There will be 9 discs of Special Features when all is said and done this Christmas! 1 disc for each 2 disc set and 2 disc for each 4 disc set, the other 9 discs are the films with 6 discs containing 4 commentaries each, which counts as Special features, the kind I'm usually most intrested in!
Quantity is one thing, quality is another. If you put too much "behind the scenes" content on a disc, you risk redundancy and you wind up boring your audience. Why listen to a commentary track that simply repeats what you just heard in a behind the scenes doc, for instance? 20,000 Leagues was guilty of this...the "making of" documentary was so good, so thorough, that listening to the commentary by Richard Fleischer was redundant. He merely repeats what you've already seen (although there are one or two exclusive stories squirreled away in that two-hour track).
The best thing on both of the LOTR discs, for my money, are the looks at Tolkien. I'm more interested in Tolkien and how Tolkien created this world than I am about good the catering was during the shoot.
Brazil: Criterion and The Fantasia Anthology are the best DVDs I've seen in regards to bonus content. The Brazil disc should be required viewing for any young filmmaker who intends to work within the modern American studio system, the Fantasia disc should be required viewing for any serious historian of American film, or any young filmmaker interested in non-traditonal modes of film entertainment.
While I'm certainly among those who think "Lord of the Rings" have the best extras of any DVD released thus far, I would also have to include "Alien Quadrilogy" in this discussion.
With both LOTR and Alien Quadrilogy, I found that the extras did not repeat each other and the sheer wealth of information was overwhelming. One could call it overkill, but you only have to watch and listen to what you want. But certainly no one could ever consider themselves shortchanged.
am i the only one who interpreted the thread as best special feature, not featureS? we all know that lotr has a ton of features on the dvds. but as far as ONE special feature on a dvd, i'll say either the hidden chronological feature on memento or the mattress man commercial on punch drunk love.
At the moment I'd go with the Alien Quadrilogy as the best special edition dvd so far. I love the Rings trilogy but the extras are too well prepared and formatted, you know exactly what to expect from the 4-disc ROTK extra content, you can close your eyes and imagine each extra feature and how it would be presented. But the Alien set blew me away, I'm still gobsmacked at how much they crammed into those 9 discs.
The upcoming Star Wars trilogy should have been on a par with the Quadrilogy but instead we're having an Indy style set, 4 discs, with about 45mins devoted to each film on the extras disc.