I just saw Final Destination 5 on a DVD I got from NetFlix. In the old and hated Disney fashion, from the early days of Disney DVDs, this DVD forces you to watch all the previews, trailers, video game ads, etc., but with the added hassle of not being able to scroll through them with the next button. So you either have to watch them all, or you must fast-forward through them all, but reset the fast forward button/speed after each one has ended, as it seems to reset to play at the beginning of each promo. Um, this is intolerable! To say this sucks or is unforgivable doesn’t even begin to describe it anymore! This is an old technique which has been attacked and derided time and again for years now, but someone is still doing it? There is no excuse for this behavior, and there never was! Only an asshole would even suggest such a thing! (But at least they didn’t disable fast-forward, I guess!)
Okay, here’s the problem, although maybe I deserved it for wanting to see Final Destination 5: When you are selling a DVD of a movie, people will buy it so they can watch the movie. I mean, unless they’re buying it to be completists, and they want a library of DVDs to rival that of their parents’ books. But it’s very hard to want to watch a movie when you are locked into watching 30-45 minutes of previews you’ve already seen every time you put it into the video machine! If people know about this feature, they will avoid the DVD in droves, and then you will have made it for nothing! Well, maybe you could sell them as coasters, but otherwise, forget it!
Now, this DVD was a “rental” version from New Line Cinema, so maybe that’s why they locked us all into watching the previews, but I don’t know that for sure. But what I do know for sure is this: I will never, ever, under any circumstances, ever give another dime to New Line Cinema from now on no matter what they make because of this DVD. And it’s nobody’s fault but theirs for doing this. And the kicker is, I usually like to watch the previews after the movie! But by locking me into them at the beginning, they have lost my business forever, and probably will lose the business of DVD buyers in future. Great job, assholes!
And for other movie companies, remember: Fascism never works. Force me to do something, and I will hate you. Act like it’s a “special feature” and I will watch them anyway. That’s just human nature. So you shoot yourselves in the foot when you force us to do things we don’t want to do: that, by now, ought to be obvious! We buy and rent movies for fun, but by forcing us to watch stuff we don’t want to, it feels like a punishment! That’s a very good way to make us just wait for it to come on HBO-type movie channels, and then the bottom falls out of your home video market. Just keep on doing this, and see if I’m not correct. (BTW: I don’t lose any money by being wrong here, but you would!)
Oh, and about the movie, I shouldn’t have bothered anyway. But I like the series.
