The Essential Starrcade: Disc 1.
I'll prefix this by saying that I have personally stayed away from WWE DVD's the second half of 2008. For me, it was truly a terrible year for DVD's, and the production value of the DVD's have gone down greatly. It used to be that there was a good build, and an honest amount of quality work put into these. Now the WWE is just vomitting these bad boys out about 2 a month, and you can tell. The DVD's just seemed rush, and are for the most part, awful.
I believe this trend started with the Triple H DVD. Just a terrible DVD in all senses. It went down hill with the Hardy Boy DVD, which I honestly didn't mind, but that was the beginning of, yeah, they're just putting these out. The Hardy's can't get a 3 disc set? Come on. I'm not their biggest fan or supporter, but I at least knwo that between the two of the Hardy's, you can get three good DVDS. Then the Rock and Ric Flair had their sets, and honestly they were know good. Yes, the Ric Flair documentary was pretty damn good, but the match selection wasn't, likewise with the Rock. I have skipped out on the IC title one (a personal shame of mine, as it looks to be excellent) Hell in the Cell, Eddie Guerrero and Edge. I just bought the Kane DVD, and Disc 1 is terrible, pretty much reconfirming to myself that the WWE has decided to go the route of quantity over quality...
The being said, I bought the Starrcade DVD. I want to say its for nostalgia. On one hand, we have history as we know it, or as we are told to know it. A history of Randy Savage (sorta), the Ultimate Warrior (meh), Hogan, Austin, Andre, the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels. We then have this whole other alternate reality, one in which most people are simply unexposed to, btu the people that do remember it, remember it fondly. And two, I wanted to see how bad this bad boy was WWEized.
The documentary isn't great. It's only an hour long, and really doesn't focus on anything in particular. It goes into detail about the early days of Starrcade. Pretty much it was the original Thanksgiving day special, yadda yadda yadda. Then Survivor Series comes along, and Vince McMahon issues the u ltimatuum of, you show SS, or you get know Wrestlemania, thus crippling Jim Crockett and the rest is history.
McMahon makes a brief cameo in the form of a picture, but the documentary does its bet to not make too much of mentioning of the WWE. Surprisingly enough, Jim Cornette is on here,b ut I'm not sure if this was all pre-taped or not. Jim Ross becomes the major talking head, as I guess he's the only real reprsentative of the NWA remaining on roster with the departure of Ric Flair. Of course Arn and Tully are doing what they do best, and that's riding the coat tails of Flair and the Horsemen to the bitter end in this documentary.
The big shame of this DVD is that it seems rushed. Honestly 50 minutes of documentary for a show that was a Supercard show for the 2nd biggest company of the last 25 years. Would the WWE release a documentary on the history of Wrestlemania that last an hour, I think you knowt he answer. Starrcade isn't treated with the same classs and dignity of Wrestlemania, which is a shame, because it did earn it. Eric Bischoff gets barely a passing mention in this DVD. Dusty Rhodes speaks highly of him being the man the re-revolutionized the Starrcade name, but Bischoff gets all of 30 seconds to elaborate.
Zero mention of this documentary of the epicness which was sting vs. Hulk Hogan. The biggest match in the history of WCW, let alone the history of Starrcade gets zero attention paid to it, which is a true crime upon itself. The DVD itself goes into elaborate detail on the first 5 Starrcades up to Starrcade 87, after that, the DVD whisk threw them like Mexican Water threw a tourist.
I give this documentary a D. The only saving grace is the first 30 minutes or so, which was tremendous. It seemed to give a damn and honestly paid enough attention to each starrcadew ith the respect tehy deserved. the second half of the documentary is entirely terrible, and it's really a shame that the WWE decided to go this route. I know, they wanted room for the 25 match countdown, whcih I will watch soon, but why not just make this a 4 DVD set and give Starrcade a proper documentary?
In closing, simply another missed opportunity from the WWE to knock people's socks off with their impressive video library.
I'll prefix this by saying that I have personally stayed away from WWE DVD's the second half of 2008. For me, it was truly a terrible year for DVD's, and the production value of the DVD's have gone down greatly. It used to be that there was a good build, and an honest amount of quality work put into these. Now the WWE is just vomitting these bad boys out about 2 a month, and you can tell. The DVD's just seemed rush, and are for the most part, awful.
I believe this trend started with the Triple H DVD. Just a terrible DVD in all senses. It went down hill with the Hardy Boy DVD, which I honestly didn't mind, but that was the beginning of, yeah, they're just putting these out. The Hardy's can't get a 3 disc set? Come on. I'm not their biggest fan or supporter, but I at least knwo that between the two of the Hardy's, you can get three good DVDS. Then the Rock and Ric Flair had their sets, and honestly they were know good. Yes, the Ric Flair documentary was pretty damn good, but the match selection wasn't, likewise with the Rock. I have skipped out on the IC title one (a personal shame of mine, as it looks to be excellent) Hell in the Cell, Eddie Guerrero and Edge. I just bought the Kane DVD, and Disc 1 is terrible, pretty much reconfirming to myself that the WWE has decided to go the route of quantity over quality...
The being said, I bought the Starrcade DVD. I want to say its for nostalgia. On one hand, we have history as we know it, or as we are told to know it. A history of Randy Savage (sorta), the Ultimate Warrior (meh), Hogan, Austin, Andre, the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels. We then have this whole other alternate reality, one in which most people are simply unexposed to, btu the people that do remember it, remember it fondly. And two, I wanted to see how bad this bad boy was WWEized.
The documentary isn't great. It's only an hour long, and really doesn't focus on anything in particular. It goes into detail about the early days of Starrcade. Pretty much it was the original Thanksgiving day special, yadda yadda yadda. Then Survivor Series comes along, and Vince McMahon issues the u ltimatuum of, you show SS, or you get know Wrestlemania, thus crippling Jim Crockett and the rest is history.
McMahon makes a brief cameo in the form of a picture, but the documentary does its bet to not make too much of mentioning of the WWE. Surprisingly enough, Jim Cornette is on here,b ut I'm not sure if this was all pre-taped or not. Jim Ross becomes the major talking head, as I guess he's the only real reprsentative of the NWA remaining on roster with the departure of Ric Flair. Of course Arn and Tully are doing what they do best, and that's riding the coat tails of Flair and the Horsemen to the bitter end in this documentary.
The big shame of this DVD is that it seems rushed. Honestly 50 minutes of documentary for a show that was a Supercard show for the 2nd biggest company of the last 25 years. Would the WWE release a documentary on the history of Wrestlemania that last an hour, I think you knowt he answer. Starrcade isn't treated with the same classs and dignity of Wrestlemania, which is a shame, because it did earn it. Eric Bischoff gets barely a passing mention in this DVD. Dusty Rhodes speaks highly of him being the man the re-revolutionized the Starrcade name, but Bischoff gets all of 30 seconds to elaborate.
Zero mention of this documentary of the epicness which was sting vs. Hulk Hogan. The biggest match in the history of WCW, let alone the history of Starrcade gets zero attention paid to it, which is a true crime upon itself. The DVD itself goes into elaborate detail on the first 5 Starrcades up to Starrcade 87, after that, the DVD whisk threw them like Mexican Water threw a tourist.
I give this documentary a D. The only saving grace is the first 30 minutes or so, which was tremendous. It seemed to give a damn and honestly paid enough attention to each starrcadew ith the respect tehy deserved. the second half of the documentary is entirely terrible, and it's really a shame that the WWE decided to go this route. I know, they wanted room for the 25 match countdown, whcih I will watch soon, but why not just make this a 4 DVD set and give Starrcade a proper documentary?
In closing, simply another missed opportunity from the WWE to knock people's socks off with their impressive video library.
