JAGzilla wrote:some ancient dub.
Have any of you ever thought that just about any tired, easy judgment of the dubs can be just as easily applied to the films themselves? For most people living in the US during the 20th century, the dubbed versions WERE the films, and the films are ancient.
Also, absolutely nobody is calling for every last English version to be released on video in its complete form. Some are much higher priority than others. Some only have a unique credit sequence or prologue, which still makes for a good extra. Some could just be an audio track option. You can economically present all that is unique from every remotely significant version. You don't have to be extremely creative to pull this off.
The truth is we have a niche subgenre in which hamstringer Toho has been able to render completely unthinkable the idea of extras like alternate versions, or even US trailers - the kind of things that grace Euro trash movies on new BRs every month without any fans even begging for them for years. I can understand why you seek justification for not including these features, because there isn't a precedent for it in releases of kaiju films. Other genres have it 100x better. Look to new releases of Euro trash and '70s - '80s porn to have a better idea of how even an absolute bottom of the barrel, nigh unwatchable cult movie should be released on video, not to hamstrung North American releases of Toho films. Toho imposes an extremely low bar on US distributors, so again, I can see where you're coming from.
Well we do still have Omgitsgodzilla and Co.s efforts.
Talk to omgitsgodzilla and anyone else who has done restorations, and ask us how feel about our copies continuing to be the best that's out there. I always considered my restorations to be placeholders until an actual restoration from newly scanned film occurs... they are rough around the edges and have necessarily uneven picture quality due to the poor quality of previous DVD and VHS sources. Omg has stated before that restoration of the US versions shouldn't be a duty that falls to the fans. None of us are happy with the current state of affairs.