Prime Time Geek

In case you missed it among this week’s new releases on DVD and blu-ray, the “ultimate” gift for the Watchmen fan in your life has finally arrived:

If there’s one thing that rubs my rhubarb, it’s double/triple-dipping when it comes to home video releases. When a studio releases and re-releases the EXACT same movie over and over on DVD with slightly different packaging and a few different (and usually insignificant) extras, it’s a slap in the face of consumers. Their marketing people might as well be in the next room with the door open, laughing at us and how stupid we are because they’ll release these things and we, as hungry as we are to have the “newest, shiniest” versions of things, will simply snap them up. It happens more often than you might think–look at the myriad releases of the Evil Dead films and the James Bond films, for example.

Far more excusable, and in fact quite welcome and exciting, are the instances when the re-releases contain alternate versions of films, such as extended or director’s cuts versus “theatrical” cuts. Again, this can be a con on the part of the studios, but when these films offer true substantive changes to the film experience, then they are worthwhile purchases, if only just for comparison to the original releases. The prime example of this for geeks is, of course, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy; once the extended cuts of each film were available on DVD, there simply was NO reason whatsoever to hold on to the theatrical cut DVDs, if you bothered to buy them at all. Other good examples are the director’s cuts of Kingdom of Heaven and Troy, both of which profit immensely from additional footage being added back into the film to allow each story’s characters and interpersonal dramas to be more fully fleshed out. This week we have what is sure to be another fine example of this phenomenon: Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut.

We’ve known for a while now, since before the film was released in theaters in March 2009, that Watchmen’s home video release would see THREE different iterations:

• Watchmen (Theatrical Cut) – released July 17th, 2009: included Theatrical cut of film;

• Watchmen (Director’s Cut) – released July 17th, 2009: director’s version included 24 minutes of additional footage plus the “Tales of the Black Freighter” animated film as a separate feature;

• Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut – released November 10th, 2009: includes director’s version with “Tales of the Black Freighter” WOVEN INTO the cut, extending the film to 215 minutes (original theatrical cut ran 162 minutes).

From the descriptions, it really looks like the Ultimate Cut is the ONLY version worth owning, particularly if you’re a fan of Watchmen and you felt that the film version that played in theaters simply didn’t live up to the source material, despite director Zack Snyder’s darned-near slavish efforts at reproducing the look and feel of the Watchmen’s world. If you felt that way (and I know I did, though I’m far from a die-hard Watchmen fan), then this release is the one for you.

And to add to the Watchmen goodness, here are some deals on other Watchmen merchandise from our friends at Entertainment Earth. I mean seriously, what better stocking stuffer for the wanna-be Rorschach in your family than a Rorschach mask and fedora? (Note how I don’t point out how scary the idea of a “wanna-be Rorschach” in anyone’s family really is–”scary” IS relative, after all.) Happy Holiday shopping!