That chrome-boned monster just won't die! That's right, THE TERMINATOR is back in yet another Blu-ray release, this time in a rather skeletal Digibook edition which arrived on store shelves May 10th. Viewers of this new packaging will find nothing new inside save for the 25-page collectible booklet/storage unit, but MGM/Fox Home Entertainment's release pales in comparison to the in-depth, fan-pleasing TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY Skynet Edition on Blu-ray that we reviewed exactly two years ago today.

This 2011 Limited Edition Digibook Blu-ray can serve as a suitable entry-level start for the few remaining humans not familiar with THE TERMINATOR film franchise, and if that demographic doesn't want a lot of bonus features cluttering their disc menu, then MGM/Fox's single-disc edition fits that bill for certain.

HE SAID HE'LL BE BACK Unless you've been living under the rubble of humanity after Judgment Day, you already know the riveting story and legendary success of director James Cameron's apocalyptic time travel tale THE TERMINATOR: a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from the future is sent back in time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), a very inauspicious waitress who is destined to one day give birth to her son John. Skynet, a self-aware AI defense system, overrides its human control and launches a nuclear war in 1997 to exterminate mankind to protect itself. A survivor of the atomic holocaust, John Connor will grow up to lead humanity in overthrowing Skynet in the year 2029. The film's plot focuses on Sarah Connor's fight for survival against the Terminator, assisted by a human soldier, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), sent back in time by John Connor to save his mother's life before he's even born. The time travel loops in logic and paradoxes resulting from these two throwbacks from the future have indeed fueled the TERMINATOR movie franchise for over three decades now and counting. Cameron and producer/co-writer Gale Anne Hurd devised an incredibly tight, tense and suspenseful script, giving the film a huge boost in production value and storytelling complexity which audiences embraced with geeky glee. Even when the film becomes one prolonged chase to the death, with surprise twists along the way, fans and critics held on white-knuckled for the ride. After three feature film sequels and a TV series spin-off, the prophecy has become self-fulfilling: THE TERMINATOR will not die.

BLU-RAY PRESENTATION

As expected, this MGM/Fox Blu-ray edition preserves THE TERMINATOR's original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio which fills a 16x9 screen for viewing. Alas, this re-release offers nothing new in terms of its high-definition 1080p transfer, simply repeating the existing, passable but hardly thrilling conversion which has already been burned onto Blu discs three times before it. Given the film's age and film stock limitations of a 1984 low-budget sci-fi action flick, never intended at the time to be a franchise launching classic by anyone but Cameron's wildest dreams, the image is still a bit buddy even if only in terms of how well similar films (like T2 for the 2009 Skynet Edition) have been upgraded for Blu-ray distribution.

Credit should be paid accordingly to director Cameron and cinematographer Adam Greenberg for shooting the film with such a dynamic conceptual eye and visual palette, which made the movie look far better than expected from its meager budget, a dividend which truly pays off now in the HD era to yield surprising results in lieu of an outright high-def transformation to create the ultimate edition. Still, in some scenes with Sarah and Reese on the run at night, the color values get a bit drab instead of dramatic, yet harsh conversion conditions like Sarah's hideout in the foggy, dim Tech Noir club show surprisingly few visual distractions. The come-and-go grain of the film stock, most evident in underlit night shots, play into the Blu-conversion cliche of "lending a gritty atmosphere" to the action... which would be a flimsy excuse if it weren't so often true. All hail the analog glories of film stock for an image you can sink your teeth into!

In all fairness, this MGM/Fox edition is no worse than prior versions either, but franchise devotees may wonder why the studios didn't hold off re-releasing the title without a new, 21st Century-worthy BD enhanced version which would guarantee sales. We can only suppose that MGM's recent financial woes (and surprising recovery from same) may have prevented a big-budget overhaul of the title on Blu-ray — that and the constant battles, sales and buyouts of the TERMINATOR franchise rights may have complicated matters as well, since neither MGM nor Fox had any participation in the THE TERMINATOR's theatrical genesis in the first place.

What was once considered top-of-the-line audio treatment, THE TERMINATOR now lags behind the industry standard by perpetuating its outdated PCM 5.1 uncompressed English audio track. Again, it works for this non-upgraded film transfer and a good sound system will deliver the intended punch mixed for this version, considering the original track was mono to begin with.

DIGIBOOK AND BONUS FEATURES

Similar to the film's revisited transfer limitations, this Blu-ray edition offers three making-of featurettes which all viewers except first-timers will have seen (and perhaps enjoyed) before:

• Creating The Terminator: Visual Effects & Music - the title along betrays the age of this bonus feature, as two staples of Blu-ray era featurettes are combined into one 13-minute extra. The standard-definition mini-doc has been reformatted to fit an HD screen for 16x9 viewing, though the visual quality doesn't suffer too badly considering. The making-of content is substantial in behind-the-scenes materials, with a solid emphasis on the miniature work shot for the opening Judgment Day battle scenes and the climactic tanker explosion. Gene Warren Jr., the Fantasy II visual effects supervisor, and pyrotechnician Joe VIskocil host much of the segment, describing their own tasks to integrate their miniature shots seamlessly with live-action foregrounds or location footage from the main unit. Producer/co-writer Hurd sets up the remaining five minutes featuring composer Brad Fiedel and the challenges he faced turning his synth score into the "Heartbeat of a Machine," as the segment title states. This is the meatiest making-of bonus offered on the disc, so savor its retro-styled nutrition while you can.
  
  
• Terminator: A Retrospective is a bit of a misnomer, since this 20-minute featurette dates back entirely to a vintage conversation with director Cameron and star Schwarzenegger, reminiscing (with little probing insights) into their backstory of the film's genesis and their personal experiences while making it. Their seemingly casual chat clearly leans in Arnold's direction as the iconic figurehead of the film, whose career was skyrocketing beyond THE TERMINATOR by this time. Cameron spends so much time asking for his star's recollections, that the featurette cuts in an even earlier interview circa 1984 with the young (bearded) director just to give Cameron some answer time of his own. Those who appreciate old school electronic press kit videos may dig this retrospective, but others will find it as dated and outmoded as Skynet considers humans in our century.
  
  
• 7 Deleted Scenes offer the obligatory glimpses (nearly 10 minutes' worth) of moments cut from the final film, most of which prove themselves rightly omitted as sidebar filling which had to end up on the floor to maintain the thriller's relentless, mechanically menacing pace. The seven scenes are listed as: Wholesome Sarah (a waitress' self-motivating moment), Wrong Sarah (briefly extends the death scene of the first victim of the T-800 pointlessly), Lt. Traxler's Arc (would have given actor Paul Winfield more screen time but no character enhancement), Sarah Fights Back (as Sarah plots to destroy Cyberdyne before it can invent Skynet, a plot precursor to the events of TERMINATOR 2), Making Bombs (extends the pipe bomb building scene as Sarah imagines introducing Reese to her world which he never knew), Tickling Reese (a post-lovemaking moment attempting to reveal more of Reese's human side), and The Factory (in which two Cyberdyne employees find the T-800's processor chip in the explosion aftermath and Sarah is driven away in an ambulance).

• The Digibook insert offers 25 pages of glossy film images, quotes, essays and bio material, effective replicating standard publicity materials in a highly condenses, slickly printed format. Richard Tanne's bio-essay James Cameron: Cinematic Terminator spends most of its five scant pages of text recapping the director's personal biography and career prior to THE TERMINATOR. Safe to say this effort is quite redundant when focusing on the self-proclaimed "king of the world" post-TITANIC, and one of the most visible making-of directors in Hollywood history. Suffice it to say Tanne's prose sketch of the filmmaker will teach little if anything about THE TERMINATOR's creation or legacy beyond what even the most casual fans already know. Cast bios of Schwarzenegger, Biehn and Hamilton follow in minimalist form, and the Terminator Trivia page consists mostly of factoids about the film which could easily be replicated spending two minutes viewing the film's trivia entries on IMDB. MGM/Fox did the same thing with their recent BD release of THE USUAL SUSPECTS, which belies some of the bare-minimum efforts put into their rather unoriginal repackaging of a cinema classic. Travis Baker's essay Tech Noir: The Dark Side of Techno is easily the best read in the Digibook, both in style and content, though given its limited page space, its analysis of the films many underlying themes never graduate beyond a superficial skimming of its depths.
  

REVIEW SUMMARY

THE TERMINATOR is back on Blu-ray again, though with little new to distinguish this Digibook Limited Edition as must-own material for anyone beyond the neophyte viewer or the die-hard collector of the film franchise. Cameron's cracking good sci-fi thriller remains a spellbinding spectacle despite its humble production origins, proving that even a low-budget action flick can rise to the challenge of its visionary creator, and FilmEdge finds no fault with the product even 30-plus years later. The movie's 5-star rating suffers a 2-star deduction for the lack of Blu-ray transfer upgrade to 21st century audio-visual standards (which this classic so richly deserves), its skimpy sampling of vintage standard-def bonus features, and the lightweight content of its glossy but hardly engrossing Digibook insert. FilmEdge regrets to rate this all-too limited Blu-ray release with 3 stars earned on the sheer power of its feature film re-issue.