How LaserDiscs changed cinema
The streaming era has reignited the debate over the importance – and potentially gradual demise – of the home video format, but it’s a conversation that’s been raging for decades. It may have gradually been phased out in favour of DVD and, ultimately, Blu-ray – and didn’t catch on all too much in specific markets entirely – but the importance and influence of LaserDisc should never be underestimated or overlooked.
Initially launched in 1978 under the era-appropriate title of ‘DiscoVision’, the 12-inch discs became massively popular in Japan and in the United Kingdom to a lesser extent, although the all-important foothold in the United States proved hard to come by.
Seeking to gain attention right off the bat, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was the first-ever title to be made available on LaserDisc in America, even though it had been three years since his shark attack thriller had changed the face of cinema forever and became the highest-grossing movie ever made. That being said, the audio and visual quality improvement was immediately noticeable, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that LaserDisc began to show its full potential.
The story often goes that the format the pornography industry sides with in any new emerging home video technology is the one that tends to win out in the end, but the Criterion Collection should never be underestimated as it applies to cinephiles. These days, special editions and extended cuts packed with special features are commonplace, but the LaserDisc debut of Citizen Kane in 1984 – fully remastered and restored, as well as packaged with a brand new video essay and rare trailer – set the template for what was to come.
In subsequent years, Criterion would issue countless titles on LaserDisc, including the most acclaimed and near-mythical movies of all time. The snowball effect would see several other labels emerge to try and muscle in on the action by catering to film fans with hard-to-obtain deep cuts burnished by new bells and whistles such as cast and crew commentaries, multi-disc editions, behind-the-scenes making of documentaries, alternate endings, deleted scenes, and plenty more besides.
James Cameron was an early proponent of LaserDisc, which carried the first home video releases of Aliens, The Abyss, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day in their extended forms, in addition to a cavalcade of additional material. Soon, it was commonplace for every major theatrical release to arrive on disc virtually obligated to be packed to the gunnels with extra content, but the format wasn’t without its issues.
VHS may have remained ahead of LaserDisc in terms of sales and popularity, but cassettes could only hold the film itself, so were found wanting in almost every other department incorporating both quantity and quality. However, the latter’s inability to allow for more than 30 and 60 minutes of playback on each side of the dual-sided disc necessitated flipping the disc while watching a movie or stopping to insert additional discs.
The expense was another serious hindrance, with VHS continuing to be the more affordable option by far, with special editions often outside of the price range of those who desperately wished to acquire them. The numerous hurdles inevitably accelerated the decline of LaserDisc as newer technologies emerged – with DVD ultimately rendering it effectively obsolete following its much-vaunted arrival in 1996 – but the groundwork laid by its predecessor was adopted as the standard industry practice whenever it came time to launch a high-profile film in either standard, extended, or special edition form for the home video crowd.
Even though it had been entirely abandoned by the major studios as early as 2001, LaserDisc players were still being manufactured into the late 2000s. It may have been supplanted to the fault of irrelevance – a danger that’s now creeping in on DVD and Blu-ray as studios and streaming services scale back physical media – but the impact and influence of LaserDisc on the technology that ultimately caused its downfall is undeniable.
