This week we got the official report of when the Rogue One Blu-ray would be released(April 4th) and what we should expect to see on it. You can see the whole list here. There were two glaring and frankly upsetting omissions, no Director commentary and no deleted scenes. What’s the deal?
Let’s look at the director commentary first. This one I can almost understand, schedules being tight from box office release to Blu-ray release these days it can be difficult to get the commentary done. That being said I am also a bit cynical about it. For The Force Awakens we didn’t get commentary until they re-released the film on digital 3-D a few months later. This seems like a money grab to me and it makes me wonder if holding back a director commentary to sell more Blu-rays is part of why its not on the initial release. We all know fans that will buy it again just for the commentary. Heck I probably will eventually buy TFA again but only once the entire trilogy is done and released as a box set(I love box sets…) but the fact that we aren’t getting it now is a disservice to the fans that pre-order and buy right away.
Now on those deleted scenes… ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I get that the drama around the re-shoots have caused some issues but ignoring the scenes that were filmed is not the way to address this. We know there are a boatload of scenes that were dropped, you only need watch the trailers to see about 10, so why run from this? I can see only two reasons personally. One is the same as the cynical side from before… deleted scenes mean people will buy the Blu-ray again. The next is they don’t want to be second guessed anymore on the changes that were made. We don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t what the film looked like at the first cut and we don’t know how different it could have been. The deleted scenes may give us an idea. We here at Spoiledbluemilk came up with ideas based on the trailers of what we could expect in Rogue One. We got most of wrong but I wonder if it wasn’t closer to the original cut? I’d love to see those deleted scenes and see if I could figure it out.
So what is the real reason? Probably a mix of both, more money if they are released with a director commentary re-release and wanting to avoid a rehash of the re-shoots drama from last year. I will say there may be a glimmer of hope for a few deleted scenes…The Target exclusive release has two exclusive bonus features.
Target Exclusive: 5-disc set includes collectible packaging with interchangeable character covers and exclusive bonus content (Blu-ray 3D + two Blu-ray + DVD + DVD exclusive content – 2 additional bonus features + Digital HD + collectible packaging) –Starwars.com (Bolded for emphasis)
Could this mean deleted scenes? I doubt it but a boy could dream. I will probably get this version anyway as it seems to have the most extras and Target is pretty reasonable on its prices. How do you feel about the ommisions? Respond here or tell us on twitter
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