Oliver Stone's Alexander has three cuts--all director approved, each fairly different than the other.
And yet all were still terrible.
A new cut is never a guarantee of improvement. What interests me about the new cuts is not whether the film is any better, but how different they are (my primary research area is historical feature films, so I have an academic interest when such films are extensively re-worked--
Kingdom of Heaven's Director's Cut was significantly different from the theatrical release as well. In that case, the longer cut was substantially better. For
Alexander, neither the shorter, heavily re-ordered Director's Cut nor the quite longer, yet less different from the original Final Cut makes the film itself better. However, the editing choices do make for an interesting case of variations on a theme.)
Some Blu-ray features require web access. For instance, in order to get all of the documantaries on the new T2 disk, you have to go through Blu-ray Live and get them online.
Other disks have web only content as well.
I'm torn two ways on that.
You pay for the disc [set?], and then find out some of the stuff isn't even there unless you can get onto a high speed internet connection. And of course EVERYONE has that, not to mention the ability to channel it thru your TV.
On the other hand, it could be claimed the online stuff is "extras" beyond what you paid for.
Eh.
Doesn't excite me. I don't have a Blu-Ray machine yet and will only be buying the DVD, and hoping the deleted scenes are on that version too. (If they aren't, I shall pout mightily.)
The player handles the internet access. Not the TV. Just FYI. (and some players are wireless--but high-speed connections are a must to get the BD-Live material, with rare exceptions)
I'd just like the option of seeing it with the deleted scenes added in.
I know a lot of people feel that way, but I am STRONGLY against altering a film without its creator's approval. In
Gladiator's extended cut DVD, Ridley Scott has a short intro where he says the extra footage was inserted because he thought it might be interesting to some (I don't find it substantially improves the film, though it doesn't detract too much either) but he does not consider it better than the original theatrical cut. On the other hand, with
Kingdom of Heaven, he most certainly prefers the longer Director's Cut (has an intro for that as well on the DVD) and those additions make it a much more coherent and better film. I'm not certain that adding in the footage to
Star Trek would do the same. Moreover, to be done well, it should be re-edited, not simply re-inserted.
TMP had stuff just re-inserted and that did not help it--I'd argue it hurt it (the home video version and TV version of the 80s, not the recent Director's Cut). IF an "extended version" is made available, I really hope Abrams has something to do with it. Otherwise, I'd rather they leave cut scenes in the extras section.
To be fair, the "extended" cut of TAKEN merely restores the original European cut of the movie which was re-edited to get a PG-13 in America.
The same was true of the international cut of
Blade Runner (one of the five cuts in the full set), though PG-13 was not at issue then. Also applied to
Eyes Wide Shut--Warner used digital effects to mask (very slightly extra) nudity for rather silly reasons, given it still had an R rating in the US.