Gamertell Review: Watchmen Director’s Cut on Blu-ray (including digital download and BD-Live)
by at August 15, 2009 1:34 am
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As I’ve already given a review of the Watchmen film, here’s a look at the Director’s Cut of Watchmen along with a look at the special features included with the Blu-ray purchase.
The main bonus features in the Blu-ray release are the dozen plus extra minutes of footage embedded within the movie, the Maximum Movie Mode, BD-Live extras, the Special Features disc and the Digital Copy disc.
Director’s Cut, Director’s Schmut
The release does include both the Director’s Cut and the theatrical release, so you can compare the two. Of course, doing so will require about 6+ hours of your time, something you likely won’t do in one sitting.
The extra footage is primarily 15 minutes of more violence and blood, usually involving Rorschach. It makes it more true to the comic but the fifth axe chop is not more meaningful than the first two, just more gut wrenching. In one case, involving the original Night Owl’s attackers, the extra footage is actually a determent to the movie, taking away from a few rather decent bouts of acting to them focus on overacted, uber rehearsed lines, detracting from the dramatic effect of the following scene. In that case, the scene was best left edited out and the film slightly suffered because of it. Luckily, it’s only a couple minutes of the movie and, for most, will soon be forgotten.
The Director’s Cut proves to be a mixed bag of beneficial and detrimental footage that makes an already long movie even longer. For a movie buff, that’s probably OK but for most that’s a dozen more minutes of sore butt syndrome.
It’s Totally Maximum Movie Mode, Dude
Maximum Movie Mode is much like a lecture class where the director (Zack Snyder) periodically stops the film to talk about it, brings in guest lecturers and tosses in some gratuitous extra effects and insights to keep you interested. And it works despite the seemingly annoying aspect of being interrupted every few minutes with a comment, tidbits, historical timeline overlay or cast member comment. It’s informative and certainly a good way to learn more about the movie, graphic novel and thought process behind the details and differences between the movie and the book.
It combines all the familiar extra features – director’s commentaries, photos, factoids and interviews – in a way that make a lot more sense and is a lot more fluid than scrolling through an unreadable menu.
The main drawbacks are is that it sometimes seems a little scripted and ends with a personal “Thank You” session from Zack that viewers won’t really appreciate. Otherwise, it’s highly informative and vastly superior to the featurettes offered on the second disc. Aside from the high-def video, your extra money is well spent with this potion of the Blu-ray. Kudos to Warner for this feature and I look forward to more releases with a similar feature.
One potentially irritating part feature is that it isn’t easy to find, especially if watching on a PS3. You’ll need to hit the “Pop Up Menu” button to bring up the bottom menu with the Maximum Movie Mode option. Otherwise it’ll go right from previews to the movie. (I guess that’s what happens when companies cut back on printed manuals.)
BD-Live is BD-ogus
BD-Live is essentially an online component that pairs the offline Blu-ray disc with online content. You can record commentaries and host online viewings with your friends. I was initially excited with the potential of the interactive features offered via BD-Live when Dark Knight was released. With Watchmen, however, there are hardly any worthwhile online extras. Sure, you can scroll through the confusing menus to get to content you watched months ago online (Dr. Manhattan making-of featurettes and a couple retro videos) but the user-created content is completely lacking. Anything that is available is marred by a laggy server that leaves you watching the loading icon longer than you watch any videos.
The only worthwhile commentary might be the writing team of David Hayter and Alex Tse who offer an uninteresting look into what they had to do, for several years, with an infamous graphic novel to turn it into a movie. Even then, you’ll spend more time with the loading icon than absorbing anything useful. Aside from the making-of segments you might have missed and are mistakenly not included as menu items on a disc, don’t even bother with this feature.
Semi-Special Features
The disc labeled “Special Features” include a lot less than expected. I expected to see compilations of interviews, photos and other stuff from the Maximum Movie Mode that could be scrolled at your leisure. Instead it was only a couple 30 minute featurettes that seemed more standardized for DVD releases than special. The fact that it is Blu-ray implied that much more would be available. Instead, the three features and music video (by Gerard Way’s band My Chemical Romance) are a letdown and offer little more than you’d find on most Watchmen fan sites.
I’ll retract that a little to give some credit to the DC editors, cast and crew that helped to dissect the graphic novel a bit for those who are unable to ponder it that deeply purely because they were not alive int he 1980s (no insult intended). The real-world vigilantes featureless was at times more silly than serious so it might be viewable for a few giggles.
Warner Bros. really missed an opportunity with this disc. They should have included a complete, selectable menu of all the items offered in the Maximum Movie Mode.
Digital Download Disc
This is the bonus that will probably make a lot of people happy. With your purchase you also get a free download of the movie for both your PC (Mac or Windows) and iTunes. That’s at least a $10-$20 value right there considering you can take the movie and watch it on a portable device to help cut down the doldrums of your cross-continental flight. You need to use the code included on a piece of paper in your disc case and expires July 21, 209, So if you are thinking of keeping that case sealed for collector’s sake, you might want to rethink it to cash in on the downloads before they expire.
Also, I noticed that the end of the legal goo at the bottom of the paper offer the humorously straightforward plea, “Don’t steal movies.”
Re-Watching the Watchmen
The most interesting things I learned from this release were that the blue glows around Dr. Manhattan were real-world effects and Zack’s thoughts on the reworked ending (which I like better than the graphic novel). That sadly means that the special features were too little too late, clearly outdone by internet.
The movie stands up extremely well as a home video with great audio (make sure you have it properly calibrated to get the vocal track up to volume with the sound effects) and amazing visual effects. Any effects that seemed cartoony in the theater are far little more forgiving at home and Patrick Wilson’s Dan Dreiberg (and Nite Owl) are a lot less creepy at second viewing. Of course, if you have a large HD TV, the rubbery makeup on Robert Wisden as President Richard Nixon and Carla Gugino as the aged Sally Jupiter will not be any less forgiving.
Not certain whether or not to get the Blu-ray release? Stop wondering. Simple answer is, if you have not already, “Hecks yes.” If you are going to get this movie for home viewing, the highest def you can get is best. Then watch it though a couple more times just to look for everything you missed the first times around.
Read [Gamertell] Photo Gallery 1 [Gamertell] Photo Gallery 2 [Gamertell]
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