I think the horror element in T1 that is particularly striking is the invasion and destruction of the police station. I recall the power of that as a kid: the dismissal of the concept of a safe place. I think it shows the idea-power that horror can have.
It's Cameron's most amazing scene in my opinion. The other arc that's resolved by this scene is that after the safety and sanity of the old world is blasted away by the terminator, Sarah is forced to decide once and for all on Reese. She's left alone, in the dark, hiding under a desk. Reese is searching for her and she's frozen for a moment before she finally decides to trust him and responds to his call. This is why I say that T1 is James Cameron's greatest love story.
T1 shows just how terrifying it would be hunted by a killer robot, or by ani killer that simply cannot stopped by any means short of a battle tank. Something the other films, including T2, failed to show.
It did work in T2, because the whole story was different. Oh, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles did a good job of it as well, shame that got cancelled.
Sounds like you would enjoy Assault on Precinct 13. It came out nearly a decade earlier and is basically that police station scene expanded to 90 minutes. Cameron is an exceptional director, but when it comes to horror, it is hard to beat Carpenter.
" The release also sadly lacks the full spectrum of special features that were available on the 2001 release, including script drafts and an hour-long documentary. "
This is something that I noticed as a pattern for DVD releases in general. When DVDs were first arriving, titles were slower to be released. There's plenty of reasoning behind this. However, "they" also did not know what level of effort would be required to get people to buy into DVDs. So the first DVDs were in effect overly produced with so much extra content. The first DVD that I bought was Contact, and the entire second disc is nothing but BTS and making of type content. Skip to the time when Blu-ray/HD-DVD were being introduced, and you had <$5 DVDs in bins at WalMart with 2 or 3 movies on it that had nothing but the movies with essentially no effort whatsoever being applied.
"When I revisited the film on Amazon a year or two ago, I realized I was watching a remastered HD version, which featured a more contemporary color grade, generally referred to as “teal-and-orange.” The bluish look of the theatrical release, which was reproduced in previous video versions, gave way to an overly greenish look that was common on HD transfers of 80s pictures."
With DVD still being SD, a lot of the films had digital masters like a DigiBeta or D1 tape format which made for excellent DVD sources. This meant the DVDs looked like how people had seen them (only much cleaner compared to VHS). For HD discs, the studios had to go back to the film sources to rescan them at HD resolution. Since they were going back to the negatives, the sources would need to go back through a color session. Most film types can't leave things alone and must always tweak, but even if they didn't it's a completely new color session and usually not the same colorist. Maybe for A-list titles did they get anything other than factory floor treatment. They had entire back libraries of films to get transferred. You also had the decisions of keeping OAR, reframing for 16x9 full frame, or even pan&scan 4x3. It was a tremendous amount of work, and the longer it took meant fewer sales. Let's not forget that some of the people that originally worked on titles could very much be "no longer available" to work with on the projects.
A similarly awful change was made to the color grading for several streaming releases of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It feels like whoever did the color had just watched Breaking Bad and decided to imitate the "make any scenes in Mexico have an orange color grading" style but for the entire movie: https://imgur.io/a/Ub5MO5R
I think the bonus content on DVD mostly comes down to tossing in anything they could think of as an effort to say "this is so much more amazing than VHS"
But it turns out what consumers actually care about is the better video quality
I usually can take or leave director's cuts. They're usually good but dont fundamentally change the movie or anything.
But the director's cut of T2 does. That one scene where they explain that Arnie is in read only mode, take out his brain chip and reset him. Apart from being an important scene in itself: John making his first leadership decision and deciding, against Sarah's wishes, to not destroy the T100; It is also soooo relevant to so many things that occur later in the movie. It's crazy to me that they cut that scene.
I thought the same, but he actually supported it as a way to drive the marketing.
I believed our potential audience would be more attracted to seeing how the most badass killing machine could become a hero than they would be to just another kill-fest in the same vein as the first film. Sequels have to strike a delicate balance between honoring the most loved elements from the first film but also promising to really shake things up and turn them upside down. Our marketing campaign was exactly that promise, and it worked.
I think this is a great breakdown and analysis, though "‘Terminator’ Really Is a Horror Movie" is something a lot of people at or near the time of its release, including my eleven year old self watching it for the first time, understood intuitively. In my mind (and perhaps even in my local video store) it was always grouped with Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street
Wouldn't and indeed likely couldn't. Cameron's talent in the early years was writing very fast paced films with stock characters - but adding a richness and depth to those in theory cliche characters (especially the women) that transcended the pulpiness of the material. Viewers got the best of both worlds - action comics meets cyberpunk punchy SF scripts, and (frequently working class and female) witty, humanised characters. This juggling act has been missing (irrespective of their financial success) from his films since Titanic.
Something that frequently gets lost in the consideration of the work of artists is that is doesn't always improve. Lots of artists / craftspeople make less vigorous, audacious work when the pressures of early career establishment are removed.
Spielberg and Lucas are both great examples of the same thing - with the same mix of humanised, droll, often working class protagonists much more richly drawn and well portrayed than was common for the time. Without these characters and this balance of pacy storytelling, the blockbuster has become mushy fan service. See any recent marvel, 'fast franchise' film, or indeed Avatar.
I don't think it's sad. We all change and some of us also grow up. Older people and parents find violence in general harder to take as entertainment. It's part of your brain changing over time. I would say that isn't an argument for less violence in movies. I'm not making a moral argument about violence in film - it's just an aesthetic thing.
There is a documentary called "Los Angeles Plays Itself". Thom Andersen is as erudite about movies as anyone could possibly be, but he still saw value in movies like "L.A. Crackdown" and "Death Wish 4". Terminator and Terminator 2 are both given shout-outs for their depiction of L.A. and the LAPD in particular.
I've never met anyone who considered James Cameron to be other than a blockbuster factory. Aliens, the Abyss, True Lies, writing the second Rambo film... who the hell would be surprised that James Cameron was involved with a Terminator movie?
Aside form that, Terminator 2 not only isn't Cameron's best effort, it's not even the franchise's best effort. It was the beginning of "to hell with making sense, look at these explosions," which got worse with each passing film, and better in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.
Wouldn't actual film snobs know that Oscars don't mean shit?
And wouldn't technical Oscars mean even less for film snobs, when it comes to the worth of a movie as a movie?
Also, why would a film snob be impressed by it being by James Cameron? He is closer to Michael Bay than to a director a film snob would actually like...
I guess count me as a fake film snob? I love a good "shoot-em-up", and I loved the first Terminator, but the second one felt hokey to me. I just couldn't get past James Cameron's idea of how a kid behaves or talks.
and we have to mention https://filmschoolrejects.com/terminator-2-helicopter-stunt/ 'With a lot at stake and not a lot of room for error (quite literally), as Tamburro, himself put it: “If I made a mistake, I would be killed.” The stunt was so obviously dangerous that the scheduled camera crew tasked with shooting the close-ups refused to take part in it. Proving that he’s not one to ask of others what he isn’t willing to do himself, Cameron said “okay fine, I’ll shoot it” and shot the stunt with the help of a very courageous insert car driver.' Oh and he did it twice.
I never even noticed T2 trying to hide the fact the T1000 was the bad guy. I suppose it was thanks to the lovely spoiling trailer [1] of the day. Plus I remember it being all over the news about the amazing graphics and how they did the famous "mercury scene".
I think a big part of the delayed reveal of the skeleton only version in T1 is pretty simple: once you reveal that, Arnie is no longer in the movie, and the special effects required to fully animate it didn’t exist back then (other than stick figures or rotoscoping which would have looked awful). As is, the scenes with just the skeleton look like a stiff puppet show instead of some intimidating killer robot.
As an audience member, you’re expected to maintain some suspension of disbelief. At a musical no one would say, “no one would actual sing what they could just say!”, or reading a book “those letters could have been scrawled by any kindergartener!”
At that point of the movie the thing the protagonists thought they killed is resurrected in an even more frightening form and dread is elevated. Obviously the viewer is not at risk, so how that is implemented has little bearing on the impact of the scene.
On the other hand, if you are interested in the technical details of how this creature appears next to actors, knowing Cameron’s history in the model department on low budget movies and Ray Harryhausen’s similar technique used in Jason and the argonauts would allow you to appreciate how it was made.
I don’t buy that the late reveal was due to effects limitations. It’s really to take an audience that may have allowed themselves to relax to be immediate brought back to an even higher anxiety level than the proceeding chase.
> I think a big part of the delayed reveal of the skeleton only version in T1 is pretty simple: once you reveal that, Arnie is no longer in the movie
Not true: they could have revealed the skeleton earlier and still have Arnie, e.g. via opening scenes set in the future, or via a Reese flashback (flash forward?), or showing the process of hybridizing the T1 before it was sent in time.
The articles argument seems congent to me: the movie FX and story reveals are carefully structured such that the terminator appears less human over time, until it is not human at all.
Add to this the fact that the T1's red-hued HUD is not shown early (this could have been shown with no loss of Arnie as the T1, but wasn't) shows that the robotic nature of the character was being intentionally being hidden at first.
Cameron has had plenty of opportunities and never has. There was something of a controversy when the DVD was re-released with a new Dolby Digital surround track and the original mono was left off. A lot of people felt very strongly about how those guns sounded.
>So, when Robert Patrick’s T-1000 arrives on the scene, the structural repetitions position him as the T2 analog of Kyle Reese. As in, we are led to believe that he is another human rebel fighter sent to protect Sarah and/or John Connor.
Actually, that's the biggest flaw "reveals"-wise for T2 in my opinion.
Robert Patrick plays his character as too robotic and even icky even before the reveal. He looks off, so people start wondering if he really is a "Kyle Reese" type or some enemy, perhaps robotic...
He should have been played the "cop" with more neutral maunerisms until the reveal, so that the reveal has bigger impact.
I remember the feeling of sheer awe while watching both movies. "Wait, what, he is a metallic skeleton underneath?!! No goddamn way!!!". I really miss that feeling in today's movies, even "Avatar 2" by the same James Cameron. He replaced it with some gizmo gimmicks, like exoskeletons or crab sumbarines, which are impressive, but not awesome.
I like how it looked like a regular mainstream action movie, but incorporated things like time travel. Accessible for the whole family to think or have fun at same time
Out of curiosity do you feel the same way about Alien? Because both movies obviously use sci-fi elements (space and an alien vs robots and time travel) but the plot arcs for both are 100% horror. Frankly outside slasher flicks a LOT of horror has either SF or fantasy elements because things we don't understand are the scariest.
me young when I saw T1 and what memorable to me exactly the horror element of movie.
> “Terminator allows viewers to have a legitimate sense of discovery while watching the movie, to learn crucial plot details largely as Sarah learns them, which makes for very efficient storytelling.”
feel today interesting story points would get shown in trailer.
[+] [-] scandox|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jollyllama|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hef19898|3 years ago|reply
It did work in T2, because the whole story was different. Oh, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles did a good job of it as well, shame that got cancelled.
[+] [-] slg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] type0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btbuildem|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|3 years ago|reply
This is something that I noticed as a pattern for DVD releases in general. When DVDs were first arriving, titles were slower to be released. There's plenty of reasoning behind this. However, "they" also did not know what level of effort would be required to get people to buy into DVDs. So the first DVDs were in effect overly produced with so much extra content. The first DVD that I bought was Contact, and the entire second disc is nothing but BTS and making of type content. Skip to the time when Blu-ray/HD-DVD were being introduced, and you had <$5 DVDs in bins at WalMart with 2 or 3 movies on it that had nothing but the movies with essentially no effort whatsoever being applied.
"When I revisited the film on Amazon a year or two ago, I realized I was watching a remastered HD version, which featured a more contemporary color grade, generally referred to as “teal-and-orange.” The bluish look of the theatrical release, which was reproduced in previous video versions, gave way to an overly greenish look that was common on HD transfers of 80s pictures."
With DVD still being SD, a lot of the films had digital masters like a DigiBeta or D1 tape format which made for excellent DVD sources. This meant the DVDs looked like how people had seen them (only much cleaner compared to VHS). For HD discs, the studios had to go back to the film sources to rescan them at HD resolution. Since they were going back to the negatives, the sources would need to go back through a color session. Most film types can't leave things alone and must always tweak, but even if they didn't it's a completely new color session and usually not the same colorist. Maybe for A-list titles did they get anything other than factory floor treatment. They had entire back libraries of films to get transferred. You also had the decisions of keeping OAR, reframing for 16x9 full frame, or even pan&scan 4x3. It was a tremendous amount of work, and the longer it took meant fewer sales. Let's not forget that some of the people that originally worked on titles could very much be "no longer available" to work with on the projects.
[+] [-] HideousKojima|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlesieutre|3 years ago|reply
But it turns out what consumers actually care about is the better video quality
[+] [-] everybodyknows|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everyone|3 years ago|reply
But the director's cut of T2 does. That one scene where they explain that Arnie is in read only mode, take out his brain chip and reset him. Apart from being an important scene in itself: John making his first leadership decision and deciding, against Sarah's wishes, to not destroy the T100; It is also soooo relevant to so many things that occur later in the movie. It's crazy to me that they cut that scene.
[+] [-] MontyCarloHall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robg|3 years ago|reply
I believed our potential audience would be more attracted to seeing how the most badass killing machine could become a hero than they would be to just another kill-fest in the same vein as the first film. Sequels have to strike a delicate balance between honoring the most loved elements from the first film but also promising to really shake things up and turn them upside down. Our marketing campaign was exactly that promise, and it worked.
https://www.slashfilm.com/1118938/why-james-cameron-spoiled-...
[+] [-] yread|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Marazan|3 years ago|reply
Such as shame that was impossible.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iso1631|3 years ago|reply
Watched a TV show last night which left the "Special Guest Star" to the start of the end credits, so you weren't spoiled at the start with his name.
The streaming platform stuck his picture on the picture for the episode rendering that protection moot.
[+] [-] david422|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HideousKojima|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3w|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillyquiet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomashabets2|3 years ago|reply
Terminator 2 is great, but it's no T1.
I recently wrote a longish post about it: https://blog.habets.se/2022/11/Terminator-1-is-the-best-Term...
But long story short is that 1) T1 terminator is uncanny valley, and T2 is not. 2) T1 is a perfect time loop, and T2 is not.
[+] [-] scelerat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiborsaas|3 years ago|reply
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/james-cameron-avatar-2-de...
[+] [-] dbspin|3 years ago|reply
Something that frequently gets lost in the consideration of the work of artists is that is doesn't always improve. Lots of artists / craftspeople make less vigorous, audacious work when the pressures of early career establishment are removed.
Spielberg and Lucas are both great examples of the same thing - with the same mix of humanised, droll, often working class protagonists much more richly drawn and well portrayed than was common for the time. Without these characters and this balance of pacy storytelling, the blockbuster has become mushy fan service. See any recent marvel, 'fast franchise' film, or indeed Avatar.
[+] [-] scandox|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dokem|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intsunny|3 years ago|reply
Me: Terminator 2 was a great movie
Fake film snob: Terminator 2?! A shoot-em-up movie?! What?!
Me: Yah, it isn't what James Cameron is most known for, but still good
Fake film snob: Wait .... James Cameron???
Me: Yup, he even got five Oscars for it. Obviously not best picture or best actor/ess, but still
Fake film snob: five Oscars?!
Edit: formatting
[+] [-] RichardCA|3 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/Ifii8LvR-ss
[+] [-] stonogo|3 years ago|reply
Aside form that, Terminator 2 not only isn't Cameron's best effort, it's not even the franchise's best effort. It was the beginning of "to hell with making sense, look at these explosions," which got worse with each passing film, and better in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.
[+] [-] coldtea|3 years ago|reply
And wouldn't technical Oscars mean even less for film snobs, when it comes to the worth of a movie as a movie?
Also, why would a film snob be impressed by it being by James Cameron? He is closer to Michael Bay than to a director a film snob would actually like...
[+] [-] hairofadog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewfromx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legohead|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRRlbK5w8AE
[+] [-] orev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonhohle|3 years ago|reply
At that point of the movie the thing the protagonists thought they killed is resurrected in an even more frightening form and dread is elevated. Obviously the viewer is not at risk, so how that is implemented has little bearing on the impact of the scene.
On the other hand, if you are interested in the technical details of how this creature appears next to actors, knowing Cameron’s history in the model department on low budget movies and Ray Harryhausen’s similar technique used in Jason and the argonauts would allow you to appreciate how it was made.
I don’t buy that the late reveal was due to effects limitations. It’s really to take an audience that may have allowed themselves to relax to be immediate brought back to an even higher anxiety level than the proceeding chase.
[+] [-] sangnoir|3 years ago|reply
Not true: they could have revealed the skeleton earlier and still have Arnie, e.g. via opening scenes set in the future, or via a Reese flashback (flash forward?), or showing the process of hybridizing the T1 before it was sent in time.
The articles argument seems congent to me: the movie FX and story reveals are carefully structured such that the terminator appears less human over time, until it is not human at all.
Add to this the fact that the T1's red-hued HUD is not shown early (this could have been shown with no loss of Arnie as the T1, but wasn't) shows that the robotic nature of the character was being intentionally being hidden at first.
[+] [-] simne|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HighChaparral|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tacticaldev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|3 years ago|reply
Actually, that's the biggest flaw "reveals"-wise for T2 in my opinion.
Robert Patrick plays his character as too robotic and even icky even before the reveal. He looks off, so people start wondering if he really is a "Kyle Reese" type or some enemy, perhaps robotic...
He should have been played the "cop" with more neutral maunerisms until the reveal, so that the reveal has bigger impact.
[+] [-] pjc50|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] type0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SergeAx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guilhas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bilsbie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runevault|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birdymcbird|3 years ago|reply
> “Terminator allows viewers to have a legitimate sense of discovery while watching the movie, to learn crucial plot details largely as Sarah learns them, which makes for very efficient storytelling.”
feel today interesting story points would get shown in trailer.
[+] [-] suction|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]