Night Watch & Day Watch

[Antony-Kwok]

I brought this on blu-ray a while ago but didn't watch it till recently, I know it's not a big deal but the subtitle track is the same old boring white text as with most foreign films.

Just wondering what happened to the cool subtitles that I had on the DVD versions?

[OrlandoEastwood]

Maybe because they would have to put the film on the disc twice. Just putting the English and Russian audio together saves space on the disc.

EDIT: I have the US DVDs, the crazy subtitles were only on Night Watch. It was a double sided DVD whereas Day Watch was single sided and like how I stated above.

[Antony-Kwok]

Originally Posted by OrlandoEastwood

Maybe because they would have to put the film on the disc twice. Just putting the English and Russian audio together saves space on the disc.

EDIT: I have the US DVDs, the crazy subtitles were only on Night Watch. It was a double sided DVD whereas Day Watch was single sided and like how I stated above.

Hmmm maybe that's why but still they made cool subtitles for a reason, must have spent a while doing them and it's a shame for them to be left out on this transfer. I guess like you said they didn't want to go to the trouble of creating two high-definition masters rather than one. They might have been able to fit on one disc though?

They should have just put on the version with cool subtitles instead of the one with no subtitles and the boring standard subtitles.

[SDon1969]

It's a shame they did not include the cool subtitles, what a waste of a great idea. Here's a thread where it was briefly discussed:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...atch+subtitles

You used to be able to check out what the subtitles should have looked like on Youtube, but Fox made them remove it. Psh.

[Hugh K. David]

I thought this was more widely known, but...

As far as I'm aware, FOX did these subs for the English language cinema prints for the US and UK, in an effort to involve the sort of consumers who normally would not watch a subtitled film. These were actually added directly onto the film print, for cinema screenings, and were kept for one DVD master. If anyone knows of similar efforts in other language territories, please feel free to correct me.

However, when they re-issued Nightwatch in the longer, original Russian cut, they used ordinary player-generated subs on it. For Daywatch, they ONLY released the longer cut to home video, again using ordinary player-generated subs. These have clearly become the standard master, since of course, the film prints are clean and can have any combo of audio or subtitle track in a wide variety of languages added, saving Fox money across a number of territories.

If you think about it, they could have mastered the theatrical prints to home video with the fancy on-print subs, but then they would only have been able to use these in the US and UK, and would not have been able to put the Director's original cuts on the same DVD - so you would have had two-disc sets for both, an additional expense which, having tried it on Nightwatch, Fox clearly felt was too expensive an option for Daywatch.

With Blu-ray's greater capacity, I think it's a shame they didn't restore the shorter theatrical cuts with dynamic subs to both discs, alongside the longer cuts with regular subs. However, that would have meant the additional expense of fresh masters for all the other languages in Europe and beyond - again, an additional expense, and possibly one not worth considering given much greater success in non-English-speaking territories. We were the only ones to need the film shortened and gussied up this way to attract viewers - other countries recognised cool film-making when they saw it.