Ah - but then there'll be the Blu-ray HD DVD with H.264 comression instead of MPEG2, extra special features, and all the little errors in the first remastering process fixed.
And then the solid-state super-high-density memory-stick uncompressed version with the full spatial and color resolution of 35mm film.
Not to mention the fully immersive holographically-stored IMAX version that will bring you right alongside Asuka in the cockpit of Unit02 as she severs a few MP units' heads.
Seriously, I think GAINAX and Lucasfilm might really be onto something with this "make a new release of your most popular epic at least twice for each new storage medium to come into favor" stratigy. Supercharge the color saturation, add some extraneous CG glitter, and improve the overall video quality for a really inexpensive way to make sure your cash cow never goes dry.
I just wonder if the new remasters of Star Wars are going to go over like New Coke. Well, the part about people complaining that the original was better has definately happened - now we can just sit back and wait for "Star Wars - The Remastered But In No Other Way Altered Edition" to come out as a 2.35:1 DVD. I know ILM hasn't just thrown out the pre-X footage, and it would be a really easy way for them to make money. Tell people to buy both - so they can experience it "for the first time - two more times". Films will come in remixes like electronic club music - with a wide variety of styles and endings for you to choose from.
Maybe this could be a good thing - like the popularity of Directors' cuts allowing Directors and Cinemetographers to show their audiences scenes that may be good - but were believed by marketing boards to slow the pace or reduce the mass appeal of the film. Perhaps there will no longer be a decision over whether to use the "marketable" script - complete with irritating anthropomorphic sidekicks (no offence to Sakura's Kero-chan) and tons of inplausible and ultimately irrelevant sex, gunfire, and explosions (but then what would be left of all of those old James Bond films?), and the "artistic" scripts - which may be about as understandable as "Mullholland Drive" or as action-packed as "2001", but would likely be able to carry much more meaning in their subtleties and overall strangeness. Calling these two versions of the same film might seem a stretch - but then take a good look at Eva (the series and film - nevermind the whole "alternate universe" of Gainax-released dating sims (quite possibly the strangest concept I could possibly imagine, like playing a game about cooking hamburgers instead of just going outside and lighting up the barbique grill - you can't
eat a digital hamburger), screensavers, and physical merchandise). What do you want to watch? Action, Horror, Comedy, Sci-Fi? Is it possible for all four to coexist? It's been done. Most people, however, only seem to pay attention to one of two facets of a film, allowing it to contain wildly disparate parts without them clashing nearly so much as one might think.
Oh, yeah, back on the off-topic topic - why should remastered DVDs cost more? Remastering is cheep compared to filming/animating, and the target market consists largely of people who already own a previous version (and would therefore probably be rather unhappy to pay
more for the film they should have gotten the first time around, rather than less than or the same amount as was charged for the original release). I'm only surprised that the film and record industries haven't yet realized the degree to which they have saturated the spending potential of their customers - and the degree to which both are starting to compete with the gaming industry for that extra pocket change. If I only have $30/month to spend on CDs (which actually sounds a bit high but a lot of people probably average that over a year), for instance, I could buy one $20 CD and spend the rest on vending machine food - or I could buy two $12 CDs and spend the rest on vending machine food. In the second scenario (which is, unfortunately, often precluded by the lack of retailers selling 'good' albums under the common $15 promotional, $18 regular, $25-35 double-album rates), I get one more CD, and the record industry gets $4 more gross - which is, I am sure, greater than the production and shipping costs of the additional physical disk. But they don't think that way - they figure "Napster/Gnutella/Kazaa is soaking up all our revenue - let's charge insane prices for whatever we
do manage to sell to the rare non-pirate", probably causing a great reduction in the sale of legetimate CDs due to the classic relationships between pricing and demand. The same applies to films - though I think $20 for something that took a lot more money to make and sells in a lower volume is perfectly reasonable - if all legit anime DVDs are to retail for about $35 apiece, there really aren't too many people who can purchase them in volume, and even fewer who would consider one as an "impulse purchase".
Of course, here's a crazy idea - sell the first DVD of a series for $5 - just enough to cover costs. Use it as a promotional tool, by turning it into an impulse buy that would allow someone to "preview" the series without downloading the whole thing (since anime is often packaged that way for underground internet distribution). Then, if they like what they see, they can buy the others at a price closer to current full retail.
Who knows - maybe the only end result would be an even higher proportion of AMVs composed entirely of footage from episodes 1 and 2 of any given series.
