YMMV / The Criterion Collection

---

• Broken Base: Should Criterion strictly stick to arthouse films and landmarks of cinematic history or branch out and release other, less artsy films? This has been an issue at least as far back as Armageddon (1998) being their final laserdisc release. Some believe more mainstream fare strips away what makes Criterion unique and that it'll lead towards a slow decline in sales and cause viewers to lose respect for them. Others point out that the company still releases artsy films and cinematic landmarks and a great majority of their stock consists of those types of movies alone, so releasing stuff like Hausu, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or the Showa Godzilla films isn’t going to kill the company. Some in the latter group note that many of the films accused of bringing the company down are cinematic landmarks in their own right (i.e. Night of the Living Dead (1968), pioneer of the Zombie Apocalypse genre), many of which needed better home video treatment before joining the Collection (especially if they had never come to Blu-ray before).
• Gateway Series:
  • For foreign and arthouse films. Indeed, movie scholars championing a certain film or director consider their work done when Criterion puts out an edition of that work.
  • With major studios neglecting movies both old and new that don't fall under Small Reference Pools and foreign-language films since the Great Recession, Criterion is now one of the last hopes for many important films to get non-Vanilla Edition releases or even stay in circulation.
  • Among North American streaming services, Criterion Channel is one of the very few — and by far the most high-profile and largest — to feature pre-1980s, independent, and foreign-language films, carrying on the work of its precursor FilmStruck. While HBO Max features a hub curated by Turner Classic Movies, Criterion's partner in the former service, many of its titles — especially the older/foreign-language ones — are also available at Criterion Channel while many of those that aren't (mostly major studio titles from the '80s onward) are often available on free-with-ads services such as Tubi.
• Minority Show Ghetto: In the summer of 2020, the New York Times featured an article discussing how the Collection has neglected African-American directors in particular (less than 1% of titles, the vast majority of which are by Spike Lee), noting that women (7%), Asians (11%), and Latinos (2%) were also underrepresented compared to white men, reflecting larger issues with the tropes in film criticism in general. From 2021 onward, there has been a noticeable uptick in regularly adding films by minority and female filmmakers to rectify this. For example, of the inaugural six 4K Ultra HD titles that November, one was female-directed (The Piano, making its Collection debut) and one African-American-helmed (Menace II Society, which had last been seen in the LaserDisc collection). These tropes are virtually an non-issue with the Criterion Channel, which draws upon a much larger pool of movies and regularly features collections with such themes as New Korean Cinema, Women Directors of New World Pictures, and Afrofuturism.
• Mis-blamed: Criterion got a lot of blame for the issues that plagued the Godzilla: The Showa Era release — the fact that the Godzilla (1954) disc was just a recycled version of the 2012 release (which most people already expected, but that didn't stop complaints), the limited bonus features, the lack of access to source transfers for the titles (especially with the Japanese cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla), and the fact that the selling point was mostly the packaging, among many others. None of this is Criterion's fault, however — as described in further detail on the opening paragraphs of Bad Export for You, Japanese media companies have a reputation for being easily one of the hardest companies for Western distributors to work and negotiate with, Godzilla owners Toho being among the toughest of them, which is something that has been common knowledge since at least the release of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Their refusal to cooperate with Criterion on the set is the main reason the set ended up the way it did; many sources close to Criterion have stated that they wanted to do so much more with the set, only to be stymied by Toho at almost every turn.
• Older Than They Think: Criterion began releasing "mainstream" movies during the LaserDisc era with such titles as RoboCop, Ghostbusters, and The Wizard of Oz.
• Once Original, Now Common: As noted on the main page, Criterion premiered many aspects of home video releases that are now largely the default — primarily the use of letterboxing and bonus materials. When Criterion upgrades one of their Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition LaserDisc sets to Blu-ray and DVD nowadays, it might seem redundant if a different studio already gave the movie a Blu-ray with a quality transfer and extras platter, some of which Criterion recycles along with their LaserDisc bonuses and some new interviews.

---