escape to insanity

Today I picked up GoldenEye at my local WalMart. It was on the cheap (cheap as compared to most DVDs at WalMart) DVD rack, so how could I refuse? The great Bond movie that spawned one of my favorite video games of all time had to be mine.

Right there next to GoldenEye were four other Bond movies, all priced the same as the one in my hand. The only thing keeping me from getting them right there on the spot was the reminder at the back of my mind that I could get all of the Bond movies in boxed sets now, and if I did decide to pick those up, I'd be stuck with the single copies of each of these and have to sell them off. Not that it's a hard thing to do, but then I'd have dropped an extra $40 plus tax on these extra movies. (I'd probably still keep GoldenEye on its own, just because.)

I'd actually been looking at the four boxed sets — sorry, “volumes” — a few days ago at Best Buy. They're ridiculously expensive — around $70 each — although I suppose each box does have five movies plus some bonus material. If you assume each movie would be at least $15 if not more, then I guess they're actually pricing them fairly accurately. In any case, I don't usually like to drop several hundred dollars on a whim, so I left Best Buy empty-handed that day.

What I don't understand is the way the movies are sorted. Each “volume” has five movies, but they're not arranged in any sort of understandable fashion. I would have expected them to be grouped by release date — the first five movies in Volume One, the next five in Volume Two, and so on. Instead, it seems to be completely random. I'd hate to have to read each box every time I wanted to watch one of the movies.

“Hmm, I'd like to watch 'Diamonds are Forever.' That was the seventh movie in the series, so that must be in the second box. Oh wait, that's right, it's not arranged in some logical order, it's actually in the first box.

Well, you know, actually I think I'll watch 'Die Another Day.' That was one of the most recent ones with Pierce Brosnan, so that's gotta be in the last box. D'oh! No, that's right, it's in the second box!”

Ridiculous. What was the logic behind the order of the movies? Every boxed set I've ever seen has had the movies arranged in order of release. Granted, there's usually not twenty-plus movies, but still. The principle is the same. I see no discernible pattern to the order of the movies. I thought maybe it was by actor, but no. Maybe it's some sort of theme to the movies themselves, but again no.

Gah. It doesn't really matter, but it's terribly inconvenient. The extra few seconds I'd spend looking for the movie I want could be spent… um… getting chips. Cause those extra ten seconds are ten seconds I'll never get back. I'd like to think there's going to be a boxed set released with an order that makes sense, but I know I'm just being idealistic. Eventually I'll pick these up, but right now the price tag is still a bit too high for me.

Edit: Sami has a suggestion as to the reasoning behind this idiocy:

Sami: probably pairing the ones that bombed up with the ones that did well just for marketing

Which… oddly… is probably the case. I mean, why else would they pair a fantastic movie like A View to a Kill (featuring none other than Christopher Walken as the villain) with a movie like Die Another Day?