Quote:
Originally Posted by DimitriL
If I was gonna be flip, I’d say Armageddon is in the collection solely for the amazing commentary. But honestly, and I think they’ve said this before, they consider the films representative of a certain kind of 90s action filmmaking and felt it was valid to include them. I think a far stronger argument can be made for The Rock with that rationale, as it was quite well-regarded at the time. But you know, like Wes Anderson, sometimes Criterion builds relationships with directors.
At any rate, they certainly weren’t averse to big, popular films when they got the opportunity. Back in the LD days, the first three Bond films were in the collection; so was Ghostbusters. Close Encounters, Blade Runner, Akira, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robocop. Monty Python and the Holy Grail! They’ve always been more than open to the right pitch for a great popular entertainment.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ravenus
My guess is that the DVD market was still nascent at the time, and they wanted to go with a property that is already popular and had a built-in fan base, rather than some arthouse flick. And Bay's pride in his movies and enthusiasm for talking about his process gave them extraordinary access to the making-of materials. There was a time before we could take for granted the "hours and hours of extras" on the back blurb of DVD's, and Criterion's efforts helped build that market.
But what is this "What compelled Criterion to release..."? The Rock is a classic of modern Hollywood blockbuster movie-making. Decades later, it is still quoted and enjoyed by fans. Ed Harris' character is a better written bad guy than you see in many movies. Maybe someone at Criterion genuinely likes Bay but has been shut out by the other snooty arthouse snobs on the board.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Snicket
Not quite. The Criterion that released those movies is not at all the same company as it exists today. Back in the early home video days before studios were all in on physical media criterion was used as a way to release movies so studios get a nice cut of the profits without have to do the work of putting a release together.
It didn’t really have anything to do at all with the artistic impact of the films. It was more like the studio hired them, and they did it. The branding of themselves as the Noah’s Ark of important work as we know them today did not come in until later.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior
Interview from 1999 with Peter Becker.
http://archive.thedigitalbits.com/ar...iterionpb.html
Spoiler-marked part below talks about Bay's movies.
[Show spoiler]Doogan: What was up with the rumors that went around about Michael Bay pulling a bit of clout to get the Armageddon disc out from Criterion.
Becker: Armageddon was actually an extremely easy, straightforward thing. The back-story on the whole Disney working relations has been very smooth. It was very smooth all through our laser life -- I think we did about 16 or 17 titles on laser with Disney and Miramax. Among those was The Rock. When The Rock came up the first time, that was going to be a monstrous amount of work, and we approached it with a little bit of trepidation. Michael really wanted to see it happen and so we said, "okay, let's do it." We hadn't done a major action film like that before... well, we had done non-traditional action films...
Doogan: Like Spartacus. Sparacus is kind of an action film. An epic, historical, spear-through-the-belly action film, but an action film none-the-less.
Becker: Not really though, I mean only in the same way that Henry V or Passion of Joan of Arc is an action film. What Michael does is a very specific, very current, modern brand of adrenal entertainment, and we'd never really done a movie like that before, and we didn't really know how to approach it at first. We started to realize that we had to approach it on its own terms. I don't know if you remember The Rock LD box, but inside the insert, there was a quote from Jerry Bruckheimer that basically said that there's a difference between a megablockbuster and other kinds of film. A movie like that comes out swinging for the fences. It's a whole other style of filmmaking, and it was interesting for us. We approached it with, like I said, a bit of trepidation.
Doogan: Were you guys fans enough of The Rock that you consider it a modern day classic?
Becker: We are. Honestly, within the staff, we had mixed opinions. That's often the way it is with modern stuff that we do with current films. It's much harder to argue about the merits of a film when it just comes out in the theaters, than it is 40 years later, after it's stood the test of time. It's a lot easier to argue the merits of Seven Samurai now than it probably was in the 50's.
Doogan: I have always thought that The Rock was the perfect brainless action film. Because it's perfect in that sense, I think it's good enough for me to have a Criterion edition.
Becker: Well, you know, I think the key to it is that the edition itself has to be a good edition, and I'm very proud of what we did on The Rock. I'm very proud of what we've done on both of Michael's films. And we couldn't have done it without him, and that's part of what our whole way of working is. We really try to take our leads very strongly from the filmmakers themselves and the people involved, trying not to leave any stone unturned. The story on The Rock is essentially that Michael really did wanted to do a Rock Criterion laser, and he made that known to the folks at Disney. The folks at Disney called us and said, "Do you want to do it?" We asked if we could think about it overnight, and we had a long, knock-down, drag-out about it. When it was all over, you know what? We actually did want to do it. This was a pretty exciting project. And from then on, we didn't really look back. We had a great time, and it was a huge disc, not in terms of sales so much in the laser market, although it was strong, but in terms of content. When Michael made Armageddon, he called us while he was shooting at one point and just checked in with us along the way. There was a whole bunch of back and forth between us subsequent to The Rock, and when it came time for Armageddon to go to home video, the only issue with Disney was being able to work out arrangements to be able to do it on DVD as well as laser at that point, because we were converting so much of our work to DVD. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by fitprod
Armageddon and The Rock were released on LD (and DVD) as a strategic move. It did help that Criterion had a relationship with Disney/Miramax at the time.
Other titles released during the later LD years:
Chasing Amy, Dead Presidents, El Cid (controlled by Miramax at the time); English Patient, Evita, Pulp Fiction, Sling Blade, Supercop and Trainspotting
The sales from those "unworthy*" titles funded many of the smaller Criterion titles that would not be big sellers.
fitprod
*That being said, I feel The Rock was a legit release, Armageddon was a bonus.
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Thanks to all who responded with different and interesting views.
It seems to me
Criterion's early days in the Laserdisc industry were a different time for both the company and the home video market. Perhaps Janus Films were able to afford bigger productions and movies to license back then but now with the studios and bigger wallets at the top, the
Criterion Collection found their niche in acquiring films that the bigger studios would pass on, as opposed to competing with them. I think the whole success of the
Criterion Collection is them choosing films that are very diverse, from independent to foreign to arthouse to classics as well as forgotten classics, and early major directors' films.
I liked DimitriL's viewpoints and think that building relationships with the directors is key (case in point: David Lynch... someone who once shunned
Criterion (or at least that's what I once recall reading somewhere online) but then eventually did a complete 180 and is now very prominent in the collection). Lucrative licensing agreements with well known directors is where
Criterion excels on every level.
Since its a question of money, I would be very surprised to see a return of Janus Films and
Criterion going after some bigger blockbusters like the Michael Bay films, and maybe even directors like Peter Jackson (unlikely), Steven Spielberg (unlikely but who knows), Ridley Scott (extremely unlikely), J.J. Abrams (tremendously unlikely), Roland Emmerich (enormously unlikely), George Lucas (incredibly unlikely unless it was an early film of his like THX 1138), James Cameron (spectacularly unlikely), Richard Donner (maybe but probably not), John McTiernan (unlikely), M. Night Shyamalan (unlikely), Tim Burton (quite unlikely), and John Carpenter (possibly but I doubt it).
In case anyone is curious, the handful of blockbuster directors that are in the
Criterion Collection (for those whose films grossed more than 1 billion dollars in the box office worldwide) are:
Michael Bay ($6,443,668,115)
Christopher Nolan ($4,960,225,738)
Robert Zemeckis ($4,357,046,005)
Followed by:
Stephen Soderbergh ($2,292,578,496)
Martin Scorsese ($2,153,717,738)
David Fincher ($2,108,393,607)
Ang Lee ($1,692,941,738)
Alfonso Cuarón ($1,654,904,636)
John Woo ($1,328,084,552)
Sydney Pollack ($1,270,147,068)
Joel Coen ($1,161,489,095)
Paul Verhoeven ($1,061,993,917)
Lasse Hallström ($1,051,158,504)
Mike Nichols ($1,047,422,380)
Michael Mann ($1,041,943,727)
Brian De Palma ($1,036,840,757)
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