The Terminator

Rating:
Summary: Best Sci-fi flic of the Eighties
Review: I'll be back! This is one of my most favourite Sci-fi's of the Eighties by far! T2 was a good follow up, T3 lost the genius of the first two completely and was just a cash-in follow up. The effects are probably a little outdated on T1 now, but the story is in depth and the acting excellent which cannot be said for T3.

Rating:
Summary: You'll be back to watch this over and over again
Review: This is a sensational 2 disc DVD set. The first disc is the classic movie and the second is full of special features. This review will concentrate on the feature disc but just in case you haven't seen the movie I'll just say watch it as it is superb and something which is highly likely, well not the time travel maybe but the war against the machines definitely.

Watch the scenes which were cut from the film such as the Terminator walking to his car after blowing away the second Sarah Connor with kids and everyone else running away, lots of scenes between the two main cops (learn that one of these actors was originally supposed to be the Terminator before Arnie claimed it in the Other Voices feature section), Reese breaking down in a field as he tells Sarah how he has never seen plants and stuff plus much, much more.

Other Voices is interviews with the actors and key staff, where they reflect on moments in the film and on being cast. Michael Biehn was originally almost rejected for Reese because they thought he had a southern accent, is just one of the interesting facts you'll come across. All companies but Orion rejected the movie idea as well as other background facts make this entertaining and educational viewing.

Terminator a Retrospective is mostly filmed in 1985 with a young Arnie and James Cameron discussing the film with a few inclusions of a 1991 interview mentioning the sequel. Worth watching just to see what these famous people looked like back then and very interesting too. The theatre trailers are interesting for those of us too young too remember them. A very entertaining and well worth the money must have DVD. T2 Ultimate Edition is also excellent.

Rating:
Summary: I'll be back!
Review: This is truly a classic. I jumped at the chance to get it on DVD. The special features and behind the scenes are worth watching. I never get tired of watching this, even though I know all of the lines and the plot. Great special effects, even for today's standards.

Rating:
Summary: Some scenes are still missing
Review: On my Region 2 SE DVD, purchased in Holland as IMPORT (so I expect it a UK version) sone scenes are definitely cut:

1)When Terminator has just got the clothes, the rain starts, and it runs upon his face, but he does not blink

2)Just before getting into the GUNS store, Terminator passes a row of TV-sets, which get distorted, as he passes them.

Probably the scene of murder of the second "wrong Sarah" is also omitted.

THis really makes me think soon we shall get something like Ultimate version with these two scenes.

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Rating:
Summary: Special Edition of the classic Sci-Fi.
Review: 1984's "The Terminator" is by far the bleakest (and the best!!) of the triligy. In it Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cyborg sent back from the future to the 1980s to kill Sarah Connor, a waitress who will soon give birth to the leader of man kind during the War Aginst the Machines. The good guys manage to send a lone warrior, Reese to protect her. The action is fast, continous, and brutal. This is the bloodiest of the batch with the coldly efficent Terminator. Also it is grim with the fact that the end of the human race is enevidable; you can not stop it, only prepare. Linda Hamilton dose a good job of being a vulnerable ditzy blond at the beginning and makes a credible transformation to a hero in her own right by the end. Michael Beihn's Reese is the heart of the movie, who is the passionate warrior fighting for all the right reasons, preservation of the human race and for the love of the woman. This is obviously Arnold's brake-out roll, he has nothing to emote, has less lines than the bum on the corner, but he is the most imposing figure in the film. There is also the message of over reliance on michines, even more relevent now in the 21st Centery than in '84. The DVD Special Edition has several documentries, and most of them are pretty good. I like the interview with Arnold and James Cameron. Hearing about it's troubled production is funny and interseting in retrospect (they tried out Lance Hindrickson and O.J. Simpson to play Terminator). This is the best of a great series, but of course you probably already knew that.

Rating:
Summary: The Terminator Special Edition
Review: It's is hard to imagine that someone has NOT seen this movie, so I won't write much about the movie itself, but the purpose of this Special Edition DVD. I don't know much about the technology behind digital remastering of the audio, but it just seemed to me that the sound effects of the movie were just recorded over the original sound. Anyone who's seen this film over a dozen times or less would immediately notice gunshots, crash scenes, and voices (screams) were replaced. They did a pretty good job with the new sound effects, but there are a few glitches where the main characters' voices got muffled a bit (because they get mixed in with the new sound effects) and the sound of bullet impacts did not match what was seen on screen. As we all know, movie audio is just as important as the video, but the worst part is, the sound effects weren't even that great...just the average KABOOM's and POW's of any regular film...I mean there is no improvement, just replacement.
Being a die hard fan of The Terminator, it just bothered me a little that some sound effects were changed. It just didn't sit right for me or give me that same feeling it did almost 20 years ago. Luckily, it had the original Mono audio option that put the old sound effects in, so I was able to experience the original movie as it should be. Unfortunately, it didn't work through the 5.1 surround sound, of course.
The "Terminated Scenes" really got my hyped. I don't know if they presented these scenes in any other version of Terminator, but I could not believe they left such crucial scenes out of the original movie! Well, I won't spoil it, but there are a few scenes that would have made Terminator 2 a complete, accurate sequel to this movie. And it would have REALLY made the movie have a complete ironic twist.
My overall opinion is: If sound does not matter much, one must get this DVD for it awesome 5.1 feature. The deleted scenes included are great, if one has never seen them before.

Rating:
Summary: The Terminator's coming to get you Sarah...
Review: Looking back almost twenty years to James Cameron's 1984 film, "The Terminator" almost seems quaint. Given the special effects that would dominated not only its two sequels but just about every other big budget action film to come down the pike, there is an almost brutal simplicity to the original offering. Lacking the computer generated effectives, more expensive production values, and the self-reflexivity of the two sequels, "The Terminator" simply strikes me as being the best of the bunch. There was a lot of creativity and thought put into "Terminator II," but this one has the better story.

If you think back to 1984 then what we have in this movie is a combination of key elements from "Jaws" and "Halloween." From the former we get the idea of a relentless killing machine that stops at nothing, while from the latter comes the fact that somebody who knows you is out to get you for reasons that you do not know and none of the tradition tools of persuasion, such as knives and automatic weaponry have any effect; like Michael Meyers this guy keeps getting back up. "The Terminator" now acknowledges the work of Harlan Ellison, whose teleplays of "Solider" and "Demon With a Glass Hand" on "Outer Limits" are clearly antecedents for this tale, but in many ways Cameron's movie is a high-tech slasher film. Keep in mind that his previous directorial effort was "Piranha Part Two: The Spawning," and from this film he moved on to "Aliens." It was not really until "The Abyss" that Cameron's films started evidencing a sense of the truly poetic (then again, there is the Polaroid photograph in this one).

The premise is simple and direct. Two naked guys show up in Southern California. One of them tears a page out of the phone booth and starts killing women named Sarah Connor. However, there is one more name and address on that list and she is the true target of what is happening. By now both of the naked men are dressed and the other one saves her from the killing machine, at which point she finds out it really is a killing machine. Not only that, it has been sent back from the future for the sole purpose of making sure she ends up dead. Furthermore, it turns out the stakes are a whole lot higher than that as well.

Much is made about the title character being played by the (almost) current governor of California, and while this was certainly a breakthrough performance for Arnold Schwarzenegger (at least for those who never saw "Pumping Iron"), the story is still the more important element. Cameron knows how to have exposition double up for explanation, especially when yelled by a character during a car chase, and that most of his audience are not hard-core hard-science science-fiction fans who enjoy a good time travel paradox narrative, whatever the problems in logic and physics.

As Cameron would prove again in "Aliens," he knows how to push down on the pedal and pour on things at the end to give us the thrill of several "what next?" moments. Also, he maintains the Dionysian sense of gloom until the end of the film. In fact, that is true of the entire trilogy, which has ended the series without every providing a moment when the lead character and the rest of us can believe that things are going to be okay.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty, straightforward intro to the series
Review: While lacking the superior effects and epic preachy scope of its successors, the original film serves as a taut and gritty introduction to the Terminator mythos of James Cameron. Sent back in time by the machine world god to eliminate the mother of the leader of the human resistance, played by the creased and unattractively mannish Linda Hamilton, Arnold is the Terminator T-101, a killing machine wrapped in human flesh. To stop him, the human resistance of the future sends a lone soldier back to ostensibly save Hamilton but also to fulfill is uh other duties. Shot mostly at night, there is never much of a let down in the action as the Terminator stalks and shoots at the two protagonists. The stop motion animation of the T-101, and the miniatures of the opening and dream sequences, well before the advent of affordable CG, doesn't hold up too well these days. Also in the post-Conan era, Arnold brings a blank relentlessness to the Terminator that would do Michael Meyers proud. Unlike the two sequels, the film is widely humorless, except for, amusingly enough, Lance Henriksen as the cynical cop. While rightfully a genre stand-out, it does appear a bit dated. The 2 sided DVD offers some rather old documentaries on the making of T1 w/ Cameron and Arnold vying for conversation control. There's also the original treatment, and Cameron's artwork. Not bad and still recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Good offering for followers....
Review: (Instead of reviewing a film you probably already know, I stick to DVD special features)

Those Extras:

Commentary: NONE! Yikes.

Deleted Scenes: Now this is a bit odd. They couldn't get Cameron to sit down for a full-length commentary, but he has time to do one for the cut scenes?? Whatever. Anyway, they're nothing special, unless you're a diehard desperate for something new to chew on.

Documentary: Two actually. Covers everything you'd want to know about the film, and then some, as it actually runs on a little too long.

Overall: Though only a couple of big features, they're so extensive that you still get your moneys worth. The absence of higher than thou Cameron for a running commentary (c'mon, at least get Gale Ann Hurd!), plus outtakes and an on-set making of, cause this to fall short of greatness.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Film -- And A Message
Review: This is a superlative action/adventure/sci-film, an absolute classic.

That said, is this movie's message questionable? A terminator arrives in town determined to kill Sarah Connor. Her protector, Kyle Reese, said at one point that "it can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with." That rang as though Reese had a unilateral, dead-or-alive cowboy mentality. Reese at no point ever stopped to consider a multi-lateral path, consulting the United Nations to form a coalition, or anything like that. Also, Reese never asked, "Why does he hate us?" Reese made no attempt to understand this terminator's cultural background, and there was certainly no mention of any religious factors. The only course Reese ever considered, in the face of something that was determined to kill Sarah, was to kill it first. By killing the terminator first, that prevented Sarah Connor from being killed. But was this the compassionate, tolerant, diverse and inclusive approach? Certainly not -- all it did was keep Sarah Connor from being killed, and it wiped out the threat forever (until the sequel, but we didn't know that then).

The message here seems to be that when you're faced with something totally unreasonable that wants to kill you, then the only way for you to achieve security is to kill it first. Don't waste time with any of that touchy-feely and wholly ineffective tolerance stuff, just kill the beast. That's certainly the only sensible thing to do, which is why everyone rooted for Sarah and Kyle to prevail over the terrorizing terminator.