Notable can mean many things. Maybe it was high quality, insightful, and provided context for a more artistic scene. Maybe they teased a cut scene that would have radically shifted the tone of the movie. Maybe it was funny. Maybe the director absolutely hated what they produced and is only providing narration because of a contractual obligation and a lot of alcohol.
I am looking to hear about anything that stuck with you in some way.
A lot of people consume content online where director’s commentary frequently isn’t present but I imagine there are still a lot of people who are into this niche.
The one that stands out in my mind was The Sum of All Fears. It was the weakest of the Jack Ryan franchise with Ben Affleck in that role, and the commentary track featured the director being savagely berated by Tom Clancy throughout.
I have bad news. Read the synopsis for Without Remorse.
I do think Sum of All Fears it is better than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit but holy hell is Without Remorse another level of bad.
I love the Jack Ryan stuff, but what I was really surprised by was that I actually found the Harrison Ford movies to be the worst as far as viewing experience goes when it comes to “Jack Ryan saves the world” kind of stuff. Like, Hunt for the Red October, we have someone that sees the pieces for what they are in a captain defecting with a nuclear sub. In Sum of all Fears he sees the pieces for what they are as someone trying to trigger a nuclear war in a nuclear terrorist attack. In Clear and Present danger he’s … stops a kidnapping, kills a kidnapper in the process, and the kidnapper’s brother wants revenge.
Nuclear war -> kidnapping. The scale is completely different. In actually liked that Sum of All Fears really raised the stakes back to where they should be for Ryan (plus the absolute best part of Leiv Schreiber taking out all the ‘bad guys’ at the end is fantastic).
I will say that Shadown Recruit was a disappointment. The thing that makes the others deal great is the misdirect and mystery. “It’s the Russians” -> “Its not the Russians! It’s someone making it look like the Russians!”. Shadow Recruit was just “yep… It’s the Russians.”
Ryan isn’t an action hero. He is an accidental intelligence agent.
What is funny in The Sum of all Fears book is they had no idea there was a bomb. Jack spend most of the book at odds with the presidents chief of staff as she tries to screw him over (get him fired and possibly divorced) after she misunderstood her first encounter with Ryan during Clear and Present Danger.
I won’t fault them for changing the bad people from Muslims in the book to Nazis in the film.
I remember quite enjoying the commentary on Equilibrium. The writer-director talked about the shortcuts to cut costs in various scenes, he admitted when certain shots weren’t quite perfect, he talked about the concepts in the movie where they were silly and where he really thought they worked.
IMDb page here for those that want it. I am surprised I haven’t seen it.
I feel like the cost cutting aspect would be quite interesting. Did they express any regret towards that or the imperfections they pointed out?
The Lord of the Rings has like four goddamn commentaries per movie, from the director, the actors, the scenic designers, and the composer Howard Shore, and who knows maybe I’m forgetting a couple. I love hearing the cast because you can alternately hear about what gigantic dorks they are for the material or how incredibly thoughtful they were. I recall hearing Sean Astin get way into political philosophy and how Two Towers was emphatically not a pro-war movie.
The Matrix has philosopher commentaries where Cornel West and Ken Wilber talk about the heavy duty concepts being explored. The fun part is that they seamlessly go back and forth between philosophy and action movie appreciation, where they’ll say stuff like "So you’ve got to remember that in Plato’s allegory of the cave the observer is always— oh shit she just kicked that guy in the throat!"
A lot of people consume content online where director’s commentary frequently isn’t present but I imagine there are still a lot of people who are into this niche.
This and deleted scenes are IMO the biggest loss with the shift to streaming.
I had the original run of Futurama on DVD and the commentaries were always interesting but there is no way I’m going to start hording physical media again.
The crazy thing is that its really just another audio track, from a technical perspective it would be at trivial to add to video stream but there must be additional licensing and they don’t seem to feel its worth the effort/cost.
So I collect physical media, and I carefully preserve the audio commentaries and the special features. What I’ve found is that a lot of the special features that are worth keeping are available on youtube. You just have to know about them to find them. For example, the recent Mission Impossible movie had the famous motorcycle jump featurette on youtube, and some of the great John Wick featurettes are on youtube as well. But after buying and cataloging over 1200 movies, I have to say – a lot of the special features just aren’t worthwhile to me to keep. I think this is more of a reflection of the major studios not wanting to spend money on the special features than anything else. You seem to only get good special features on really big movies or movies made before 2010.
You can get the Tropic Thunder DVD commentary on YouTube. It pretty funny, and Robert Downey Jr really doesn’t break character until it’s over.
