New Line’s Platinum Series DVDs were the greatest.
This. This was the first DVD I ever bought. Lost In Space.
As was the case with that original wave of Platinum titles, the extras on this thing were mind-blowing. You could spend hours in the menus just looking for Easter Eggs before you even hit play.
We’re talking 1998. The DVD wasn’t even a household word yet. Most people were still happy rewinding their VHS tapes and slowly coming around to the letterbox format, but New Line Home Entertainment treated Lost in Space with the level of prestige usually reserved for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Platinum Series was their flagship DVD line, and Lost in Space wasn’t yet a cult classic, wasn’t critically respected, and had underperformed at the box office. But it was one of the first to come out on Digital Versatile Disc armed to the teeth with extras.
There’s something very end-of-the-90s about it – there was such optimism behind the tech, every studio was rushing to out-feature the competition.
I was so in love with this format that I watched every minute of every extra. I even scoured every pixel for any hidden hotspot in case there was a hidden Easter egg.
These titles were often mid-tier films. It was less about critical acclaim and more about showing off what DVD could do. Multiple commentaries. Animated menus. Entire making-of documentaries broken down by department. Music videos. Art gallery after gallery. And in some cases, massive chunks of content you couldn’t even access on a standalone player like games and software – you had to jack your disc into your PC’s DVD drive (still a novelty at the time), and hope your 32MB of RAM could take the job on.
The format was the real star as these discs were demo reels for a medium trying to justify its existence. DVDs made you feel like you’d just bought a piece of tomorrow, and you could hold it in your hand.
For me, Lost in Space was that DVD. I was a huge fan of the TV show as a kid in the 70s, so this movie was a long-awaited dream come true. Yes, some of the acting is phoned-in, some of the CGI didn’t age well, and the script is very ’80s sitcom pilot – but I’ll defend it ’til my dying day. It’s a visual feast that pushes the limits of ’90s CGI past its breaking point, including an early multi-cam bullet-time effect, and the production design is absolutely gorgeous.
Almost as importantly, the soundtrack is pure glow-stick warehouse techno goodness. Everything about this movie is very 1998.
Those old software files no longer open, and the links are long dead. All that platinum content is lost in time, and we can’t get that back. But sometimes, you spot that old Platinum jewel case just hiding in your collection. That rugged cardboard cover, the unmistakable snap of the tray… The promise.
And for a second, you find yourself back there, standing at the cusp of a new millennium – with the future patiently waiting for you to press play. -Pop
Lost in Space found its way to VHS and DVD today back in 1998, after an April theatrical release.
