Comment by mrandish

Back in the day special features often had some budget and effort put into them but these days, outside of a few specialty publishers who focus on curation, restoration, etc, special features have largely become a marketing checkbox most studios put little to no effort into. Often they'll just include EPK (Electronic Press Kit) materials created solely to market the film, which are widely available on YouTube prior the film's release anyway.

There are notable exceptions however. An influential director and/or stars can contractually require a studio to not cheap out, and in those cases, special features and audio commentaries can actually still be quite "special." Other exceptions include re-issues of older films which can include special features made back when most special features had real budgets and historically notable films which can have modern retrospectives featuring cast, crew and even historians or other famous directors commenting on the film.

This is why it's always worth checking reviews to see what "Special Features" actually means in a disc release. Notable examples include "Blade Runner: Dangerous Days" (https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Dangerous_Days:_Making_B...). The entire five disc Blade Runner 25th Anniversary 2007 Blu-Ray boxed set is pretty amazing. In their release of "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946), although the original filmmakers are gone, Criterion found a long-lost 1980s interview with the director and has a lengthy commentary by Martin Scorsese, who as a young filmmaker was inspired by the film, and has become quite an expert on it. There are also notable audio commentaries that rise above the norm. One of my favorites is the Tropic Thunder commentary, both because the cast is hilarious riffing off each other and because Robert Downey, Jr insisted on doing the entire commentary as his character from the movie (backstory: his character in the film is a pretentious method actor who refuses to ever come out of character).