...in high definition T2 looks and sounds better than ever, and the German edition provides all the bells and whistles.
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"I'll be back." --Arnold Schwarzenegger
Big Arnold's Terminators were hard to kill. So, apparently, is HD DVD. Several months after the demise of the format, studios are still releasing new HD DVDs, like this one, the Ultimate HD-Edition of "Terminator 2" from Germany's Kinowelt Home Entertainment.
As you probably know, the high-definition version of the film is available from an American source only on Blu-ray, and if you wanted it on HD DVD your only previous choice was a French Import from Studio Canal. The problem with the Studio Canal release is twofold: While it contains both the theatrical version and the Director's Cut, the studio inexplicably placed forced French subtitles on the theatrical version, rendering it practically useless; and beyond the two versions of the movie, the package contains no other extras to speak of. The German Kinowelt edition rectifies at least one of those issues nicely. While it provides only the Director's Cut, it supplements it with a load of bonus materials.
First, let's talk about the movie. There is no doubt that James Cameron's 1991 "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" was a landmark film in the development of special effects, but more important it was a landmark film in establishing a truly touching relationship in an all-out action flick. For that reason alone I would place it in the front ranks of great action films, maybe among the best two or three of all time.
You will remember from the initial film in the trilogy, "The Terminator," that the first terminator cyborg failed to change history. Its makers had sent it back from the future to kill the one person, John Connor, who would eventually stop the machines from taking over the world; they intended to kill him before he was ever born. In that movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the bad cyborg terminator, a career move that seemed pretty risky for the actor at the time but turned out to be the best thing he ever did.
In this second installment, the future machines send out another indestructible metal man, a T-1000 (Robert Patrick), to kill Connor (Edward Furlong), by now a teenager. And in yet another of Big Arnold's fortuitous career moves, he plays a second terminator sent back from the good-guy humans of the future to protect young John and his mother (Linda Hamilton). Now, you understand that if it were just the Schwarzenegger cyborg against any old cyborg, it would be no contest. So, the filmmakers have made the new evil robot more technologically advanced. It has the ability to imitate in molten metal any nonmechanical object it sees or touches, so Arnold's rather old-fashioned T-800 model is up against a seemingly hopeless situation in this terminator-vs-terminator confrontation. But it's Arnold. What more do you need? This is the guy who not only made two great "Terminator" pictures and a third OK one, but became governor of California in the process. The guy can transform himself into anything and beat the odds. "Trust me."
When Arnold shows up in the present (what would we do in science fiction without time travel?), he finds that John Connor's mother has raised him to believe that robots would soon destroy the world, and that he would have to lead the war against the machines. However, people thought his mother was nuts and committed her to a mental institution, leaving young John in the care of foster parents, which is where our present movie begins. John had never believed his mother until the two terminator robots show up, and he finally realizes that his mother was right all along.
Here's the thing: Left to its own devices as a pure action flick, "T2" works commendably well. It has all the fast-paced fighting, explosions, chases, and the like that mark an engrossing actioner. But it has something more: It has heart. The T-800, without feeling, without the knowledge of good or bad, love or hate, nevertheless becomes an effective paternal figure for the rebellious young man who has never known a real father. When the picture comes to its finale, I guarantee it will move even the most flint-hearted souls.
What's more, "Terminator 2" was a pioneering film in the development of computer-generated imagery. It was not the first film to use CGI, mind you; filmmakers had used computer effects for a decade or more previously. But "T2" was the first film most of us remember using them to such an extent that we literally oohed and aahed about them. It would be almost two more years before "Jurassic Park" came out to augment the world of CGI further, and the rest is history.
"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there, and it would die to protect him." --Linda Hamilton, "Terminator 2"
Video:
The question about the video is whether this German transfer is any better or any worse than the French Studio Canal edition, and the absolute, definitive answer I can give you is, I'm not sure. I had both HD DVD versions on hand for comparison, but with only one HD DVD player hooked into my home theater, I had several minutes of delay between viewing the two discs. I compared them three times, taking one disc out and putting the other one back in, but by the time each disc booted up, my mind could have played tricks on me. Interestingly, the Kinowelt disc says "Studio Canal" on the face of it, and both discs are 2.35:1 ratio, 1080p resolution, VC-1 encodes, so I suspect Kinowelt got their video directly from the French source.
In any case, neither HD DVD displays any noise, lines, flecks, fades, scratches, or grit that I could see. What little grain that shows up is undoubtedly inherent to the original print. Definition is as good as most anything you'll find on a high-definition disc, and colors in daylight scenes are as natural as you'll find. If I had any concern at all with the French disc, it was that in some shots the picture didn't seem to look as bright or the hues as deep as I expected them to be. In the German edition, I might have noticed a touch deeper color and contrast, and maybe a tad more noticeable grain. On the other hand, I could have been imagining it. As with the French edition, the German disc has moments of stunning clarity, mostly in close-ups, and moments of slight softness, mostly in medium shots. Although both discs are quite good in HD picture quality, frankly, if you already own the French HD DVD and are only getting the German edition for its video, I could not guarantee that it's any better.
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