Super duper lux deluxe "off the heezy" edition
The trend in home video of releasing a new special edition of a movie every year has crossed the line of excess, and that's saying a lot coming from me. When the majority of the hot DVD releases in a given week are for movies already out on DVD, even I get nauseous at the stench of blatant greed. God knows how many versions of Evil Dead there are. Now we have a third edition of T2, the Extreme DVD, which comes on the heels of the Ultimate Edition. There's the 3 disc deluxe edition of Black Hawk Down, which emasculates last year's plain old regular DVD of the same flick. And the latest example to hit shelves, with the most gratuitous marketing name yet: The Fast and the Furious Widescreen Tricked Out Edition. Don't you dare be seeing driving around the block in the plain old Honda Civic that was last year's DVD.
I don't object to the studio issuing two versions of the same movie on DVD. I often prefer the collector's edition, as I did for The Fellowship of the Ring (after all, who wouldn't want Pillars of Argonath bookends?). But when they release the collector's edition a year later, out of nowhere, that's just a blatant attempt to induce collectors to buy the same movie twice. That stinks. I gave in the first few times it happened, when DVD was in its infancy, but now I'm drawing a line in the sand. At least with Lord of the Rings they've announced both editions at the same time, even though they still penalize people who want the collector's version by releasing it later than the regular version. Same announce date, same release date. Anything else is just plain greedy.
Of course, I still leave most of my DVDs shrinkwrapped, just in case I need to sell one back to trade up to the collector's edition. I hate myself for doing it.
I don't object to the studio issuing two versions of the same movie on DVD. I often prefer the collector's edition, as I did for The Fellowship of the Ring (after all, who wouldn't want Pillars of Argonath bookends?). But when they release the collector's edition a year later, out of nowhere, that's just a blatant attempt to induce collectors to buy the same movie twice. That stinks. I gave in the first few times it happened, when DVD was in its infancy, but now I'm drawing a line in the sand. At least with Lord of the Rings they've announced both editions at the same time, even though they still penalize people who want the collector's version by releasing it later than the regular version. Same announce date, same release date. Anything else is just plain greedy.
Of course, I still leave most of my DVDs shrinkwrapped, just in case I need to sell one back to trade up to the collector's edition. I hate myself for doing it.