you. It will never look better than this.
Yeah, I tend to "fade out" the dodgier SFX & concentrate on that Majestic Soundtrack at those moments.
But one thing might get you past that, it certainly did me; Brian Blessed in an interview (Linked above somewhere) stated that when the Hawkmen attack the Ship, there were actually a whole bunch of them dangling on Wires. Not just a couple, I think he said 40 or so.
If that many guys were willing to hang around (Pun intended) on the wires for that scene, bless them & whatever was added after is fine by me! :)
(And if Brian was exagerating the number, or I got it wrong, then Damn me but still Bless Them!)
 
Could someone post some pics? How is it all packaged? Is there a separate case inside the box housing the disks?
 
Watching it now in 4K on Apple TV, looks fantastic and still as much fun as I remember.

Think I paid under a fiver for it in HD, now got the free 4K upgrade, can’t complain at that.
 
One of the very best worst films ever.

And that soundtrack is one of the greats.

10/10 all day long.
 
Watching it now in 4K on Apple TV, looks fantastic and still as much fun as I remember.

Think I paid under a fiver for it in HD, now got the free 4K upgrade, can’t complain at that.
Yes might be tempted for the iTunes version even at 9.99 by the way what type of audio is the soundtrack, on disc it is DTS - george
 
My set arrived earlier today. Fortunately in a card mailer, there are reports of people getting it in a padded envelope from Amazon!
 

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My box set arrived this afternoon and I have the 4k disc playing now. Picture looks great however there seems to be some audio issues with 5.1 DTS HD MSTR track. Voices keep phasing in and out of the front left and right and the surround left and right. LFE is used sparingly but has some some real impact which is nice.

Anyone else noticed the audio issues?
 
Okay, so it may have been some audio anomaly as I had to pause it for a time and come back during which the UB820 powered off. On resuming the disc the audio seemed better, the voices weren't being spread around the room like before. The final battle is a riot of laser beams and Queen which sounded great. I'll need to try it again to see if it was a one-off.

The box set is really nice but could wear out if not looked after. The rigid slipcase and digipack have a nice matte finish with spot gloss on the Flash Gordon logo. There is also a hint of metallic red and gold.

The 10 panel digipack opens out with a disc on each panel and all the extras are loose but fit between the last two panels. They can fall out so it's something to be aware of when taking it out of the slipcase. There are images of the main cast behind each disc tray and stills from the movie on the reverse.

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Okay, so it may have been some audio anomaly as I had to pause it for a time and come back during which the UB820 powered off. On resuming the disc the audio seemed better, the voices weren't being spread around the room like before. The final battle is a riot of laser beams and Queen which sounded great. I'll need to try it again to see if it was a one-off.

The box set is really nice but could wear out if not looked after. The rigid slipcase and digipack have a nice matte finish with spot gloss on the Flash Gordon logo. There is also a hint of metallic red and gold.

The 10 panel digipack opens out with a disc on each panel and all the extras are loose but fit between the last two panels. They can fall out so it's something to be aware of when taking it out of the slipcase. There are images of the main cast behind each disc tray and stills from the movie on the reverse.

View attachment 1348004

That looks great, I'm still waiting for my set to be shipped from Amazon.
Re. the audio, its something that SpareChange mentioned in his review, so seems like its an issue with the 5.1 audio mix:
 
Picture looks weak in several places early on earth. More like a BD than anything else it has this weird phase into a heavy DNR mode with lots of noisy grain everywhere then back to a better image. Either they feel asleep or this is the best they could do (mainly the early scenes on earth).

Also it must be said some of the FX work looks awful. Loads of shots where you can clearly see through the actors due to the lack of time & money to composite properly so the elements leak through each other. 1 shot is also really terrible its clearly unfinished you see the garbage mattes around the ship for a few frames as they obviously did it in a rush.

Best thing about this transfer (apart from the fabulous sets, costumes & music) is the colour looks terrific a lot of the time. Its almost but not quite a reference release due to some very shoddy transfer issues early on and the too expensive to fix compositing issues later on.
 
Watched this as a kid on video tape nearly wore the tape out loved it but now it's complete crap still love the queen music thou.
The picture quality is absolutely stunning 10/10 all the way.
 
There's definitely a problem with the 5.1 track 😩 it's as if it's in 5.1 but then they duplicated the center channel to play over all channels too I've muted the lcr and you can still hear every word coming out crystal clear from the rears 🤷
Off to grab my pitchfork and find studio canal (who's with me?) failing that how do we start a recall petition type thingy iirc SC have a track record for fixing things?
if you still have the review disc to hand is it possible to check the 5.1 on that version please? Just incase! Thanks
 
I've just had a similar problem. Tried playing the 4K Blu-ray on my Xbox One last night and there was a delay with both the 2.0 and 5.1 tracks. Sound is being output via my Sonos Beam, with picture through my Panasonic TX-55EZ952B. Had a similar issue with the Bill & Ted 4K Blu-ray earlier in the week (both from StudioCanal). That seemed to eventually fix itself, as did Flash about 5 mins ago. Weird?
 
Some of the dialogue sounded a little odd and spacey. Anyone else have issues with PQ and sound in chapter three as they are landing on mongo? Sound drops out and the picture is pixelated and freezes.
 
I watched the 4K disc this morning and while both soundtracks aren’t particularly great, I didn’t come across any of the audio problems others have mentioned (playing back on a Panny 9000).

Is the slight audio delay or sync issues due to the fact that all voices were post-dubbed by the actors? Sure they don’t quite match up but it’s not a sync problem with the transfer, it’s a source issue.
 
Speaking of post dubbing, or in this case post post dubbing, it might be only a tiny thing but I always think it’s a pity that the newer home editions of the film replace George Harris’ original West Indian accent as the Ardentian Prince demonstrating his loyalty to Ming with a generic Mid Atlantic one.

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Of course it could just be senility kicking in but I’m 100% convinced that he had his original accent when I saw this in the cinema and when it was released on Thorn EMI VHS cassette :)
 
Just watched my copy that came in the post today on my xbox, audio did seem a bit off for 5.1, but the main issue I had was it not playing in HDR. Ejecting and putting it back in did the job though.

Anyone had any trouble playing this on a Xbox One S? Mine refuses to play

I have heard of some people not being able to play the 4k disc at all, no matter what they tried to paly it on.
 

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