Nicolas Meyer commentary on STII - A question...

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I'm aware that the commentary that Meyer recorded for the Director's Cut DVD is also available for the Theatrical Cut, since the latter was given BD treatment and the like and it has its extras transcluded from the Director's Cut DVD set.

Can I ask, since I don't own the BD, if that commentary is abridged? And how?

 

[Grant]

They simply edited out every reference by Meyer to the additions made.
What is both a riot and an insult is that for the second NEW commentary by Meyer they didnt even tell him the Blu-ray was featuring the theatrical cut! He pauses at one point and comments that this isn't his preferred director's cut!

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

You mean the one he did with Manny Cotto?

 

[Grant]

^Yes. At one of the points where the D.C. has additional footage he is talking and he stops and goes, 'this is the shorter cut, I wonder why they did that.'

Something like that

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Would've prefered the BD release had bothered to re-integrate the specific deleted moments back into the restored theatrical cut, as well.

 

[Grant]

Yeah, Paramount forgot they invented this thing called seamless branching where they could have put both versions and made everyone happy.

Even if a HD footage source is/was not available for the additional footage in TWOK---they could simply upscaled the D.C. footage and inserted it.
(Many movies have done this when the best quality footage was lost for certain scenes. The original King Kong blu-ray uses footage from 16mm prints to restore the lost scenes cut and later lost due to censorship. That's way better than saying, "sorry we couldn't find pristine film of the lost scenes--so we won't include them!" )