We're sending you Back to the Fut... um, manufacturer

[Tannerman]

Earlier this week, the Back to the Future trilogy finally arrived on DVD in stores everywhere. It's been a long wait for BTTF fans like myself. I love those movies. When Back to the Future III arrived, I went with a friend to see the trilogy back-to-back-to-back at a local theatre. Good stuff.


But alas, Universal messed this whole thing up. For those of you keeping track, they also botched the release of another popular film a couple months back, E.T. (although I still fail to see the appeal of that film). In the case of the freaky alien, Universal offered both a standard 2 disc set and a 4 disc special edition. However, the cheaper 2 disc set was to only contain the re-edited, politically correct 2001 version of the film (which removed lines about terrorists and digitally changed guns to walkie talkies). If you wanted to see the original version of the film, you were going to have to cough up more money and buy the special edition.


Well, fan outrage was huge about this, so at the last minute Universal added the original version to the 2 disc set as well. Of course, the packaging was never changed and there was mass confusion in the marketplace. The set hasn't been selling very well. Go figure.

In the case of BTTF, people thought they were going to get it right. Granted, it has probably some of the ugliest cover art I've seen, but I could look beyond that. You can only purchase the trilogy together, not as separate movies. So if you don't like a certain film, you are stuck with it. There are limited special features, but since this is only a 3 disc set (one for each movie), there isn't a whole lot of room for much more. I guess Universal stated they wanted to keep costs low by sticking with only 3 discs.


However, even with these oddities, is this something you should pick up? You might want to hold off on picking up this set for a stocking stuffer. Amid numerous consumer complaints over noticeably misframed shots in the widescreen edition of Parts II and III of the trilogy, Universal announced yesterday that they will be repressing the discs with corrected framing, and these repressed versions will be included in all future runs of the box set. So, if you have bought the set already, you have to send discs 2 and 3 back to Universal sometime in February (at your own expense, of course). They will then send you corrected versions.

Ironically, this now means that Universal will now be pressing 5 discs for the set; there goes their cost savings. If they would have just done it right the first time, they would have saved themselves a lot of grief, along with tons of bad press.

I'm not even going to comment on the fact that Universal is knowingly selling mis-produced discs to make its holiday sales numbers, hoping that most of you will never notice the problem. That's just plain wrong.

I wonder what movie they can mess up next?

[Egg]

I guess they figured they could go "Back to the Future" and fix it. Sorry I know it was corny, but had to be said.