Blu Ray Review: Terminator: Salvation (2009)

Terminator Salvation: The Director's Cut
2009
118 minutes
Rated R
Available Tuesday, December 1st on DVD, Blu Ray, On Demand, and ITunes Download

by Scott Mendelson

Terminator Salvation is arguably the closest thing to non-stop action since The Mummy Returns. It opens in the thick of a military operation and barely slows down for its 115 minutes. Character development is almost non-existent and the picture relies on our prior knowledge of the previous Terminator pictures. The characters are paper thin and the film has obvious signs of tinkering. Ironically, for a film that constantly opines about the strength of the human heart, the film lacks the very heart and soul that brought humanity to the first three pictures. It is occasionally a first-rate action spectacle, but it is only the spectacle that merits recommendation. Full Theatrical Review (the director's cut makes no difference to the film's quality).

The Blu Ray:
The film looked spectacularly bleak when I saw it in theaters, and that bleached, gray hopeless image is repeated on the Blu Ray. The kind of perfection from this image is very different from the colorful nirvana of Star Trek or a Spider-Man picture, but it's beautiful in its own way. Since I don't have surround sound, the best I can say for the audio is that it was loud and crisp, with dialogue properly separated from sound effects at all times. The biggest extra of note is a three-minute longer 'director's cut'. Considering the 45 minutes of footage that was cut prior to the theatrical release, this is a pretty shabby turn from Warner. Even Universal put the infamous deleted footage from The Incredible Hulk on the DVD/Blu Ray as a separate supplemental.

Frankly, aside from a couple extra splashes of blood, I couldn't tell you what was different in the two versions (but movie-censorship.com can). The only other extras are two featurettes running about 30 minutes total and an In-Movie Experience, which is quickly taking the place of traditional commentaries at Warner Bros (unfortunately, this is available on the theatrical cut only). To be fair, it's actually a pretty solid movie-in-movie feature, as it runs pretty much nonstop with interviews, fly-on-the-wall footage, and director McG literally pausing the film and talking you through various sequences and reminding you that he's a pretty solid filmmaker (he loves long scenes that feel like a single take). And three cheers for Warner for providing English and French subtitles for the commentary portions as well as the feature. The total In-Movie gimmick runs about ten-minutes longer than the movie itself. The only portions available separately are the 'Focus Points', which run about 29 minutes combined. All in all, this smells like a candidate for an 'ultimate edition' double-dip within a couple years, hopefully with all of the missing footage either put back into the movie or offered as a bonus.