With the latest instalment in the Terminator saga (or franchise – depending on your point of view) out this week, Optimum Releasing have brought the best of films to Blu-ray coincide with its release. Terminator was a slightly depressing and scary film, but Terminator 2 offered a new hope when Arnie returned as the good guy, even if the other Terminator was practically indestructible. There really is no need for me to run through the story because if you haven’t seen it yet, well shame on you – and it’s on TV this week.
So why would you want to buy this Blu-ray version of an 18 year-old movie? Well it does have three versions of the film on one disc: the original theatrical cut, the Special Edition and an Extended Special Edition (an extra whole three minutes longer than the SE) and it does have the famed Blu-ray HD picture. Now, I have to say I’m still not overly convinced by the alleged increase in image quality of Blu-ray, especially on this disc. To my eyes (which ain’t what they used to be) there is not a marked difference between it and an upscaled DVD, which most Blu-ray players will do. New releases, especially those shot in HD, are going to be able to take full advantage of the system unless they are rescanned as Blade Runner was. The other big selling point of Blu-ray is the increased special features and interactivity. In the case of this release, most of them are just taken from the last DVD release and presented with new drop-down menus. Unfortunately I was unable to take full advantage of these features because the cleverly designed interface, made to resemble a Skynet system, needed a password to access most of them, which is on the packaging that was not supplied with the review disc, and the Blu-ray player connected to the internet, which mine isn’t. Although I could watch some of the extras can’t tell you what the rest of them are.
Just as there are some DVDs that took full advantage of the possibilities of the format, I’m sure we will see some amazing Blu-ray releases that will raise the bar of what can be done, and this release has tried, it was just a little too smart for its own good.
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY is out now on Blu-ray from Optimum Releasing and is available from major retailers including Amazon