or The Avengers if you're outside the UK

Film Here's some somewhat inevitable comments on the ongoing situation in regards to the home release of Joss Whedon's Avengers Assemble (or The Avengers if you're outside the UK).  Or ten minutes of head-shaking converted into a few paragraphs of text.  These are the facts:

For the past ten years I haven't been buying any of Marvel's superb superhero films in a home format on the assumption that once the Avengers film came out there would be a box set.  This was a shaky assertion since some of the films were distributed by Paramount, one by Universal and the rest by Disney who now own Marvel.

But sure enough a box set is going to available from Amazon and I managed to pre-order it at a price cheap than it is now.  Yeh me.  It's not quite as busy as the US version which has TEN discs instead of SIX with extra copies in threed and a bonus disc of extras which is probably what's already available in one handy place but it is all the films on blu-ray for a cheaper price than they would have been.

But a glance at the Amazon UK listing shows a lack of director's commentary on Avengers Assemble (or The Avengers if you're outside the UK) when the US version most certainly does.  With an added comment about the entertainingly specific section on Amazon US's listing which describes what's on which version like the sites been taken over by DVD Beaver.  Bitrate graphs will surely be added soon.

Cue recent interest at Whedoneque in which it became apparent that Tesco.com does have a commentary listed and that it may be an exclusive.  I'm sorry, wait what?  Also that Sainsburys has no commentary but an exclusive 90 minute documentary and Asda neither of those but a comic, sorry "graphic novel".

In other words, the US edition has been filleted and the extras spread across a group of retailers.  Poorer fans will actually have to make a choice as to which of the extras they'd prefer when US fans will be getting them anyway and rich fans will have to fork out for multiple versions to get everything.

With the box set in an uncertain position.

Interestingly SFX's written a much longer blog post on the subject and they don't know.  Which is odd because you'd think they'd be able to contact Disney's press office and ask.  The BBFC hasn't rated a commentary either which makes you wonder if Tesco might have an erroneous listing anyway.

How did we come to this?  Does Joss know?  Joss?