It was an era of dueling extremities. Distinguished voices striving to be heard roared in the conflicts between faith and skepticism, brightness and shadow, optimism and pessimism, promise and hopelessness, the saved and the damned.”

Sound familiar? What if this read more along the lines of, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

Imagine if my entirely fabricated opening paragraph was actually an alternate opening to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and some publisher included it as extra material in an appendix to the novel. If so, would you want to spend time reading it? And would you pay for the opportunity? Probably not.

However, when studios release their movies on DVD, there is a strange fascination with what bonus features might be included — I’m talking about documentaries, directors’ commentaries, deleted/alternate/extended footage, storyboards, Easter eggs and so on. There are whole Web sites devoted to deconstructing and evaluating the quantity and quality of what studios see fit to include on these releases. (www.IGN.com and www.DVDVerdict.com are two particularly insightful ones.) People rush to stores with their wallets in hand, hoping to get a movie — and something more.

Then, when a film has been out for a while (which in Hollywood means about a year), a sequel is forthcoming, or an unexpected cult fanbase has emerged, the studios will inevitably attempt to cash in by hastily assembling a new limited/special/collector’s edition. I assume that people continue to buy these newer versions, with their supposedly exclusive/exciting/explosive bonus features, because the studios seem to keep releasing them.

Before I go on, I just want to make clear that I am a big fan of DVDs and the bonus material on them. (I’ve even bought multiple copies of the same movie.) I am not criticizing the features themselves — although the vast majority of them are shallow and self-promoting. In fact, there are some genuinely great DVDs out there: The extended Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Kingdom of Heaven director’s cut, The Godfather DVD Collection, the Criterion Collection (an authoritative series of classic films) and countless others are examples of the exceptional work being done in this field, and it should not be diminished. For people like me who are fascinated by films and filmmaking, this content can be invaluable.
I’m simply asking, why do we care so much? DVD review Web sites will mark releases down if, in their judgment, the extra content is lacking or sub-par. Why do people feel that this is something they are entitled to? Why is there this aversion to buying a DVD that only contains the film?

I have heard people say, “When I buy a DVD, I don’t want just the movie.” Why not? When you buy a book, you are just getting the book.

Think about it. An author does not write a running commentary for a book. The best you can usually hope for is a brief foreword thanking everyone he or she has ever met. Readers rarely get access to the nitty-gritty details of the author’s process.

How would that work? Maybe the publisher could include the author’s thoughts in footnotes throughout the text. If there was actual author commentary, the potential for intriguing anecdotes is limitless: “While waiting in line at the pharmacy one day, I decided that these two characters should fall in love. So I jotted some notes on the back of my Valtrex prescription, and those notes became the chapter you’re reading right now.” It could be more entertaining than the book itself.

You are not getting deleted paragraphs in your books either. If Dickens wrote anything even closely resembling my pale imitation of his prose at that start of this column, no one would want to read it because clearly it was replaced with something far superior. Writers do not spend months revising and editing pages and pages of text only to allow people to see what didn’t work.

Do you know what I went through just to write this article? I put a lot of time and effort into these 800 words, and when I was finished, I found myself with a page of material I’d cut out. I don’t want you reading it. If it was any good, I would have found a way to get it in here.

For readers, books do not require more than what is on the page. When J.K. Rowling was releasing the Harry Potter novels, people just wanted to read them. No one was looking for missing chapters or Rowling’s thoughts; they were just looking for an entertaining book.

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was fairly popular. Does anyone remember when they released a “Special Illustrated Edition” for an outrageous price? Did anyone actually buy it? I rest my case.

But I will say that when Paramount Pictures sees fit to re-release all 10 Star Trek movies (of which I already own two copies), I will be the first one in line to complain about getting ripped off as I dutifully place my money on the counter. After all, I want to see that lost footage from The Wrath of Khan.

Vince Balzano is a junior in the College. He can be reached at balzano@thehoya.com. The Reel Deal appears every other Friday in The Guide.