The SmarK DVD Rant For Terminator 2: Extreme Edition

Archive

The SmarK DVD Rant for Terminator 2: Extreme Edition.

I know what you’re probably thinking — “Oh man, ANOTHER version of T2 to coincide with the new movie?” And you’d mostly be right. Terminator 2: The “Extreme” Edition (complete with emphasized “X” in the logo) is another in the neverending series of Artisan’s money-grubbing re-releases as they milk licenses for everything they’re worth. On the other hand, if the license is GOOD, like this one, and there’s still untapped potential for DVD extras, then they can be forgiven. Besides, given that I’ve already gone through 5 different versions of T2 (home video, extended edition home video, dub of laser disc special edition, original DVD, Ultimate DVD, and now this) one more isn’t gonna kill me. And given how often I watch this particular movie, it’ll probably get a workout anyway.

The Film:

Best summed up as “The Citizen Kane of Killer Robot From the Future” movies, T2 is Jim Cameron’s epic masterpiece, less of a sequel to the original than a high-tech remake with more mature characters. Exploding into theaters in 1991, T2 was like a bombshell on the action movie genre, creating its own clichés, catchphrases and imitators.

The story from the original, hampered by budget limitations, was that In The Future, Things Are Bad. You know it’s bad because machines step on human skulls all the time. Not much for cleanliness, are they? Anyway, much like a certain other sci-fi phenomenon, in the future world of the Terminator, machines were oppressed by humankind until they became self-aware and pissed-off, and fought back. Humans are largely losing that war 30 years or so into the future, because there’s this master computer system called Skynet that controls anything electronic and has a real bad attitude towards living creatures. Fortunately, the remaining humans have two advantages: Dogs can sense the presence of machines and react accordingly, and the humans have a kickass leader named John Connor who eats machines for breakfast and shits lugnuts after lunch. The machines have evil robots called Terminators, however, and when it becomes apparent that killing him in the present with them isn’t going to be possible (or even productive) the machines get a more far-fetched idea: Build a time machine, go back in time, and send a Terminator to kill his mother instead, so he’ll never be born. The humans send back their own representative in the form of soldier Kyle Reese, and the chase to reach innocent waitress Sarah Connor is on. Luckly for us, Reese finds her first and they spend the better part of 90 minutes fighting against an unstoppable Arnold before stopping to get their freak on, and thus produce future leader John Connor. Yeah, it’s one of those causality loop paradox things, but if THAT’S the biggest flaw in your logical deconstruction of this story, then you’ve got bigger problems than that.

But while the first movie was, at heart, a simplistic sci-fi chase movie, the second one is so much more and basically redefines the genre.

10 years later (in our time, not The Future, Where Things Are Bad and Skulls Get Stepped On) Sarah Connor is locked in a mental institution for spewing nonsense about Killer Robots From the Future, her son John is a juvenile delinquent being raised by Vasquez and George Mason and lo and behold, the machines from the future try to kill off John Connor again. The setup seems the same: A Terminator played by Arnold and what appears to be a human counterpart both arrive in a flash of special effects, and both proceed to procure clothing and start searching for John Connor. However, two things become apparent: First, Arnold is decidedly not killing anyone this time, and second, the other guy is not a human being. In a clever switch, the killer is now the protector, faced with a more advanced model of himself out to kill the very person he was previously assigned to destroy. Things really start to go south of what normal action movies present from here on — they break Sarah out of the institution after a lengthy chase with the T-1000 Terminator, and she immediately becomes a strong female lead who steels herself against the harsh world by adopting a machine-like efficiency, while the Terminator (assigned to protect 10-year old John Connor at all costs, even his own life) bonds with the boy, learning how to be more human while providing a sort of father figure for the kid. And while a lesser action movie would have him teaching John to be a badass, in this movie John leads by example and inspiration, without ever pointing a gun at anyone. He learns from his mother and his surrogate father how to be a leader, and while he goes through a lot by the end of the movie, his essential childlike innocence is never really broken down by the events surrounding him. It’s a powerful acting performance for Edward Furlong, in his first role.

The movie is most notable for the villain, however, the evil T-1000, representing a giant leap forward in CGI at the time, as he was made of liquid metal and could morph himself into anything he touched. Robert Patrick was so perfect for the role that he never really found another one afterwards that he could pull off as well. I mean, really, who WASN’T constantly thinking of him as T-1000 even when he was in the X-Files? He also represents the ultimate puzzle for an action movie: Given a villain who feels no emotion, can imitate anyone, can’t be killed, can’t be shot, isn’t affected by heat or cold and won’t ever stop coming, how do you stop him?

The movie is also notable for MANY iconic images and soundbites — Linda Hamilton dramatically reloading her shotgun in the steel mill while firing away at the T-1000, Arnold’s definitive action-hero one-liner (“Hasta la vista, baby.”), the T-1000 morphing from the checkered floor behind a security guard and melting through steel bars, and many more. It’s truly like watching Cameron paint a picture with explosions, as it’s a movie that seemed to be dropped out of sky from whole cloth rather than written and assembled piece-by-piece on CGI-rendering computers. It has more action than most action movies, a tighter plot than many thrillers, and better characters than many dramas.

But is it worth getting the Extreme Edition AND the Ultimate Edition?

Tough call, actually. The Extreme Edition features the director’s cut of the movie, with Reese giving Sarah a peptalk in the hospital from beyond the pale, and tons of other character moments that have become so well integrated that I can’t even remember them NOT being in the theatrical cut (the chat between Terminator and John in the weapons bunker as Terminator practices smiling, for instance), whereas the Ultimate has THREE versions (theatrical, SE, and the vastly inferior “happy ending” version). My feeling is that the best cut is the one on Extreme, so if that’s your consideration, this is the one to get. But if you want the choice, then Ultimate. Plus there’s other considerations, which we’ll get to a bit later.

If you don’t have any version and you just want to know if it’s worth buying in general, YES. T2 is by far one of my favorite movies ever, and if stranded on a desert island with only one to watch forever, it would be on my short list of choices, probably only eclipsed by the original Star Wars or Back to the Future.

The Video:

Completely redone from a new negative, this looks a bit better than the Ultimate Edition, but probably nothing you’re gonna notice without watching on a widescreen TV. I honestly couldn’t find anything that wrong with the Ultimate version as it was, and this one looks just as good, if not better. With a pristine transfer, great contrast, no compression problems I could see and bright colors where needed, it was pretty much perfect to begin with and I guess the loss of DTS might help the bitrate a bit. Other than that, both versions are great.

The Audio:

As I noted above, unlike the Ultimate Edition, there’s no DTS track here. It’s just Dolby Digital 5.1 EX (i.e., 6.1) and since I’d been hankering for a DVD to test out my 6th speaker, this was perfect for the job. And all I can say is “BOOM BABY!” As promised, bullets go flying EVERYWHERE in the surrounds, the subwoofer is rarely silent for more than a few seconds, and dialogue is so well-mixed that you rarely have the problem of turning up the center channel only to have it explode when the action starts. I still like the DTS track on the Ultimate Edition better because I’m a snob, but as Dolby mixes go, this is as good as action movies are gonna sound. You get one of those increasingly-popular Dolby Headphone mixes for those who listen to movies on the plane.

The Extras:

Okay, here’s where the big differences in the editions come in. The Ultimate Edition has a commentary track with about 100 different people on it, but no Jim Cameron, and a second disc with literally hours of features and god knows how many easter eggs buried there, but the Extreme Edition is built a bit differently, focusing more on the movie.

You get

– A commentary with Jim Cameron and the screenwriter, the first ever done by Cameron, believe it or not. And it’s a DAMN good one, too, very lively and insanely informative. I love Cameron’s movies, his rep and ego be damned, and I’d kill for one on the Abyss, too, if they ever give that movie an anamorphic redo.

– A text commentary, which happens to be the best I’ve ever seen. Seemingly constructed by Cameron himself, it covers everything from trivia to where the matte lines in SFX shots are (complete with handy cartoon arrows on the screen!) and is rarely off the screen for more than a few seconds without popping up with some other cool bit of triviata. But there’s MORE. In the upper left corner of the screen, you also get, running concurrently, a running tally of where every shot was filmed, and with what effect processes it was made. Some of that information is covered in the text at the bottom which makes up the main text commentary, but as a handy resource in case you want to follow shot-by-shot as the production goes from one location to the studio to a CGI shot and back, the information is all there in great detail. But there’s MORE. In the upper RIGHT of the screen, watch for a Cyberdyne symbol to pop up every 5 minutes or so, and if you hit Enter on your remote, you’ll be treated to a series of featurettes from 30 seconds to 20 minutes on sound design, scoring, special effects, makeup or anything else that happens to be appropriate for the moment in question. It’s all new and original and unduplicated by the Ultimate Edition, which is pretty crazy if you think about how much material was on THAT disc. To save disc space, it’s a series of still shots instead of video, and the sound is 1.0 mono but since they’re generally only 20 or 30 seconds long anyway you’ll hardly even notice after a few of them.

On the second disc, you get

– A 25-minute documentary called “No Feat But What We Make”, which is Jim Cameron and friends talking about the progression of CGI from the days of the Abyss and how T2 influenced movies that came after it.

– An 8-minute montage of leftover footage from the set.

– Extensive DVD-Rom features, highlighted by your own morphing studio to put your face on a Terminator and a construct-your-own-death-vehicle game.

– The big one is a hi-definition version of the theatrical cut, which is made to be played on Media Player 9 on your PC. The catch, however, is that the requirements are INSANE. I have a pretty top-of-the-line system and I couldn’t even come close — you need a 3 GHz processor, 512 meg of RAM, a 128 meg video card and a BIG monitor. My chip is “only” a 2200+ XP, so the thing wouldn’t even load for me. Maybe when someone other than rich tech junkies and the President can find a system to handle the hi-def specs, I’ll come back and review it.

So ultimately, I find the movie disc in the Extreme Edition better than the Ultimate, but the extras disc in the Ultimate wins hands down. Don’t worry, though, I’m sure they’ll release a 4-disc version ala Lord of the Rings with EVERYTHING in it, just to piss me off that much more.

The Ratings:

The Film: *****
The Video: *****
The Audio: *****
The Extras: *****