From a 1980s laserdisc experiment to a 2000s prestige format to the post-streaming near-extinction. The supplementary form that briefly gave audiences direct access to filmmakers' working thinking.
The DVD audio commentary — a separate audio track in which the director, the cinematographer, the writer, or other production figures discuss the film in real time as it plays — was, from approximately 1995 through 2010, one of the most-distinctive features of the home-video format. The contemporary streaming era has largely eliminated the commentary track. What has been lost is one of the most-direct access points audiences ever had to working filmmakers' actual thinking about their own films.
This essay traces the form from its laserdisc origins to its current near-extinction.
The audio commentary as supplementary feature was largely developed by the Criterion Collection across its 1980s and 1990s laserdisc releases. Criterion's premium-format laserdiscs included director and critic commentaries on most of its titles; the commentary tracks became part of the Criterion brand identity in ways that other home-video distributors had not attempted.
The DVD format, introduced commercially in 1997, made commentary tracks substantially easier to include. The format's specifications supported multiple audio tracks per disc; production costs for adding commentaries were minimal once the recording sessions had been arranged. By 2000, almost every major studio DVD release included at least one commentary track. The format democratised what had been a Criterion specialty.
The 2000s produced the commentary form's commercial-creative peak. Major prestige DVDs routinely included multiple commentary tracks — typically a director's commentary, a separate writer's commentary, a critic's commentary, and various crew commentaries (cinematographer, editor, production designer). The Criterion releases of the period sometimes included six or seven separate commentary tracks per film.
The commentaries at their best were genuinely informative. Working filmmakers discussing their own films in real time produced material that conventional press interviews did not deliver — the discussion was scene-specific, technically detailed, and often surprisingly candid about working production realities. The commentaries by working directors (Spielberg's various, Cameron's, Fincher's, Scorsese's, the Coen brothers') became, in some sense, primary documents in working film-criticism conversations.
The transition from DVD-Blu-ray to streaming distribution across the 2010s substantially eliminated commentary tracks from the broader audience experience. Netflix and the major competing platforms do not, in most cases, include audio commentary tracks with their streaming content. The streaming user interface does not, in most cases, even surface commentary tracks when they exist for content the platform is licensing.
The structural problem is that streaming platforms operate on engagement-metric optimisation. A commentary track does not, by streaming-platform calculations, increase viewer engagement; most viewers watching a film on Netflix will not switch to the commentary track even if it is available. The platforms have, as a result, largely abandoned commissioning new commentary tracks for their original productions.
The decline of the commentary track has eliminated, for most contemporary audiences, one of the most-direct access points to filmmakers' working thinking. Books about filmmaking continue to exist; film-school courses continue to teach craft; podcasts have, to some extent, replaced the commentary form. But the specific experience of listening to a director discuss their own film in real time as the film plays — the scene-specific, technically detailed, often unguarded reflection on actual creative decisions — has, for most contemporary audiences, become substantially unavailable.
The Criterion Collection's physical Blu-ray catalogue continues to include extensive commentary tracks; the Criterion Channel streaming service includes some commentary access. A small set of premium-format streaming services (Mubi, primarily) include commentary tracks for some titles. For the broader audience, however, the commentary form has effectively ended.
Two structural possibilities could produce a commentary-track revival. First: the contemporary podcast tradition has, in some sense, replaced part of what commentary tracks delivered. Working directors increasingly appear on long-form film podcasts (Filmspotting, The Big Picture, various others); the conversations cover material similar to what DVD commentaries previously delivered. The replacement is partial — the conversations are not, as a rule, scene-specific in the way commentaries were — but the underlying audience hunger for working-filmmaker reflection persists.
Second: a streaming platform could, in principle, restore commentary tracks to its catalogue as a premium differentiation. The Criterion Channel does this; whether any major commercial streaming platform will follow remains to be seen. The Criterion Channel's broader curatorial approach (see our Criterion essay) suggests there is at least a sustainable audience for premium-cinema home viewing that supports the form. Whether the major platforms will compete for that audience is the open question.