How is the book that comes packaged with it at Wal-Mart? It looked pretty nice. If BB doesn't have any exclusive with it I may actually buy it from Wal-Mart (which i usually never do).

It'd probably still be cheaper than double-dipping down the road.

After viewing this again last night, and listening to the comments in this thread...

It is now apparent to me that this film deserves it's directors cut and / or the apparent hour of the film they cut out. While watching I noticed that many of the villians had nearly no reasoning behind their actions...you know there was some character development left out there.

The book is very nice, it's a large coffee-table-size volume, about 170 pages of pictures, stories, background, storyboards, interviews, etc. It's the type of book that usually you'd pay $15-20 for in a bookstore. I was extremely impressed with it, especially for $4.

exactly...this was probably one of the only movies all summer that I thought was TOO SHORT...most films out there are too long now (usually needing a good 15-20minute trim...ahem...wedding crashers) but this was one that a longer cut would have probably been better. I still loved the flick and picked up the disc, but really hope the directors cut arrives sooner rather than later.

MATT

I agree. I wont buy the theaterical release either. I'll wait for the DC if there's going to be one.

I also read in another post that if there is a DC it would probably be about 3 1/2 hours. Dont know if its true but sounds good to me.

You know what i saw the packaging with the book but i just bought the movie. I knew i wouldnt actually go through and read the book i dont even know if its the same price or not.

It did cost a little extra, i ended up going back and picking it up. Very nice book for anyone interested in that sort of thing.

Anybody think that the fullscreen slipcover looked better than the widescreen one? I actually prefer the gold look rather than the black one.

Yeah the fullscreen cover looks better, just like the Spider Man cover. Got it from Netflix last night and the video is way too dark. I changed the brightness settings 9 clicks up and it was still dark. Watching it for the 3rd time really made me notice the flaws of the movie. Editing was crappy as hell and the most of the characters were dull, except for Baldwin. I don't even know why Orlando became a damn leader and became an expert on war.

Wow it must really be a bad movie for you to have watched it 3 times?

Picked up my copy last night from Circuit City for $14.99. I have both versions of Gladiator and had both versions of Blackhawk Down (gave original release to a friend). I normally hate to double dip, but can't seem to avoid it on these Ridley Scott re-releases.

I'm a Ridley Scott fan so I have to watch it at least 2 times in the theatre.
Watching the movie on dvd made me realize that this movie was chopped to hell by the studio.

For example
- knights in the beginning asking if they could get food. Couple of seconds later, they're already leaving the village
- Priest knight went to war knowing he was going to die, why didn't he stay with Bloom
- Bloom defending Jerusalem when Saladin was portrayed as a very honoroble man. Based on the movies portrayal of Saladin, he would have let the Christians leave without attacking the city first

Scott should've gone with Pietro Scalia as his editor(Gladiator, Black Hawk Down). I don't know why he hired a different one. Scalia is pretty good with putting in little details and not wtf scenes

I recently watched Gladiator Extended and cut made the movie better. I'm hoping Scott's 3 and a half - 4 hour cut will at least explain the character's motives.

Ok people, this is a huge YMMV thing, but it's a fantastic deal either way. I wasn't going to pick this flick up, but I decided to just because of this deal. I went to WalMart tonight, and noticed that this DVD was only $14.88, which is by far the cheapest I've seen it for around here. That got me interested a little bit, but that price didn't push me over the edge.

What pushed me over the edge, was that at this specific WalMart (Anderson, SC - The one next to Sam's Club), they had the DVD with the huge 176 page book on the production of the film, for the exact same price of $14.88! This book alone looks like something that would cost this much.

So yeah, that pushed me over the edge, so I now hope that I actually like the movie, as I've never seen it before.

So when is the director's cut supposed to be released?