Woo boy!

I may as well just write Marvel a check because they are gonna be getting a LOT of money from me within the next year. Not only have I bought most of their movies on Blu-Ray, with a few exceptions for reasons that will be rectified come Christmas, I’ve also bought the first season of Agents of SHIELD and, as soon as 2016 rolls around, will be pre ordering my tickets for both Civil War and Doctor Strange. The same will also happen with Deadpool, but that’s FOX. In addition, I’ve been getting more and more into comics as of late and, with the exception of Batman and Batgirl, the books I’ve been looking forward to and have been reading are Marvel books: Ms. Marvel, Deadpool, ‘Iron Man: Extremis’, Captain Marvel, the new line up, etc. Hell, I’m going to the comic store with some friends next week.

But I noticed something strange when I went on Amazon to save MCU items I hadn’t bought, namely SHIELD season 2 and Agent Carter season 1, to my wishlist. I’ve been seeing negative reviews for them. Not for the shows themselves, I’ve seen them both, they’re great and wholly deserve their upcoming seasons, but for their packaging. Both have few to no special features, both are poorly packaged, and both have greatly inflated prices: Agent Carter’s DVD being $21, despite only having 8 episodes. That’s nothing to say of SHIELD S2, who’s Blu-Ray price is upwards of $70!

Why is this? They’re both Amazon Exclusives. And the very mention of that just makes me roll my eyes and remember when retailers did this same shit with Star Trek Into Darkness. A bit different, but similar enough. Basically, the schtick was where you got the movie determined what special features you got: Best Buy had a commentary, Amazon had SOME deleted scenes, ITunes had another commentary, etc. (Mind you, I don’t remember exactly what went on whose DVD, I’m just making an example.) I don’t know what the retailers or the distributors were thinking other than ‘people will buy them all if we only put some special features on certain DVDs’. No, that’s not how it works and, as someone who loves special features, it actually stopped me from buying a copy of the movie. Granted, a fully featured copy is out now, but I still haven’t bought it.

Thankfully, whatever deal Amazon has with Marvel doesn’t extend to their movies, so I can get the Blu-Rays for the MCU films I didn’t already buy earlier just fine. However, ‘Amazon Exclusive’ means that Amazon is the ONLY place I can buy the shows on DVD online so that’s a bummer. Though really, all I need to do is wait until this all blows over and both shows hit my local geek store, and at this point I’m just in it for the special features as I own Agent Carter on ITunes and SHIELD is on Netflix. Plus, it’s nice to show Marvel support and give my money to someone who’ll use it to make something good, like Captain Marvel. Whatever gets me better content and special features.

Oh, and then there’s also the fact that Hollywood keeps putting all their special features on Blu-Rays instead of DVDs these days which sucks for people like me who only have a laptop to watch their movies on. However, I now have a PS3 so I can buy them again and have all those lovely deleted scenes, gag reels, Behind the Scenes extras, commentaries (Seriously, have you ever listened to the Lemony Snicket commentary of A Series of Unfortunate Events? It’s hilarious!), and more. …God, why am I a history major?

Look guys, it’s late on September 19th and I needed something to rant about other than ‘Robert Downey Jr. is in de facto retirement other than playing Tony Stark and his own work’ or ‘Tony Stark’s motivation in Civil War is gonna be protecting Bruce Banner’ or some other Marvel rant or theory because apparently I’m on a Marvel kick and Hannibal is over. So while I wait for my beloved cannibal to rise from the murky depths and the next Marvel film to come out in May, I need to find something to write about.

Hmm, maybe I’ll do a mass review of the Marvel films like I meant to last year…now to buy an HDMI cable…and hope Marvel releases special features for Daredevil and Jessica Jones (Coming November 20th).

(Photo via ABC)