What can be said about The Terminator? If you someone haven't seen the 1984 sci-fi action classic debut by James Cameron (no one counts Piranha II as a real debut, so stuff it, pedants) which elevated Arnold Schwarzenegger to even higher orbit of stardom and spawned five sequels, a TV series and an anime series, in the past 40 years, then I can't help your cultural deprivation much more than to say get on to watching it NOW.
If you need a recap, here's the expanded TV Guide listing: A cyborg from the future, the Terminator (Ahnuld), is sent back in time to find and kill a young waitress, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), because her yet-to-be-born son, John, will lead the human resistance against the machines. Kill her, no resistance. Also back from the future is a soldier, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), sent by John to protect his mother. Many chase hijinks ensue.
What could've been a disposable trash B-movie is elevated by Cameron's writing & sharp directorial chops. There's a reason Sarah Connor is in the Pantheon of Bad-Ass Movie Chicks along with Princess Leia and Ellen Ripley, who Cameron would further iconize in his next film, Aliens. While her evolution into her bad-ass final form would wait until 1991's Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the groundwork of this scared young woman facing down on unstoppable robot killing machine was laid here. We care about this girl and feel for the doomed soldier on a one-way mission to save the future.
The recent remastering of Cameron's catalog has been a source of great controversy among collectors and purists, triggering an uncalled for attack on them from Cameron himself. Just like George Lucas, Cameron has an issue with the technical limitations of how his movies were film, specifically the film grain of the Super 35 format. So he used Peter Jackson's Park Road Post and their AI-powered digital noise reduction and upscaling tech to remove much of the film grain and then restore lost details with AI which led to endless still frames where overly-sharpened and weird-looking faces and details being posted online.
When in motion these processes don't look as horribly bad as some have made out by the stills, but there is definitely a difference that sometimes isn't good. Adding insult was the fact that two of Cameron's movies, The Abyss and True Lies had never been even released in anamorphic DVD (the 16:9 "enhanced for widescreen TVs" format meaning that these movies on a modern TV, the movie play with black bars on all sides in low resolution), much less Blu-ray, so for the movies fans have been begging for two decades were finally here and adulterated.
While Terminator 2 is one of the worst 4K releases ever (I think I have every previous release of it and I refused to buy what should've been an instant "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" sale), the general consensus has been that of the remasters, The Abyss fared best; Aliens is OK, but some caveats; and True Lies is very problematic especially with people looking waxy and rubbery due to DNR scrubbing away pore detail. This is why I decided to just go with $5 sale copies on digital 4K rather than the $40 disc releases when there aren't many new extras that we're out before.
Fortunately, The Terminator on iTunes 4K falls towards the good end of the transfer spectrum with clear details in hair and fabrics and the Dolby Vision grade offers some good pop for a film that mostly occurs at night. The clarity can emphasized the few ropy special effects shots like the obvious prosthetic head used when Termie cuts out his eye, exposing the camera underneath, but that's the source. The Atmos sound mix offers some good overhead usage when HKs and helicopters fly overhead, but the gunshot foley sound is canned and stock. Again, that's source related.
On the extras front, it's rather slim pickings though it includes a retrospective piece that was omitted from the physical release for some reason. There are a handful of deleted scenes which don't add too much, though one extends the scene where Sarah calls her mother (or so she thinks) then proposes to Reese that they go and blow up Cyberdyne Systems, an idea which would be revisited in T2. Biehn's acting is a little rough in one point and I can see why Cameron cut it to keep the action going.
Retrospective pieces from previous releases go into the VFX and score with their respective creators and has Cameron and Ahnuld kibitzing about how great it was to make the movie. Rounding things out are two Q&As taped in conjunction with 30th Anniversary screenings in 2014, one with Cameron alone and the other with his producer (and ex-wife) Gale Ann Hurd who at the time was heading into the fifth season of her show The Walking Dead.
There is some overlap between the two, but also a lot a great stories like how Roger Corman fired Cameron from a production design gig for working too hard on making the sets right before the crew arrived. The solo interview drifts somewhat into questions about Avatar, but it's fascinating to hear him discussing how he was handling the sequels at a point five years after the first one blew out the box office, yet still eight years before Avatar: The Way of Water would arrive.
Long review short, The Terminator is a seminal sci-fi/action classic that launched the career of one of the most successful filmmakers in history and with a good 4K transfer and sound, it's a bargain at twice the price (but still wait for it to go on sale for five bucks).
Score: 8.5/10. Buy it.
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