Are You Neglecting To Watch Extras Because Of the Size of Your Collection?

[Member-222782]

I don't regret that I have a huge pile of unwatched films in my collection but I'm beginning to worry that I'll never have the time to watch all the supplemental material. At times I've even found myself hoping to get to the end of a film so I can begin watching another one, and not necessarily to whittle down the unwatched pile. Hitting the extras menu doesn't even cross my mind much anymore. I've always told myself that I'm not in a race to watch everything I own but now that's exactly how it's starting to feel. I haven't completely written off watching extras, as there are still some very good featurettes being produced. The upcoming 4K reissue of Apocalypse Now has a crapload of extras, both old and new (including the Heart of Darkness doc, which I've never seen) and it just seems so overwhelming just thinking of getting through everything that I'd rather not focus too much on it. Anyone else in the same boat?

[Monterey Jack]

Pretty much...if I watched EVERY making-of and listened to every commentary, I would NEVER see the light at the end of the tunnel. I always placate myself by saying I'll go back and watch them when I've finished my "to-watch" pile, but I'm constantly adding new movies to my collection, so...

[InuYashaCrusade]

To be honest, I forget about the bonus features. If I don't watch them on release day then I very rarely (if ever) decide to revisit them.

[LMFAObros]

I used to watch them back in the early days of BD but have since accumilated a larger collection and am constantly visiting and revisiting titles in my collection

[mysticwaterfall]

I used to love watching special features, but anymore I just try to watch deleted scenes since I have such a huge backlog.

[DR Herbert West]

Originally Posted by mysticwaterfall

I used to love watching special features, but anymore I just try to watch deleted scenes since I have such a huge backlog.

Ditto

[Al_The_Strange]

Yeah, I have so many titles I need to watch, re-watch, re-evaluate, and check off my watchlist, there just isn't time for hours and hours of extras.

I will dabble a bit for long-time favorite movies. Like recently I did see the new interviews on the Arrow edition of Children of Men. Saw the new extras on the SF edition for In the Mouth of Madness. Last time I saw The Thing, the Arrow edition, I watched the feature-length documentary for it. If it's a movie I'm very familiar with, I might play the commentary, but I haven't done that lately.

Bigger priority right now is watching all the blind-buys. And it's a brutal watch-pile with things like Lonesome Dove (6+ hours) War and Peace (7+ hours), the Human Condition trilogy (9+ hours), and lots of horror movie sequels (an ungodly number of hours). And I have occasional rentals and streaming movies to wedge in.

Maybe someday, if I can get my watch pile beat down, I'll make time for watching more bonus stuff.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Depends completely on the film. I don’t care at all on extras for movies I only like or thought we’re decent. If I love the movie though I’ll watch everything on the disc.

[drb124]

I try to watch special features on movies I really like, but setting aside the runtime of a movie to listen to a commentary rather than watch a different film within the same time period is difficult. My collection is huge, and trying to get to just the movies is tough enough, not to mention, reading all the books that I own.

[infiniteCR]

I watched them on my first few dozen dvds back at the turn of the millennium, but mainly because I was broke and had to wait to buy more. Now i might watch one every few hundred movies or so.

[ElectricPeterTork]

No, I'm neglecting to watch extras because I usually don't care about them.

Deleted scenes? Meh, contextless snippets that weren't good enough for the movie. Commentaries? Mostly circle jerks with little to no real information I wanted to hear. Featurettes? See: commentaries.

[AgentOrange]

I think it depends on the film.

I generally always at least check out deleted scenes and trailers. Sometimes those end up being very much worth it, otherwise not so much. Still, deleted scenes especially I feel like I have to watch immediately after the movie, so I can try and place those scenes back into the film mentally.

Other features I'm a bit more random with. I tend to not watch them right away. I do have alot I've never spent time with at all, but that really has nothing to do with the size of my collection. I just have to be in the mood to watch extras, and sometimes I don't get around to them unless it's my 2nd or 3rd or 4th time with the blu-ray (or really DVD, since I could say the same thing all the way from when I first started DVD collecting)

[The Great Owl]

I watch all of the extras and listen to all of the commentary tracks on each one of my Blu-rays.

This is a key reason why the size of my still-unwatched stack grows exponentially faster than I can actually watch the discs.

[bigshot]

I'm not interested in hearing what talking heads have to say. And I don't want someone talking over the movie. If I want to find out about a film, I'll read a review. Perhaps if it's the director talking about how he made the film, but that has to be organized into a documentary.

[glennstl]

I definitely understand where you are coming from. I just bought about 8 1950’s sci-fi movies by Scream, partially for their good extras...especially the commentary tracks. Even though I got through all the movies in about four days... 2 weeks later I’ve still only listened fully to one of the commentary tracks.

As others here have mentioned, I think it depends on the movie and how much I love it. A movie like Green Book I watched all the extras right after finishing he movie because it was probably my favorite movie of last year,

It also depends on the studio releasing the movie. For example, whenever I buy a Criterion, I watch all the extras usually a day or two after watching the movie.

[meremortal]

Originally Posted by infiniteCR

I watched them on my first few dozen dvds back at the turn of the millennium, but mainly because I was broke and had to wait to buy more. Now i might watch one every few hundred movies or so.

There definitely did seem to be more enthusiasm and patience in those days but we were also a whole lot younger. I used to welcome those really loaded dvd editions like for say Kevin Smith films. But when you're no longer single and have a lot of other priorities to take care of during the day, watching a movie is several steps down the que list. in reality, it's often tough to get around two hours of interrupted free time to watch a movie. When you factor in extras that can easily double. And often by the time I've finished watching a movie I'm already tired or have to do something else. Stuff like commentary tracks are rarely utilized, but I do try to at least get around to to the cast and crew production material/interviews, deleted scenes, etc.

[kevin87]

Only extras I watch are the gag reel if they have one and sometimes deleted scenes... Very very rarely do I watch any bts featurettes, depends on the movie. and how long they are.

I personally have only watched a handful of movies with commentary, it's almost like somebody's talking during a movie in the theater... you can't see them but they keep talking over the dialogue lol

[Monterey Jack]

Originally Posted by meremortal

There definitely did seem to be more enthusiasm and patience in those days but we were also a whole lot younger.

To say nothing of the sheer VOLUME of content to watch. Why dedicate twelve or whatever hours crawling through the voluminous extras on the average Edgar Wright Blu-Ray when you could watch another SIX movies in that time? Back in the days when I "only" owned a handful of DVDs (and deluxe laserdiscs before that), I would take time to watch each and every feature, listen to each commentary, etc. But when I buy a half-dozen Kino titles whenever they have a sale, it's just too much. And that's not even getting into making time to watch new TV shows, read books, listen to music... There's WAY too much content to consume, let alone savor at your leisure.

[Monterey Jack]

Now, if I could rip a commentary track to an iPod or something so I could listen to them while taking a walk, I'd listen to a lot more (especially the more professorial ones that barely acknowledge what's going on in the movie on a scene-by-scene basis).

[Monterey Jack]

When I first started collecting movie soundtracks in the early 90s, I used to listen to those early albums COUNTLESS times, simply because I didn't own that many of them. Now that I have well over 700 in my collection(!), even great scores I'll rarely listen to more than a handful of times. It's like the old line about smoking more, enjoying it less.