Pixar DVDs: Victims of stupidity and greed?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a major Pixar junkie -- I follow news of their new releases, I try to catch their new movies in the theater on opening weekends, and I've got boxed-set deluxe editions of the home DVD releases. Granted, my fanboyish devotion has wavered a bit lately due to external distractions, but I'm still enough of a geek to plunk down big bucks for fanboy fodder like this (buy it now, it's awesome!).

One area where I have lapsed, though, is in DVD releases -- my last Pixar DVD purchase was for The Incredibles, and it has a honored spot alongside my other Pixar DVDs.

But I've passed on the DVDs for Cars and Ratatouille, for one very simple reason -- there are no director's commentaries with those discs.

Actually, the extras for those DVDs are rather skimpy overall (especially compared to the previous Pixar DVDs, which were bountiful, two-disc deluxe editions jam-packed with goodies), but the lack of a director's commentary track really sticks in my geek craw.

I was miffed at the bare-bones DVD release for Cars last year, but I toughed it out, figuring that a deluxe two-disc edition would be released this year (a blatant case of double-dipping). Yet a year has gone by, Ratatouille is now out on DVD, and Cars is now out on Blu-Ray, but a deluxe geek-targeted feature-crammed DVD set for Cars is still nowhere to be found! What gives?

Well, if Disney gossiper Jim Hill is correct, Pixar movie geeks like myself are getting screwed forwards and backwards. From the front:

If John Lasseter & Brad Bird had their way, the theatrical release of every new Pixar film would immediately be followed by a multi-disc edition of that same movie. We're talking about a DVD that would then walk you through every phase of production, that would go into great detail about how that particular picture was made.

(*SOB!*)

...95% of the people who actually purchase these new Disney / Pixar titles (at least during the first two weeks that these films are out on store shelves) aren't actually animation fans. But -- rather -- they're parents who just want something new that they can then drop into the family DVD player... That's what Walt Disney Home Entertainment has learned over the past 5 years through extensive survey work and consumer products testing. That the group that buys the largest number of new Disney / Pixar DVDs (i.e. parents of small children) just don't care for the two disc editions of these films.

Why For? Would you believe that it's because Mom & Dad are concerned that -- in their rush to load this new DVD into the player -- that they might accidentally drop the wrong disc into the machine? Which will then cause their kid to complain about how they're not able to see the movie.

...Look, I know that that sounds a little cold-hearted. But the way I hear it, that's actually why WDHE opted to go with single disk editions of all of the new Disney / Pixar releases. Because that's what parents really wanted.

In fact, to address the ease-of-use concerns that some parents have with the DVD format ... Well, that's why Walt Disney Home Entertainment invented the FastPlay system. Which effectively allows Mom or Dad to just drop the newest Disney DVD into the family player and then walk away.

In other words, in order to appease the parents who can't take five seconds to see if they got the first DVD with the movie or the second disc with the extras (or, more likely, the first disc with the widescreen edition and the second disc with the fullscreen edition), Walt Disney Home Entertainment decides to make things super-easy for lazy parents by having just one disc -- hacking off extras along the way -- that can be dropped into the DVD player, so they can quickly plop their kids in front of the TV and keep them sedated for a few hours. Needless to say, that pisses me off both as a Pixar movie geek and as a responsible parent.

But wait, it gets better (or, rather, worse):

As for us hardcore animation fans ... Not to worry: WDHE's business plan does eventually call for two disc editions of these new Disney / Pixar films to hit store shelves. But usually two to three years after the release of the original DVD versions of that same movie.

Aggggggh!

More to the point, the multi-disc editions of these films will deliberately be sold at a much higher price point. So that the Mouse gets the maximum amount of return off of what is then basically a library title.

Aggggggh!

Of course, another reason that Walt Disney Home Entertainment has been stinting on the Extra Features that it's been folding into its DVDs lately is that they now want consumers to start buying their new Disney / Pixar titles in the Blu-Ray format. Take -- for example -- the Disney Blu-Ray version of "Cars" that hits store shelves next Tuesday. This Hi Def disc features a never-before-seen deleted scene from that John Lasseter film. Plus -- if you take advantage of this Blu-Ray DVD's "Cine-Explore" option -- Lasseter himself will walk you through the making of this movie. All this, plus the "Car Finder" game. Which then allows you to hunt for the 200 different makes & models that Pixar created for this road picture.

"And will those Extra Features be offered on a non-Blu-Ray DVD version of 'Cars' ?," you ask. Well, the way I hear it, WDHE doesn't have any plans to release a disc like that anytime soon. So if you want to hear John Lasseter's insights about how "Cars" actually came together ... You're going to have to get yourself a Blu-Ray player.

Aggggggh! Aggggggh! Aggggggh!

Look, guys, I have no interest in Blu-Ray -- and apparently neither do a lot of other folks -- so making these extras Blu-Ray only is a move that's merely going to piss off those of us who aren't going to change formats just to get the goodies we've gotten in the past. And I don't even need to explain the irritation in waiting three years (or more?) for a full-featured DVD set, do I?

Now, granted, this is all just rumormongering from Jim Hill, but it's certainly in line with what shoppers can see on store shelves today. And it's not as if this is an unprecedented move for the Mouse House before -- I'm still waiting for the feature-loaded DVD release of Lilo & Stitch, a movie that came out five years ago. So there's a very real possibility that the home releases of my beloved Pixar movies will now become fanboy-milking-fodder in a way that makes double-dipping look like an amateur effort by comparison.

On the very off-chance that John Lassetter is reading this -- c'mon, John, you're now one of the biggest cheeses at Walt Disney Studios nowadays, can't you use some of your clout and pull some weight for the fans out here? After all, you managed to finally slay the shameful direct-to-video cheapquels (thank you!), so this should be trivially easy by comparison...

Aggggggh!