Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

Video 4/5

Filmed in Super-35, the 2.4:1 picture is encoded in VC-1 video and looks amazing for the most part but lacks any really astonishing depth in darker scenes. Thankfully there are only a few. The rest of the movie looks crystal clear and is especially impressive when many different colors splash across the screen at once (usually in the Terminator POV shots). Some grain is evident in a couple of scenes and a couple are also a bit soft, but this is otherwise a great transfer that really shows of the special effects and CGI very well.

Audio 4.5/5

The Dolby Digital Plus sound design fills your living room with audio carnage. Deep bass and surrounds are pretty aggressive and the whole film is filled with millions of sound effects that’ll come at you from all sides. Marco Beltrami’s generic as all hell score sounds pretty good when he’s only doing atmospheric cues but the trudging, dull action music comes through clear as a bell in all its boring glory. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I am not really sure. He only does the iconic Terminator theme over the end credits! What’s the deal with that? A pretty damn good sound design anyway.

Extras 4.5/5

There are two group commentaries and one with director Jonathan Mostow on his own. The group commentaries are tacked together from different interviews but it comes together well. But commentaries usually bore me and there was nothing particularly interesting about either of them to make them stand out from the rest.

The IME (that’s In Movie Experience) is kind of like a commentary that you watch. As the movie plays, a small box will appear at various corners of the screen with either the director or producers, cast and crew talking about the scene or some other part of the filmmaking process. I actually prefer these to commentaries. But it does fall into that typical commentary trap of falling silent and just watching the movie every now and again.

The ‘Sgt. Candy’ scene is an amusing deleted scene in which we see why all T-800s look and sound like Arnie. It would be fun to have it in the movie but almost impossible to keep it in context.

The ‘HBO First Look’ documentary is a 13-minute promotional fluff piece that superficially skims over the production of the film. Barely interesting. Check out the IME instead.

We also get an introduction by Arnie. How nice of him. And…what’s the point of it again?

The ‘Terminal Flaws’ gag reel offers three minutes of slightly amusing flubs that will raise a smile instead of making you laugh like a madman. If THIS is as funny as the shoot got, it must have seriously depressing the rest of the time.

‘Dressed to Kill’ is a two-minute clip of the ideas for the wardrobe of the Terminator characters. Utterly pointless and really should have been part of the main featurette.

The ‘Toys in Action’ featurette focuses on Todd McFarlane’s (he who created Spawn) action figures of iconic movie characters. Most of you will have seen one of his ‘Movie Maniacs’ dolls at some point as they are quite popular. Here we get to see the process of created Terminator toys. Quite fun.

‘The Making of the Video Game’ featurette offers a five-minute look at how the dated, four-year-old, spin-off was put together for the obsolete PS2 and Xbox consoles.

Storyboard galleries (bo-oring) and a couple of trailers fill out the rest of the T3 extras. There are apparently some Easter Eggs according to the packaging. But I have yet to find any.