Cinefex 47

by Jody Duncan

Seven years ago, writer-director James Cameron was an unknown entity with only an ultra-low-budget horror picture to his credit, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a world-class bodybuilder with a few less-than-world-class movies under his belt and Linda Hamilton was a young actress with a number of nondescript teen roles on her brief resume. The Terminator changed all that. A landmark science fiction film whose nonstop techno-action was punctuated with rare humor and an affecting love story, The Terminator was the impetus for major career breaks across the board. In the next half-dozen years, Cameron would become one of the hottest directors in Hollywood, Schwarzenegger would become the world's biggest boxoffice star and Hamilton would become the celebrated beauty of a cult television series. Though a sequel seemed inevitable, prospects for launching one were snarled in a spider's web of proprietary interests and legal entanglements until early 1990 when Carolco Pictures stepped in and cleared the way. Eighteen months later, after a grueling six-month shoot and an intense postproduction schedule, one of the biggest films in history was ready for release. Bringing magic to Terminator 2: Judgment Day was an army of effects people — most of them veterans of earlier Cameron productions. Stan Winston and company were responsible for Terminator makeups and animatronic puppetry. Dennis Muren supervised the creation of an advanced shape-shifting terminator at Industrial Light & Magic. Gene Warren of Fantasy II provided a major truck crash and a future war in miniature while Robert and Dennis Skotak of 4-Ward Productions wreaked nuclear havoc on Los Angeles. Video Image supplied 'Termovision' point-of-view material and Pacific Data Images performed some digital rescue work. The result was an epic foray into science fiction filmmaking.

Paperback

Published August 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jaysen Huculak · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a fan of VFX and the film highly recommended.

When Cinefex closed their doors this year I ordered this back issue as Terminator 2 is one of my all time favorite movies. This is one of the better written treatments on the special effects. Awesome to see that Doug Chiang of current Star Wars/Mandalorian etc. fame is represented in here and I always like reading from Dennis Muren. One of the things the shines in this is the dawn of the usage of CGI:
"I have felt very strongly that ILM should be the place to do this work," stated Dennis Muren. "We have been able to really focus on computer graphics, especially since The Abyss. And George Lucas has really supported it. All the way back to the second Star Wars movie, George said that digital was the way things were going to go. We've been doing this since the early eighties, and there have been a lot of changes in technology. For one thing, it is quite a bit faster; therefore it is less expensive. We have programs now - like looping on the monitor so you can loot at a full-color image over and over again - which are very important in getting these images to really work. You have to be able to look at them and react and change them over and over again until you've got your shot. Before this, the turn-around time was just too slow. We could have done almost everything we did for Terminator 2 five years ago - but it would have taken us five years to do it!"

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

From August 1991, this is a great read and thankfully (for me) spends more time on the practical effects than the CGI and so doesn’t suffer the modern Cinefex curse of people sitting around computer monitors and talking about particle simulations. Thoroughly researched and well-written - it’s always a treat to see Jody Duncan’s byline - this follows the production of “Terminator 2”, taking in the make-up and animatronics of the Stan Winston Studio, the future war and truck crash from Fantasy II, the miniature work on 4-Ward Productions (probably the most fascinating pieces of the lot) and the CGI of ILM under the supervision of Dennis Muren (who is always interesting). If you’re interested in special effects or “Terminator 2”, then this is a great read and I’d very much recommend it.