[box cover]

The Terminator: Special Edition

MGM Home Video

Starring Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Paul Winfield, and Lance Henricksen

Written by James Cameron and William Wisher
Directed by James Cameron

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Review by Alexandra DuPont                    


"Once upon the earth, in a typical town, on an agonizingly beautiful day, a nondescript woman, whose name I forget, killed a monster robot from the future and saved the human race. The End."

— "The Terminator: The Novel," — a one-sentence joke written by
Randall Frakes and Terminator co-screenwriter William Wisher,
featured among the Terminator: Special Edition DVD extras.


I. INTRODUCTION: A "SMUGGLER" DESERVES A BREAK

The most interesting directors (for me, anyway) are the ones Martin Scorcese called "smugglers" — genre adherents (usually Western, sci-fi and horror auteurs) who repeatedly sneak pesky personal obsessions into their work.

Just so with James Cameron. These days, Cameron is snorted at by the intelligentsia for being a middlebrow technophiliac with a raging ego and a penchant for spending too much money on his films. This collective sniffing, as near as I can tell, is predicated entirely on the success of Titanic — his romance-novel-handcuffed-to-a-disaster-film blockbuster that went to insane lengths marrying taut action filmmaking to cringe-inducing Harlequin dialogue.

But even Titanic, flawed though it is, is a "smuggled" film, broadly exploring Cameron's twin obsessions — distrust of technology and men sacrificing themselves to empower strong, smart, pissed-off women. One hopes the Terminator: Special Edition DVD will splash a little cold water on film-snob faces, reminding them that Cameron, particularly in his first few films, was the most exciting sci-fi filmmaker since Young Spielberg mined his obsession with benevolent alien father figures. MGM's DVD — improving on a movie-only disc put out by Image Entertainment in 1998 — should also remind movie buffs that Cameron was able to "smuggle" his themes (however un-subtly) even when he had no clout and his budget was something like $1.95.


II. THE STORY

Recounting the story is pretty well moot at this point. Released in 1984, T1's high-concept pastiche immediately entered the cultural fabric — a why-didn't-someone-make-this-movie-sooner mix of Corman splatter, Harlan Ellison, Japanese technofetishism, urban paranoia, and monster movie, relentlessly told. (Note that almost all of the film's exposition, and there's a lot of it, happens while characters are fleeing or hiding — a device today's action filmmakers would do well to study).

Waitress Sarah Connor (a pre-commando-training Linda Hamilton) finds out she's the Virgin Mary of the secular human race when a "Terminator" cyborg from the future (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels back in time to kill her. It seems she's destined to give birth to John Connor — leader of the human freedom fighters who defeat an evil machine race in A.D. 2027. She's aided in her fight against the assassin robot by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a human who traveled back in time to save her — and who will, as it turns out, sire John Connor and awaken Sarah's inner freedom fighter.

This isn't particularly subtle stuff (John Connor's initials are, after all, "JC") — but, like Planet of the Apes, you can peel apart The Terminator and find yourself rewarded with several cohesive, fully cooked themes and paradoxes. In 1984, when schlocky, low-budget sci-fi consisted of such silly stuff as Battle Beyond the Stars and The Last Starfighter, The Terminator was practically revolutionary.

Here's Cameron's trademark Man-Sacrificing-Himself-to-Empower-A-Woman Theme, smuggled to varying degrees into all his films. Here's a really broad abortion allegory, with a faceless machine state trying to force a woman to "terminate" her pregnancy (a plot in which both pro-life and pro-choice advocates can find thematic succor — maestro!). Here's a Horatio Alger-like tale of self-transformation. Here's the paradox of a man fathering his future leader — the ultimate military service, if you will — and thus creating a self-contained temporal loop that only the five Apes films explored with equal success. Take a step back and behold the paradox of Cameron using every technical trick in the book — a la Lucas and Classic "Trek" — to foster a deep distrust of technocratic society.


III. THAT SAID

Be ye warned: If you haven't watched T1 since the late-'80s (as I hadn't) you may be in for a bit of a shock. The movie itself has become a bit of time travel — thanks to the oh-so-'80s trappings of its fashions and hair (particularly in its infamous "Tech Noir" nightclub sequence, which resembles nothing so much as an episode of "Square Pegs" with squibs). And the movie's admirable lo-fi trappings may disappoint (or even bore) people who consider T2's groundbreaking effects a form of fetish porn.


IV. THE EXTRAS

Tech-heads may be interested to know that this disc was encoded using DVD-14 technology — a single layer on one side, an RSDL dual layer on the other. Content-wise, this is a fat-free platter with slick menus that refute the overwrought T2: Ultimate Edition DVD menus with their brevity.

Side One features an anamorphic transfer of the beautifully restored print and a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 EX soundtrack. (Purists beware: The Digital Bits has reported that composer Brad Fiedel re-orchestrated — and altered — some of his opening-credits music. I still consider this one of the best cheapie-synth film scores of all time, and the re-work didn't bother me a bit.)

Side One also features DVD-ROM content — for, believe it or not, PC and Mac users — including "script to screen" Web files linking you to the fourth draft and final draft of the script, as well as Cameron's original treatment. There are also Easter eggs here — audio interview clips (with stills) you can access by clicking various boxes on the borders of assorted menu screens.

Side Two — the gold-tinted side — is a lean collection of snazzy extras. Under "Trailers/TV Spots" we find a 1:26 teaser trailer (featuring Cameron's original production art in lieu of finished special effects), a 1:57 theatrical trailer, and a 3:08 foreign trailer that plays with the mystery of who (or what) is stalking Sarah Connor (and that plays up the film's brutal, bloody elements), plus two 30-second TV spots touting the film's surprise box-office success.

Under a "Documentaries" menu we find two "making-of" features, one brand-new:


Next up are seven "Terminated Scenes" — viewable individually or strung together, and with or without commentary by Cameron (a DVD first):

  1. "Wholesome Sarah" features Hamilton talking to herself in the mirror in her waitress uniform;

  2. "Wrong Sarah" is an extended cut of the Terminator leaving the scene of one of his Sarah Connor murders, oblivious to fleeing witnesses;

  3. "Lt. Traxler's Arc" is a collection of several deleted scenes featuring Paul Winfield and Lance Henricksen as police detectives — climaxing with an injured Winfield giving his gun to Reese, finally convinced that the Terminator is the real deal;

  4. "Sarah Fights Back" explores some of the ideas fleshed out in T2 — with Sarah talking to Reese about blowing up Cyberdyne even as Reese weeps at the future loss of nature ("I wasn't meant to see this!");

  5. "Making Bombs" features Sarah and Reese talking about things he's never seen as they cook some homemade explosives;

  6. "Tickling Reese" is, as Cameron puts it in the commentary, "a clumsy attempt on the part of the writer to show that Reese has rejoined the human race";

  7. and "The Factory" reveals that the site of the film's climactic showdown was in fact Cyberdyne Systems — with a couple of fairly weak actors finding the Terminator chip and palming it for R&D.


Rounding out the disc is a "Still Gallery" of hundreds of photos — organized under the sub-categories of "James Cameron Artwork" (which looks like really well-done '70s van art), "Production Photos," "Stan Winston Effects," "Fantasy II: Visual Effects," and "Publicity Materials," which features, I shit you not, a smiling Arnold Schwartzenegger in a tuxedo — plus Cameron's 40-page "Original Treatment."

That is all.

— Alexandra DuPont
dupont@dvdjournal.com

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