My first and only warning, major spoilers ahead. I'm going to assume you've seen the Terminator before, and if you haven't, where the hell have you been since Cameron informed us that the world was going to get leveled sometime in the late 80's? This is more of a meta-terminator discussion that assumes you've actually seen the blasted movie--probably dozens of times. If you haven't, good lord, go rent the big silly thing, what's wrong with you!!??

OK, so I probably haven't seen the Terminator since High School, but I'm sure I saw it WAY too many times then. Enough to give it a ten year hiatus. But with its grand reissue on DVD with tons of extras, I thought it was time to give my second favorite Arnold movie a run-through.

Well, I'm not going to discuss the movie for reasons said above, but damn it, I want to discuss the extras on this sucka! But before I do, just one little thing. MAN! This movie was from the 80's. I don't know how I can make this more clear. There are some great, decade defining 80's films, and they don't look quite so much like the 80's as The Terminator. For some reason, films like Robocop actually clean up good and feel right at home next to Starship Troopers (a 90's film), and even other classics like Carpenter's The Thing, while remaining in all other ways a TOTAL 80's film, somehow was digitally cleaned up so that you just can't really tell what decade it came from (at least visually). The Terminator doesn't have this problem. I don't know who produces the filter that looks like the 80's, but Cameron seems to own stock in them. Perhaps it is because of the lack of budget, but other low budget 80's films just don't look quite so 80's. I can't really explain this, but when I think 80's cinema, I think The Terminator. Holy Crap! There are early 70's films that are less grainy than this thing. Not muddy like 70's films, grainy. If you were born too late to know what the 80's looked like, just look at this movie.

A few other little things I noticed this time. Oh god, you can completely see Arnold's schlong in the cleaned up version--one for the ladies I guess, but fair warning to all the gentlemen viewers. I also noticed briefly following this scene that one of the punks (yeah, the guy with tire tracks tattooed into his face) is one of the dudes from Aliens (you know, the guys who shouts 'game over man, game over'). I also noticed once again how much Terminator 2 doesn't make ANY SENSE whatsoever in conjunction with this film. Yeah, that's old news, but every time I see Terminator 1, the sequel gets worse.

OK, on to those extras. I really want to discuss one particular outtake. Yup, this entire review is really about just one outtake. Well, I was clued in that the extras were 'thankfully' not integrated into the film (you actually have to flip the disc over to watch them), but once all was said in done, my opinion of the outtakes was fairly high. No, most of them weren't necessary and I know that pacing means a lot. The Terminator is a fast paced, short attention span film that never gives you much time to think over the plot. It is pretty much run, run, run, run, run, crush. But perhaps the most significant deleted scene (it is both fairly long and pretty critical to the characters), changes that formula up a bit. Not unlike a cut scene in Alien that more or less gave away many of the plot elements of Aliens, the scene in question has Sarah planning to destroy Skynet. Think about it. One of the major thrusts of Terminator 2 is Sarah wanting from the very beginning to destroy Skynet. They finally even break into the building trying to do just that. Guess what? The idea had already been scripted out when Terminator 1 came around, you just never got to see it!

Well, that point aside, this deleted scene offers a lot more than Sarah voicing her interest in wanting to blow up Skynet. What it does do is develop Reece's character in ways that were otherwise only very subtly developed in the film as it stands. I think it still comes across that Reece was a live wire, but in the deleted material we see him breaking down, and discussing his difficulty dealing with being in non-destroyed world. It's really a pretty cool scene that paints Reece as being a guy in a totally ill-fated position to begin with. I'm sure this comes off anyway, but for me at least, it changes the tone of the film a bit. It definitely foreshadows his self-sacrifice a bit more, and makes him a little bit less of an action hero and a little bit more of a human being. Unfortunately, film pacing hasn't got time to developing characters for 4 minute stretches.

Incidentally, the pace of the film apparently still allowed for the 'multiple choice' scene (you know, 'have you got a dead cat in there?'), despite adding very little beyond comic relief.

Needless to say, the scene in question also develops Sarah's character as being stronger than she comes off in the final cut. In The Terminator, I think we only see Sarah as a strong character in the last few scenes of the film, but this deleted segment makes her role as the 'mother of the future savior of humanity' a little more believable.

Well, with that bit of nonsense off my chest, let's talk about menus. Who the hell designs DVD menus anyway? Is someone getting paid for this? I don't want to have terminators shoot out of tubes when I go to chapter select. I have a feeling that the CGI artists that can't cut it in the actual movie business make really bad CGI interactive menus!!? I don't know man, but this is getting pretty terrible. OK, there are worse menus than this. Ever seen the menu on Big Trouble in Little China??!!! Let's go a step worse, that menu on Disney's Dumbo for instance. Good lord, I know there is a movie on that disc somewhere but between the most nauseating CGI menu I've seen in history and trailers for direct-to-video nightmares, only major intestinal fortitude and a quick chapter skip button will bring you to the movie in one piece. The Terminator disc isn't that bad, but they've got to lay off these gaudy menus. I'd rather see them put the money into the box. I just recently saw The Wickerman limited edition DVD and it comes in a freakin' wooden box. Forget those stupid 'interactive' menus, I want my movie packaged in something stupid. The Fellowship of the Ring came in a set that looked like a book, plus you could purchase additional bookends for the set! Think of all the absurd merchandizing that could go along with a Terminator DVD instead of some lame-ass menu. For one, why not include the soundtrack? CDs are cheap as dirt to make these days, and since The Terminator should have been released in a replica of the Terminator's head, there would be plenty of room to include the soundtrack. Well don't even remind me about the terrible packaging for the standard version of Robocop. Really, nobody cares these days about presentation. Are we going to be moved by seeing terminators shoot in and out of tubes? No! But how 'bout packing it like that new Iron Maiden box set with freakin' Eddie's skull embossed into the metal sarcophagus. Oh yeah, that's the ticket baby!

Thanks for the review Chris, even if you couldn't remember the name of my man Bill Paxton! If you would like to submit a review, drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com but until the writing bug hits you head on back to either the Third Movie or Main page.