Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray collectors are often willing to pay top dollar for releases of films – but they still deserve value for money.
Available in stores this month – both online and occasionally actual real-life ones – is a brand-new release of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc.
This one’s quite the occasion: it’s the special 30th anniversary edition release, and it’s selling for a premium price. The new release will set you back the princely sum in the UK of £39.99, a hefty amount for a single movie that most of us already have access to. But then it’s a limited edition, and a birthday package too, and so you’d not unreasonably hope that a shift had been put in.
For context, the film first arrived on 4K disc two years ago, and is still in print. As such, you’d expect more for the extra £20 on top of that.
You certainly get it, too, just not on the disc itself.
Instead, it’s paraphernalia around the release that bulks out the new limited edition, which in itself seems to be a growing trend. For a reissue, it’s cheaper to just add stuff around the actual disc, then go back to the disc itself.
Pulp Fiction-specific, you’re getting a fun-looking pop-up-o-card, as well as a photography contact sheet, a hardcover slipcase and, er, five – count ‘em! – collectible stickers. ‘Collectible stickers’ is a new combination of words on me when it comes to film releases, but let’s let it pass for a couple of paragraphs.
In terms of actual on-disc extra features? Well, to my tired, middle-aged eyes, there’s precisely nothing new. A side-by-side comparison with the original 4K disc release of two years ago lists the same additional features, across two discs. The same 4K transfer too I’m wagering.
It was a good release then, and it’s a good release now. Selling for £19.99, half the price of the 30th birthday offering, it looks a princely bargain.
Yet it feels a little, I don’t know, off? What I suspect might happen is a physical media collector – the core audience for such a title – might just pick up the new version and realise they’ve basically bought the same disc twice. What certainly seems to have happened is the assumption that physical media purchasers are used to premium prices to support disc media, and a determination has been made as to how much extra they can be charged for, well, not much new.
See also: we all took the DVD boom for granted
Of course, physical media collectors have their own free will, and can make an assessment themselves as to whether a release is worth their funds. But I do think there’s a point where things start to take, if you don’t mind me being blunt, the piss. I’ve been seeing asking prices for collector’s sets of varying merits head towards £40, 50 and £60. Sometimes for stuff of substance, sometimes not.
I get that for each studio, they’ll likely have 20-30 titles apiece that continue to bring in the money. Those are the titles that they’ll revisit, and try and generate fresh revenue off the back of, and multiple disc releases is but one part of that.
What’s more, reissues of films are nothing new. Those who lived through the most intense blast of the DVD era will be oh-too-aware of the growing number of tricks publishers used to get us to buy the same film umpteen times. John Carpenter’s Halloween is a good case in point. The DVD Compare website lists 15 different versions released over a decade and a half, several in America alone.
The thing is though, in the DVD era, if you wanted to flog the same film twice, you at least had to make a bit of an effort. I’ve written before about spurious attempts to add value to, say, a reissue of Con Air, but each time that was brought out, something was dug up to justify another round. You weren’t getting the same extras, the same transfer, and nothing else on the disc.
Now, there’s a growing sense that the disc itself is – while still the main attraction – facing some competition. Take that Pulp Fiction release. It’s a crude comparison, but the original 4K disc has a value of £19.99. What, then, is seen as of equitable value, of the £20 premium for the birthday disc outing?
Bluntly, some cardboard, a nice case, some stickers (!) and a photography contact sheet. To you, that may very well be a reasonable return for 20 notes. For me, I’m paying the price of another 4K disc to get all of that, and as much as I’m a sucker sometimes for the words ‘limited’ and ‘edition’, I’m getting a bit taken for granted here. Everything, by definition, is limited, so to a degree it’s always been moot.
Yet I do think if you’re going to offer a bells and whistles 30th birthday edition of a film, you need to add something else to it. Not just redecorate the thing that you’ve issued before.
The taken for granted element with physical media is something I’ve been feeling a little more from some quarters. The core audience for Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs by this stage is pretty dedicated fans on the whole, the kind who stick with things even when they’re apparently going out of vogue. The kind who believe in physical copies of films, even when they’re going for £25 a pop.
The majority of disc labels are respectful of that. I’ve seen in recent times expensive special editions land, but then a more normally-priced iteration isn’t far behind. That or the expensive collector’s edition that goes on sale alongside the more straightforward disc.
Where I’m struggling is the generating of tat, to try and lure more money from our accounts. Stickers, posters, postcards and fancy cases are supposed to be the gravy, the condiment to the main meal. The disc, and additional features, are the heart of why we buy films on disc. Anything else falls under the nice-to-have-but-hardly-necessary category. I except books from this, as a collection of essays around a film feels like a good addition, and there’s some terrific writing around these releases.
But I’m back at stickers.
I’m not immune to the appeal of a sticker, and have been known to occasionally stick them to things. But even the most collectible of stickers costs a couple of pence to knock together, and doesn’t even begin to justify doubling the price of an existing disc release.
I may be wrong, and the new Pulp Fiction disc is awash with fresh extra features, but I don’t think it is. I’m not naïve and I accept that it exists because of commerce, but still: it might not be killing the not-so-golden-these-days goose of a Pulp Fiction disc release, but it is still plucking at the feathers.
I’m an avid buyer of discs, and I’ll continue to be so. I think physical media really matters, and I’m very happy to support the releases that respect that. But play fair. Put the disc at the centre of what’s being offered, don’t just regurgitate the exact same disc for an anniversary release. And in my case at least, you can keep your stickers.
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