The Wolfman, Salt, Knight and Day, The A-Team, and The Town. What do these films have in common? Not too much, except I saw all of them in theaters, all on my own dime and (more importantly) on my own time. I enjoyed The A-Team and kinda-sorta liked Knight and Day and Salt. But the one constant is that they all came to DVD/Blu Ray with extensive 'Extended Edition/Director's Cut' versions. The whole 'unrated/extended cut' thing has been around since the beginning of DVD. Usually it amounts to an R-rated comedy (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Hangover, Role Models, etc) or horror film (every single Saw picture) tossing in three minutes of 'extreme' material that could have allegedly gotten the film an NC-17. But this recent wave is different. These are old-fashioned action pictures and star-vehicles, the kind that are allegedly struggling to find an audience, yet they are consistently mocking their theatrical audiences by unleashing more substantial versions on the home video platform just months after theatrical release.
The Wolfman is nineteen minutes longer on DVD than it was in theaters.
The A-Team has twenty minutes of character-development beats, which allegedly make the move a more thoughtful, insightful, and just-plain better action picture.
The Town has a
whopping 25 minutes of extra scenes. Sure, they don't help the movie all that much, but considering that the film came out on DVD just 90 days after its theatrical release, it's almost like the theatrical audience is being pranked.
Knight and Day has just seven minutes of new material, but perhaps had I known I would have waited for DVD. And the
heavily-tinkered-with Salt comes with three different cuts of the movie on DVD and Blu Ray. There's only about four minutes difference between versions, but it's painfully clear that the director's cut (with a much darker finale and more finite resolution) is the version that Philip Noyce submitted before Universal and/or test screening audiences demanded a more audience-friendly and/or franchise-friendly film. And that's not counting the comedies (
Get Him to the Greek,
Date Night,
The Other Guys, etc), all of which are being released in 10-20 minute longer versions upon their home arrival. Paul Weitz has just promised 'over five movies worth of deleted scenes' for
Little Fockers. Even if the reviews for that one weren't dreadful, comments like that are just the kind of thing to keep me away from the theaters.
The Wolfman, Salt, Knight and Day, The A-Team, and The Town. What do these films have in common? Not too much, except I saw all of them in theaters, all on my own dime and (more importantly) on my own time. I enjoyed The A-Team and kinda-sorta liked Knight and Day and Salt. But the one constant is that they all came to DVD/Blu Ray with extensive 'Extended Edition/Director's Cut' versions. The whole 'unrated/extended cut' thing has been around since the beginning of DVD. Usually it amounts to an R-rated comedy (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Hangover, Role Models, etc) or horror film (every single Saw picture) tossing in three minutes of 'extreme' material that could have allegedly gotten the film an NC-17. But this recent wave is different. These are old-fashioned action pictures and star-vehicles, the kind that are allegedly struggling to find an audience, yet they are consistently mocking their theatrical audiences by unleashing more substantial versions on the home video platform just months after theatrical release. 
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