If anyone has read my inagural review of Watchmen when I first joined here, then someone might guess that I'm a Watchmen fan. In fact I love Watchmen. It's dark, it's gritty, and it's an amazingly deep and emotional story. Watchmen is the story about outlawed heroes and their struggle to uncover a plot that threatens the world. It is a bloody epic that will roll you over in it's human bean juice that is it's awesome sauce all day long.
But this is all beside the point and here I'll go over the dvd/blu-ray and their features.
First off, there are quite a few different releases of Watchmen. The director's cut dvd release, a standard theatrical widescreen release and a blu-ray director's cut release. There is also an Ultimate 5-disc edition that comes with the motion comic, Hollis Mason's Under The Hood and has Tales of the Black Freighter woven into it.
Well the theatrical release is just that, your basic everyday movie release to dvd, nothing special.
Director's cut features 24 minutes of deleted material, making the movie over three hours long. The scenes are relatively minor but are nice as they add even more depth to whatever dialogue or action that is taking place within the movie. The deleted material is especially helpful in fleshing out Dr. Manhattan's story.
Commentary from director Zack Snyder is really cool in that he's not just a voice playing over the movie (blu-ray).
Other releases also have the standard commentary.
And there are loads more features on the more expensive discs. The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics, The Original Graphic Novel's Groundbreaking Impact, Real Super Heroes, Real Vigilantes Explores How The Saga's Characters Are Mirrored in Historical and Contemporary Real-Life Behavior, Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World, Immerse Yourself in All 11 Watchmen Journals, a music video for My Chemical Romance (bleh), a digital copy of the film (theatrical version) and of course, the BD Live feature. Whew! That was just me typing straight from the back of the box, and thats loads of content in just the Blu-Ray edition my friends.
The Director's Cut Standard DVD release (also Widescreen) contains: The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics, Webisodes, the friggin music video (BLEH!) and a digital copy of the theatrical version.
The standard Widescreen edition doesn't seem to contain hardly anything in the way of special features, but good news! It's in color!
So by now your thinking, okay, special feature overload, especially with the blu-ray edition. Just let me tempt you in that the movie does in fact look great in blu-ray, and this film is totally worth the buy. It's a benefit to moviegoers who enjoy adult-themed superhero entertainment, and a boon to most fans of the Watchmen universe. I highly suggest that this movie be spinning in your disc player right now. So go get it!
5 out of 5 for the special features and presentation of the various dvd releases (excluding the bare bones edition).
5 out of 5 because the movie itself, while not quite as deep as say Gran Torino, is highly entertaining, high production values, an amazing story and unforgettable characters. It's rated R for very adult themes, violence, sexual abuse, language, etc. It's directed by Zack Snyder and stars Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino, Malin Akerman and Billy Crudup. It's brought to you by Paramount, Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.
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