Indiana Jones and The Incredible Hulk

I watched Indiana Jones (Crystal Skull) and The Incredible Hulk over the weekend.  I enjoyed both movies; I thought both were good.  I had heard some bad things about Indy both on the ‘net and from a co-worker, particularly the ending being bad.  But I didn’t really have a problem with it.

I have to admit, the sound is what I wanted to “see” these movies mostly for.  And I wasn’t disappointed.  I am now using the analog outs of my onboard, and I’m quite pleased with it.  I have to turn the volume dial up more than with SPDIF, but that’s no big deal.  There were tons of effects going on in both, and it all sounded very good.  I found one scene in Indy that was kind of odd to me; it was what they DIDN’T do with the sound.  If anyone’s seen it, the part where they’re driving through the jungle/forest and there’s this round thing that comes detached and rolling (maybe it was a big saw or something, don’t remember)…but it’s rolling right at you (the viewer) and I fully expected to get this big sound of this thing rolling by me into my surrounds…and I got nothing.  It’s like they switched the camera angle all of a sudden and this thing seemed to be going away from you; still I then expected to get sound from the surrounds going to the front…but still nothing.  That’s one little thing, and it may sound silly, but I was really disappointed that they didn’t use any kind of surround effect there.  When my wife brought home The Incredible Hulk, I was looking over it and glad to see that it was in DTS HD.  I’ve had this idea that from what I’ve experienced, DTS HD is a lot better then Dolby HD.  But after watching both movies, I can’t say that there was a big difference between the Dolby HD of Indy and the DTS HD of the Hulk.  After the few Blu-Rays I’ve watched, here’s my rankings of the sound.

1. The Forbidden Kingdom
2. Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
3. The Incredible Hulk
4. The Next Avengers (lol)
5. Iron Man

I know that a lot of people has said they really liked the sound in Iron Man, and even some that said it was better than The Forbidden Kingdom, but I just don’t see it…or in this case, hear it.  I’ve replayed several of the action scenes over and over in Iron Man and just come away unimpressed.  I think it has more to do with the scenes themselves.  Most of the action scenes are pretty run-of-the-mill (as far as sound goes)…gun-fire, explosions, jets.  How many times have we all heard jet fly-bys and gun fire in a movie?  Then the other scenes where there wasn’t any action going on, really didn’t need any kind of surround stuff.  I like all the wooshes, fly-bys, zooming, and explosions, but what I really have gotten to like is how a movie does the subtle stuff in the surrounds.  Things like wind blowing, background talking, voices, off-screen noises.  I think that’s why I liked The Forbidden Kingdom so much because there was a lot of stuff that hasn’t been done to death sound-wise.