So it’s finally happened…I’ve been suckered into rebuying a movie on DVD that I already own on DVD, just for the special features. The movie in this case is Star Trek Nemesis, which I had bought the first time because…well, lemme ‘splain.
The initial release of the Star Trek films on DVD were bare-bones editions. Your special features were pretty much “sound” and “color,” and maybe a trailer, and that’s it. Had I been an early DVD adopter, I probably would have picked those up as they came out. However, by the time I got around to getting a DVD player for myself, most of them had already been released, and the general feeling that I picked up from various news sources was that new editions with extra material would eventually be released.
And, sure enough, they were. Two-disc sets were released for each film, a few months apart, in the same order they were released in theatres, with tons of bonus features for each flick. (My favorite bonus is probably the text commentaries that “pop up” as you’re watching the film.)
Well, Nemesis came and went in the theatres, as a week after its debut Lord of the Rings came along and demolished pretty much every other film in release. The DVD for Nemesis came out shortly thereafter, and unlike the other initial DVDs of the previous films, this one did have extra material: deleted scenes, director’s commentary, even an extra bonus mini CD-ROM with computer goodies. I figured, “hey, they won’t need to do a special two-disc edition…they got everything on it the first time!”
Yeah, I know, that was a stupid thing to think. I should have realized that having all the films except one in the two-disc “special collector’s edition” format was going to irk some fan somewhere, and that Paramount was eventually going to have to put one out anyway.
Well, they certainly did. I have it sitting on my desk, right here next to the computer as I write this. Comparing it to the old DVD, it looks like all of the special features from the first disc are on the new set, assuming the director’s commentary is the same (which it certainly must be). There’s also an extra commentary track from Rick Berman, and the aforementioned text commentary, plus more behind-the-scenes documentaries and such. I don’t know if there’s going to be any focus in the extra features about this film being a franchise-killer or not (the film itself wasn’t bad, really, and I think at this point more people think Enterprise killed the franchise anyway)…I don’t imagine so. (Unless the director mentioned it in his commentary…I never did get around to listening to it.)
Yeah, I know, this isn’t really about comics, unless I want to make some tortured comparison between this habit of some studios to release enhanced versions of DVDs released only a short time ago, and, say, “director’s cut” versions of comic books that come out only a couple weeks ago.
But I think I’d rather go watch the DVD instead. I’ll let you know how it is!
