by Jake Lever

Outside of the New Line Platinum Series and the Criterion Collection, there haven’t been any second place finishers in the DVD market; the Platinum Series and Criterion Collection are atop the leader boards, simply looking down to see if they can spot any competition at all. In the year 2000 however, only one studio has seemingly put the production of solid and unique DVD and Special Edition DVD releases on its list of things to do. Rapidly rising through the ranks of the Digital Video Disc world are the 20th Century Fox Special Editions (a label that includes the Fox Five Star Editions and the Collector’s Editions).

Ideally the goal of every motion picture is to capture both the attention and hearts of its viewers: to transport the audience to another place for the duration of the running time. Working off of this notion, the goal of a DVD release would be to give the viewer a product that can answer questions about the feature, give insight into what the writer, director and actors were thinking and present background information about how the film was made. This is precisely what the 20th Century Fox Special Editions have done.

One of the best examples of this sense of completeness is the double disc special edition of The Abyss. On one disc, The Abyss Special Edition featured both Jim Cameron’s director’s cut of the movie and the version of the film that was pared down by 28 minutes for its theatrical release. The other disc featured two documentaries on the making of The Abyss, the complete screenplay (so those of you aspiring writers can learn what not to do when writing) and multiple angles of the pseudopod sequence, breaking the filming of the scenes down to something that easily shows how the ground-breaking computer generated images of water were created.

The decision to include both the director’s cut and theatrical release versions of the film is an enormous positive (this option is also available on the Independence Day DVD). Having seen director’s cuts that are much worse than the original releases, Army of Darkness being the most notable, the fact that Fox is allowing the viewers to choose which cut they want to watch is an added bonus.

One of the only curious elements of the Fox Special Editions are the titles that are currently available. With an enormous catalog to choose from, it was rather surprising to see that three of the four releases this year were rather average movies in The Abyss, Fight Club and Independence Day (and calling Independence Day ‘average’ is giving that movie entirely too much credit). However, with the releases of The Sound of Music and The Rocky Horror Picture Show this fall to match May’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Fox has started to do slightly better for itself as both films, in their own way, are distinct classics.

With more special editions planned for a holiday release, Fox’s ball is continuing to roll and roll, for the most part, in a positive direction. You really can’t go wrong with a Fox Special Edition.