One of the titles I was looking forward to getting later this year on Blu-ray was Independence Day. And now I come to find out it's not the longer cut. Wonderful.

I guess double-dipper version is going to be released at some point in the future?

Its also missing nearly all the special features as well from the 5-6 DVD versions that have been available. But hey, it does come with a nifty alien fighting java game!

Well thank god! Wouldn't want to justify the added expense in any way, would we now?

There's a longer cut of this "entertaining, would be better if it were a half hour shorter" aka "already bloated" movie?

Theres no excuse for multiple versions not being on the disc, and the dropping of extras is BS. Though the longer version not being the one released in HD isn't something I'm particularly concerned about.

Yea, this ticked me off too. I don't understand what Fox's wacky logic is with their Blu-Ray releases. I mean, how hard can it be to port the extras over? And if it needs a second disc, then by all means give it a second disc. They're already charging us $40 for the damn thing, they might as well add some weight to it.

I'd also love every release to be definitive, but double dips must have been profitable enough to justify this kind of thing. Its hard to believe anyone is surprised by this kind of stuff anymore.

I like the theatrical version better than the extended but I have to say. We HD adopters are just getting royally fucked. Fox has released so many blu-rays without any features. We were arguably screwed by Universal for not including both cuts of American Gangster on the disc.

I don't think double dips are inevitable either. Maybe when blu-ray replication costs come down. I'm sure studios make more money on original releases than they do on re-releases.

Why couldn't Fox do branching like Warner did with I Am Legend on ID4? Fox just bugs me. They would rather add little stupid Java games that only work properly on the PS3 and D-Box that no one owns then make the disc as complete as possible compared to the SD versions. Then of course charge $40 MSRP for it.

As for American Gangster HD DVD, both cuts are present, but the extended is just on the SD side. Still sucks.

Being this is HD, it's setting a new low for movie studios. I don't think I'm ever going to buy a Fox title on Blu-ray. Fuck'em. I'll upconvert all their SD DVD releases.

It's been this way with their DVDs as well. It's not an HD adopter thing.

That'll show 'em!

Fox is the worst as far as Blu-Ray releases. Independence day is one of my favorite movies but it was rather grainy imo. I think the worst Fox release was KOH. 4 disk set to just 1 bare-bones disk.

WB has been decent. Alexander got all the features transferred and then some. I was particularly happy to get an Oliver Stone Commentary where as it wasn't on the SD release.

I wanted to ask by starting a thread but now I don't have to.

To all of you who owns this BD version of the film, I ask:

Does the film still have a soft look to it? The review mentioned good picture quality but I've seen this film countless times not only on DVD, but theatrically as well and it always looked very soft. Detailed, but still much softer compared to most films I've seen.

If I had the money, this is the one film I'd jump into Blu-Ray for.

I like most of the extended cut scenes, except for two:

-Russell Casse has an argument with his stepson.
It's not what's being said, but the delivery of the lines - the acting seems so high school drama class.

-Russell's daughter hooking up with Brian Krakow ( ) during the final battle sequence.
Again, it's not so much the dialogue but the line delivery.

The remaining scenes are a welcome addition, though the Oval Office scene with the Levinsons plays more like an outtake stuck into the middle of the "Welcome Wagon" choppers flying overhead shot.

Nifty? Not even close. One of the lamest games that has shown up on a video disc yet. And that's saying a lot!

Agreed... as usual in most cases, the theatrical version is better.

Fox has already announced a double dip on Alien vs. Predator sometime this year, you just know ID4 will get one next year - I mean as has already been pointed out there are 6 or so DVD versions and DVD is only a about 12 years old.

You must not sense sarcasm.

What do you mean?

followed by:

The "wonderful" part was sarcasm. Like if I were to say "Fox is charging $80 for ID4. Wonderful". I'm not happy Fox is charging $80 for a movie. Nevermind.

Thanks, I must've missed that text when I copied and pasted the thread title over it.

Don't feel bad. John Sinnott's sarcasm detector wasn't working either, judging by his response to the quote about the Java game.

BTW, I agree that the theatrical (or original, as I've taken to calling it lately) cut is often better. Of course it depends on the movie.

Given that I never got around to watching the extras or the dir cut on the previous version(s), I don't really care here. As long as the A/V is good (which it sounds like it is) that'll be fine with me. So, I'm just taking it on a case by case basis for my BD's. You want to wait - fine. I'll have fun revisiting ID4 this summer.

LOL you find out something new every day. I think I've watched the 5-Star DVD once since I got it and didn't even realize it was 9 minutes longer. It's been years since I've see it. Not that it shouldn't have been the longer cut though.

A movie that runs 2 hours, 24 minutes and is directed by Roland Emmerich certainly doesn't need additional footage. I was able to get an hour of this watched tonight. I'll gladly revisit this one, among the many Fox titles I own, when I get a new receiver that can decode DTS HD MA. The DTS "core" track sounded great. I imagine the full mix will blow the doors off.

If this had been a reasonably priced disc I would have bought it special features or not. As it stands I just rented it from NetFlix as it appears that Fox is taking the same over-priced approach it used in the early days of DVD.

For what it's worth I thought the image was pretty great but it sure wasn't $30 great.