Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut 4K Ultra HD review

The newly re-mastered Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut is being released on Blu-Ray, 4K Ultra HD, and – for the first time ever – 4K Steelbook. Zack Snyder’s noir superhero feature has become a cult film and fans won’t be disappointed.

The film

Set in an alternate American landscape, and based on the bestselling graphic novel series, Watchmen follows Rorschach, a superhero vigilante who sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit the superheroes who live in plain sight in society. He and his associates must fight an international conspiracy for their freedom and, ultimately, their lives. The Ultimate Cut intercuts scenes from the animated Tales of the Black Freighter into the Director’s Cut of Watchmen.

The quality

To the delight of its fans, Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut has been newly remastered. This time, on top of HDR, the disc also offers Dolby Vision, which adds metadata for each scene, enhancing dynamic range – and ultimately the overall quality – of each scene. It’s an upscaled 4K, therefore it won’t be much of a leap from the Blu-ray version, but being a very dark film, the dynamic range is a game-changer. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack delivers crisp dialogues and powerful sound effects – this can be also enjoyed on the Blu-ray disc. The main downside of this disc is that this quality cannot be enjoyed for the theatrical cut, as it’s only possible to watch it in its 215-minute version.

The bonus features

On top of the UHD film, the package also contains a Blu-ray disc of the Ultimate Cut and also one containig special features. These include The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics, Real Superheroes: Real Vigilantes, Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World, 11 Watchmen “Making of” Webisodes and the music video for My Chemical Romance’s Desolation Row.

The editorial unit
Photos: Courtesy of Warner Bros

Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut is available in 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray from 25^th November 2019 and 4K Steelbook from 2^nd December 2019.