The "Margaret Blu-ray" is just plain lazy... - Review

[Veronica Mars]

Originally Posted by nametag

Indeed. There was clearly not a lot of money to put the Extended cut together and many reports say there is evidence of the sound mixing not sounding finished in some scenes. My guess is that it was created from rough cut footage originally assembled a few years ago (in SD) and there wasn't enough money or time to put together the extended version from original film elements. They've had a couple of Q&A screenings of the extended version recently, but by all accounts they just showed the DVD. The fact that the DVD contained Extended and the Blu-ray Theatrical WAS announced by Fox, but I agree the cover is misleading.

Having said that, I'm not sure the Extended version is actually going to be better. Lonergan has not called it his 'preferred' or 'director's' cut of the film, just an alternative version which is more 'explicit' than 'suggestive' (IMO - not always a good thing). I loved the Theatrical, even though it does have some narrative problems towards the final third. However, the Extended version doesn't just add in a few deleted scenes to make the narrative make a bit more sense, it apparently changes the whole tone of the film and makes almost all of the scenes of an already long film longer.

From the TimeOut review of the Extended Version:



Other reviews at places like IndieWire and some tweets I've seen are not negative, exactly, but they aren't saying it's clearly the superior version.

My worry is that whilst the narrative may seem more cohesive, it may be at the expense of the punchy emotional impact of the Theatrical. Which was like, the greatest thing about it when I originally saw it.

I'm going to watch the Extended one day, obviously I don't know how I will feel about it. But what I'm trying to say is that I think the Theatrical might be what people should watch first anyway. And that if it is, indeed, the superior version of the film then I'm glad that's the one we have on Blu-ray.

And what if it's not? That's kind of a big if, because if you do prefer the extended version, you won't own it on bd and if you want to see the film in HD, you'd have to watch the cut you found to be the inferior one.

I certainly maintain the cover makes it seem like we're getting both on blu and being an exclusive there's no excuse for them to have not listed the info and let the buyers make their decision with all the information.

If you saw a combo box with the same cover on any other bd, you'd expect the blu to have both of the cuts.

I've read a lot of things people who saw the movie wrote and I really did assume the high price was due to getting something that a lot of people weren't sure if they'd ever see at all.

If the entire "other" choice is in SD, at the very least, no matter what reviews stated about which cut was "better", I would have waited until the price dropped.

I paid $28 because I'd been excited about both cuts and thought I was lucky to be getting them both on bd.