The Terminator: Special Edition/Gold Edition (1984) |
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The Terminator: Special Edition/Gold Edition (1984) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Science Fiction |
Booklet Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Anim & Audio Notes-James Cameron's Original 1982 Treatment Gallery-James Cameron Artwork (22) Gallery-Production Photographs (30) Gallery-Stan Winston: Terminator and Make-Up Effects (21) Gallery-Fantasy II: Visual Effects (24) Gallery-Publicity Materials (15) Featurette-Making Of-Making Of The Terminator: A Retrospective (18:10) Featurette-Other Voices (59:32) Deleted Scenes-7 Theatrical Trailer-3 TV Spots-2 DVD-ROM Extras-Screenplay 4th Draft, Original Treatment Script DVD-ROM Extras-Final Shooting Script |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1984 | ||
| Running Time | 102:45 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper |
RSDL (49:23) Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | James Cameron |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Twentieth Century Fox |
Starring |
Arnold Schwarzenegger Linda Hamilton Michael Biehn |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | Brad Fiedel |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None | English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) | |
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English English for the Hearing Impaired Dutch Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Portuguese Polish Greek Hungarian Hebrew Turkish |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
Kyle Reece (Michael Biehn) is the man who has been sent to protect Sarah from the machine, a Terminator (Cyberdyne Systems Model 101) played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. On the outside it looks human; living skin, blood, hair, and bad breath, but underneath is a microchip-controlled hyper-alloy combat chassis. Hmmm, I think I may have watched this movie one too many times, since I was able to rattle that off without having the movie playing in front of me!
The question is - can Reece protect Sarah from the Terminator with the limited means and weapons of today.
I could go on and on, but for those few rare people out there who haven't seen The Terminator, I will stop there so that I don't give anything away and will let you discover the storyline for yourself. The Terminator is not just a sci-fi action flick, as it works on many levels giving it wide audience appeal. A true classic.
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer's sharpness and detail is amazing. It easily surpassed all of my expectations. The picture is extremely clear and sharp at all times, except for one short scene where the picture was a little soft, but I'm certainly not complaining. Just have a look at the background detail at 15:12. No low-level noise, edge enhancement or edge bleeding was noticed. Due to the wonderful sharpness and detail of the picture, its structure does become a little noticeable on fine, sharply-contrasted objects, like spectacle frames, but again it isn't anything to worry about. Indeed, the wonderful clarity of the picture allows you to see a production fault in the famous opening sequence where the word "Terminator" is scrolling across the screen.
The colour was excellent - beautifully saturated with great skin tones throughout. Pretty much perfect, in my humble opinion.
The grain content varies. On many, if not most of the darker scenes, there is a noticeable amount of background grain which was undoubtedly inherent in the source material. It tended to catch my eye a little, but strangely wasn't too bothersome. The most noticeable and distracting examples can be found at 0:40 - 0:55, 20:06 - 20:28, 21:58 - 22:58, 31:05, 33:30 and 70:20 - 70:38. On two occasions the background appeared to suffer from some minor pixelization, at 6:57 and 7:25, but it wasn't too distracting. The film grain is more than likely the cause of these two artefacts.
No other MPEG artefacts were noticed. This DVD shows how clean the picture can be when most of the 10Mb/s bitstream is reserved for video and is not taken up with lots of unnecessary audio tracks. Only three trivial instances of aliasing and moiré artefacts were noticed for the entire film. They are hardly worth mentioning, but I will anyway; 24:51 (moiré), 25:22 - 25:27 (moiré) and 49:27 (aliasing).
Film artefacts are the other area in which this transfer loses some marks. There is a reasonable sprinkling of small film artefacts throughout the movie. Mostly these are unobtrusive and not distracting, but there are a few that will catch your eye. The only six film artefacts that I consider worthy of a mention are at; 4:17, 13:03, 33:14, 33:23 and 99:50, of which the artefacts at 33:14 and 33:23 are the most detrimental to the picture, as they are in the form of a light black scratch that runs from the top of the picture to the bottom.
This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change placed between Chapters 15 and 16, at 49:23. The layer change is perfectly placed and is not at all disruptive to the movie, even though it was easily spotted.
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| Shadow Detail | |
| Colour | |
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| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
There is only one audio track on this DVD, which is a 448Kb/s Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and boy doesn't it sound good. Accolades and praise for the remastering team. Another plus is the fact that we get a 448Kb/s bitstream.
The dialogue was extremely clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie with no audio sync problems noticed, apart from one scene where the looped dialogue was inconsequentially out.
Brad Fiedel's musical score is a classic.
The surround channel use was excellent. They were very aggressively used for ambience, music and lots of special effects. Directional effects and precise sound placement within the sound field were the norm rather than the exception, which puts you right in the midst of the action at all times and not just during the action sequences. Excuse me while I just dodge a couple more of those bullets that are still flying around my lounge room. The sound placement and spatial integration across the front soundstage was also excellent. The stand-out highlight was the split rear use at 46:57 - 47:02.
The subwoofer is continually being used to add bass to most scenes and is extremely active during the dramatic sequences.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
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| Surround Channel Use | |
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| Overall | |
There are interviews with James Cameron (Director), Gale Anne Hurd (Producer), Bill Wisher (Ad-lib dialogue/Cameron Collaborator), Stan Winston (Make-up and Effects Creator), Gene Warren, Jr (Fantasy II VFX Supervisor), Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Joe Viskocil (Visual Effects Pyrotechnician), Mark Golblatt (Film Editor) and Brad Fiedel (Music Composer).
An important note for those who use a PC DVD-ROM as their DVD player. PowerDVD locks up when it reaches the main menu with this DVD. I had no problems with WinDVD.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Overall the video quality is very good, with only some grain and film artefacts lowering its quality.
The soundtrack is great, and only just falls short of reference quality.
There is a great selection of extras present, mostly of very good quality.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Sony DVP-725, using Component output |
| Display | Sony Projector VPH-G70 (No Line Doubler), Technics Da-Lite matt screen with gain of 1.0 (229cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Onkyo TX-DS989 |
| Speakers | Fronts: Energy RVS-1 (3), Rears: Energy RVSS-1 (2), Subwoofer: Energy EPS-150 (1) |