Terminator 2: Judgment Day was — and is, for some — the standard-bearer for bombastic tentpole motion movies after it was launched in 1991, however a lot of its followers have been lower than keen about its Blu-ray releases. Lately, although, individuals who love the film have been restoring it utilizing 35mm prints, and a type of efforts has been making the rounds over on X.
Jon W., who continuously posts about motion pictures and initiatives like these, compiled a few screenshots in a thread evaluating the brand new model with different transfers. They didn’t credit score the individual engaged on this instantly, however did post a screenshot of textual content from “the one who restored Terminator” — Googling a few of it verbatim led me to Rob’s Nostalgia Projects.
A giant a part of this effort is geared toward “fixing” the coloring of this film, which could be very muted all through — that was fairly widespread in quite a lot of motion pictures again then, particularly grim movies like Terminator 2 or Robocop. I’m undecided it’s an enchancment, however I do like a few of what’s seemingly aimed for right here.
Take the fan venture’s (prime) now-much-warmer shot from a scene during which Robert Patrick’s T-1000 questions some youths about John Connor’s whereabouts and different variations of the film. It makes the scene really feel extra prefer it’s set within the early morning or late night, which is smart given the lengthy shadows on this and different, adjoining sequences. I’ve at all times thought there are components of this film which can be too cold-looking for me, and this provides it some life it doesn’t in any other case have.
However there are quite a lot of locations it doesn’t work — as an example, the transition from these blue shadows to the sandy colours the place the solar hits the bottom is simply too harsh. Evaluating this shot to the decrease one from the Blu-ray, in addition to my nearly 30-year-old copy of The Final Version DVD, it looks as if the dustier brownish grey of these transfers is simply how director James Cameron wished it to look.
The fan model’s heavy-handed coloration additionally reveals up within the above shot, the place a lot of the element that was there earlier than finally ends up crushed in blown-out reds. However the Blu-Ray model of this scene has a weirdly salmon-colored pall that goes redder a number of moments later. Once more, I’m undecided it’s higher, however the fan model’s colours do really feel a little bit extra constant at instances.
Finally, the most important profit this switch provides the film, in my view, is letting the film be grainy. Folks complain that the Blu-ray transfers overuse digital nooise discount, leading to a kind of waxen look, and seeing the movie grain in 1080p is de facto comforting, by some means. It’s only a disgrace the colour grading feels so unpolished.
Nonetheless, I applaud efforts like this as a lot as I do the parents who introduced us the Star Wars theatrical restoration venture referred to as “The Silver Screen Edition,” which makes an attempt to ship the model of that film because it was proven in theaters initially earlier than it even had “Episode IV: A New Hope” added to the opening textual content crawl.
I may not desire this model of Terminator 2, however it’s nonetheless enjoyable to observe in the identical means that turning the colour saturation down on my TV simply to see how my shade motion pictures look in black and white is. Particularly once you’ve seen the identical film 100 instances, and also you simply need one thing a little bit totally different.