I will not be spending a whole lot of time on the film itself in this review as we have already done that here at Atomic Popcorn. What I want to focus on is the extras on this disc. Or should I say discs. This is a 3-disc set, including the ever-popular Digital Copy of the Movie. Below I want to outline what you can expect if you have yet to to see Terminator Salvation or are on the fence about purchasing it.
The Blu-ray:
Audio: The sound quality on this film is something that stands out in the transfer. The quality is above par and, thanks to the enormous special effects, we hear some outstanding things along the way. The explosions, the guns, the aircraft and their sounds all amaze in DTS-HD 5.1 sound.
While my TV is hooked up to a Bose sound system, the sound will come out just fine through regular TV speakers. This is because the film has a really great sound design, something one can easily overlook when seated in the theater; something that I think is often lacking in the design of the theaters themselves.
Commentaries: McG dives with us into the overly-immersive world of Terminator Salvation on this disc. You have several options such as Picture-In-Picture, Storyboard Comparisons and the all-too-cool Terminator Mythology Timeline. I honestly can say this is the first time I have actually watched all the extras on a disc, and these extras stand way out from the movie for me.
Focal Points:
Digital Destruction: This outlines the “guys in suits” and how the terminators are digitally transferred onto the actor in a stretchy suit. Pretty cool stuff.
Enlisting the Air Force: This little piece goes into how McG is a believer in building as much “real” into a movie as possible, using real helicopters, satellites etc. It makes for better explosions and action sequences.
Molten Metal and the Science of Simulation: This featurette dives into the scene of when the molten lava dumps on top of the Terminator: what went into it and how it became what we saw on the big screen.
Building the Gas Station: McG, as said above, believes in making as many things real as possible. The team behind the movie actually built a gas station and then took it apart structurally to make it blow up the way it needed to be. This was one of the cooler additions to this DVD.
Creating the VLA Attack: This is what it sounds like. How it’s done and how it looks in the raw form.
Exploding Serena’s Lab in Miniature: This was one of my favorites. This piece showed us how Skynet came down. The tale of all the intricacies of its structure is awesome. Glass — and lots of it — brings to life the explosion of the lab along with the blast that eliminates most of the city surrounding Skynet.
Hydrobots: This was my favorite extra. The details, the actual working models, these things are real! Knowing some of this stuff now makes me respect McG and the movie that much more.
An Icon Returns: I’d rather just skip this altogether because this detracted from the film in many ways. This goes into how they brought a 1980′s Arnold back to the screen. It’s terrible but they show it.
Terminator Factory: At this point things are starting to overlap from segments we watched earlier. The same interviews with Stan Winston’s guys and even some of the on-set props we saw. It was cool to see how they actually made the factory and so forth but it was something we saw earlier in bits and pieces.
Stan Winston Shop: This outlines who made what and how they went about making it. More of a name-dropping piece than anything else.
Napalm Blast: Now this was impressive, all of the gallons of gas, the triggers, the blast radius, the one-time shot. This was a great scene and ever better knowing it was real.
Reforging the Future: This was a montage of everything from above plus a few extras. Watch this first if you want to get an overall look at the above.
The Moto-Terminator: From a real Ducati to an digital enhanced driver, this bike was a real bike that they molded from a Ducati frame. Awesome stuff these guys did.
Overall Conclusion: The Blu-ray’s transfer/audio are top-notch, and the extras are something to watch. In my opinion they bring the movie up a notch from what it was. Still not so much a movie that will stand the test of time on its own, but these extras will will give it a lot more mileage!
