‘T2 Special Edition’ Adds Dimension, Power to Original

Laser-disc companies keep trying to top each other with more of everything: sound, picture, story, supplemental material, even packaging.

So it’s no surprise that “Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a Special Edition” from Pioneer LDCA, the latest entry in this sweepstakes, offers one of the most overwhelming laser packages yet, all wrapped in a leather case that comes with a $120 price tag.

This 152-minute “T2” could almost be called “T2 1/2.” Director James Cameron has added 15 minutes of footage neatly edited into what is now a new version of the film. When combined with the clarity of THX sound and picture, even with a modest surround-sound system, it’s an experience no one who enjoyed the film in its original theatrical release will want to miss. In one spectacular scene, a nuclear firestorm starts in the front speakers, rolls over you to the back speakers and then engulfs you in a surround-sound nightmare.

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Cameron, who also produced an excellent, expanded laser version of “The Abyss,” clearly understands what possibilities this technology offers filmmakers and capitalizes on it with a “T2” version that provides more than just a collection of outtakes. With the newly integrated footage, he offers an expanded vision of the film that adds dimension and elements that give it additional power and interest.

“I see it not as a fix, but as an opportunity to do greater justice to the characters who live and breathe within the 136-minute confines of the film,” he says. “This ‘Special Edition’ in no way invalidates the theatrical cut. It simply restores some depth and character made omissible by theatrical running time and now made viable again by the home theatrical/laser-disc format.”

Other restored and extended scenes add considerably to the story of two cyborgs sent from the future to alter it--one to save a youngster the other intends to destroy. This may be one time that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hype is warranted. His role as a single-minded cyborg, now on the side of good, seems tailor-made. One added scene, in fact, helps to “humanize” him a bit: Linda Hamilton (Sarah) and Edward Furlong (the son she protects for the future of humankind) performing surgery on his vulnerable Terminator “brain.”

Particularly fascinating among the extended scenes is one in the final confrontation in which the T-1000 cyborg (played by Robert Patrick, and a host of incredible special effects) finds his perfect chameleon-like functions glitching in and out of control.

The notes on restored scenes in the accompanying color brochure are well done, giving an explanation of each extended or added scene with chapter stops for easy access. Among them: the brutality of hospital orderlies toward Sarah (Chapter 10); a restored dream-nightmare sequence in which Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), John’s father who died at the end of the first “Terminator” film, returns to urge Sarah to remember her mission to protect her son (Chapter 13); an attempt to teach the Terminator how to smile (Chapter 40).

The re-edited film is offered in CLV (extended play), but the supplemental disc comes in CAV (standard speed, which offers freeze frame, slow motion, random access and faster scanning). The supplement features interviews with cast and crew, three minutes of footage not inserted in the restored film, storyboards, designs and artwork as well as the full shooting script, teasers and trailers. For many, the strongest draw will be a look at how the film’s astounding special effects were created.

As filmmaker Cameron says, special editions such as this “give viewers a choice between seeing a film as it was shown in the theater and seeing essentially a finished version of the initial conception of the movie. It’s a look behind the curtain on the creative process that got the filmmakers to the version of the film that was released; one can see the ideas that were being explored. It’s a good lesson for people who are interested in film to see what is necessary--and what is not--to tell a story.”

Laserbits

New Movies Just Out: “Cliffhanger” (Columbia TriStar, letterboxed, $40); “Life With Mikey” (Touchstone, letterboxed, $40); “Made in America” (Warner, letterboxed, $35); “Lost in Yonkers” (Columbia TriStar, $35)