Vintage Collectibles/First Experience Part II: Terminator 2: Judgment Day/1992 European VHS Tape and More
What's interesting about Terminator 2: Judgment Day, is that almost every country had their own unique promotion for it and in some cases even unique merch. For example, South America had two companies, Jocsa and Cromy, which produced T2 merchandise that wasn't available anywhere else. Or, as another example, Germany had T2 bubble gums by a company called Dunkin. So I wanted to write about the experience of the movie's release from a different perspective, and that's that of being in Europe at the time, in a country that got it last according to imdb (although, I'd argue that information). Good buddy of mine, and a fellow T2 knucklehead, Casey from the excellent Tfor2 Show, made 'T2 in different cultures' an interesting subject (such as in France and Japan), so maybe I can too (see what I did there?)
While for the vast majority of the world, the theatrical release date of the mighty T2, Terminator 2: Judgment Day was in 1991, where I was born, it didn't hit theaters until 1992! One of the last countries to get it in its original run. I was born and raised in Poland, and lived there until the age of 17. In the early 90's, Poland had left the shadows of the Eastern European influence and the western pop culture came flooding in. DC and Marvel comics came knocking, as did all the popular US TV shows and movies for young and old. VHS rental places opened all over the place, guaranteed a crowd every weekend, and the US comic books were one of the best selling "magazines" in the country for years ahead.
While we had to wait for T2 many months longer, we were fully aware of the film when it was scoring world records across the globe everywhere else. See, the buildup for T2 was unintentionally, in a way, larger than anywhere else, and that's all because of that delay. We not only had the waiting time that west and US had plus more, but we got to see how everyone was going crazy for it and praising it as being an event in movie history, a mind blowing record breaker for months until we could experience it.
The first time I was made aware of T2's existence and its plot was through a, at the time, very popular European pop culture magazine called Popcorn. And that was an issue from November of 1991 (saved scraps of it and described the experience of it HERE). This is when I first read about the plot, saw photos from the film and found out about the 'twist' of the T-800 being a defender this time around. For me that was such a shocker I just sat there frozen staring at the photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Fat Boy bike, trying to process that idea. I found it fascinating and completely unexpected. Don't ask how, but I had never seen or heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger at that point other than seeing him in the first film (an experience described HERE), so imagining him as a good character was that much more of a shocker. Of course after T2 came out, Arnold films were everywhere and were flying off the shelves in Poland.
From the very same, double paged feature article, I also found out that the film was breaking records everywhere. The article starts with
The most expensive movie of all time is breaking every record! None of the films produced for mass entertainment can match it. Thanks to the use of the newest computer animation technology and a gigantic financial backup, an important step towards the cinema of the future has been taken.
Add to that the mind blowing images, among which you could see Arnold with the exposed endoarm and the T-1000 in its liquid form, and you know right there and then that something special just happened in movie history. And that was just the beginning - the media coverage didn't stop there and continued on up to the film's release sometime in '92! (as to why am I saying 'sometime', I'll get to that later). And mind you, in a country where movie promotion and hyping was new, it was still very new and fresh to everyone (Tim Burton's Batman also received quite a promotion though) so it was that much more impactful
From now, every entertainment magazine had some feature on T2. Every teen magazine had posters, cards, pinups or stickers - which made me insanely happy since that was the only merchandise available for us at the time
An interesting note - in US, nearly, if not all promotional photos and pics printed in magazines were from the "blue" session - a photo session from which the film's poster came from. In Europe, almost all photos of Arnold were from a "fiery" photosession with flame colored background
The coverage in early 1992 was just as extensive as it was in the previous year. The press coverage was massive. Special articles were being featured in entertainment magazines (one really cool showcasing abilities of T-800 and T-1000 on separate pages, and I showed it HERE), and kept the interest and anticipation going.
The February 1992 article in teen Bravo magazine starts with this:
"More than 4 Million viewers had already seen this breath taking movie. (...)
For the last few weeks two robots in human form guarantee the highest tension and sold out screenings.
I also had access to plenty of magazines from the neighboring Germany, so that meant more pinups, more posters, more photos from articles I couldn't read.
The whole thing with the hype machine working for a full year and a longer buildup to the premiere wasn't some clever marketing plan thought, and it was all a byproduct of reprinting magazines from Germany. What gave T2 a heavy coverage in Poland in late 1991 were the entertainment magazines, predominantly the aforementioned Bravo and Popcorn, and they were simply word by word translations of their German counterparts. So T2 was triumphing in German theaters and naturally gathering all the press, and all the articles got translated and reprinted in the Polish versions. However, all the other Polish media did start the hype machine in January of 1992
The interesting thing is that, since from the first reports and publications about half a year for the film to hit Polish theaters, there was no official translation yet, so the translations of the subtitle was up to each publication. That way, there are at least 4 different Polish titles for the film. Popcorn Magazine translated the title as Terminator 2: Deciding Match, Bravo Magazine printed the title as Terminator 2: Day of Paybacks.
As early as January of 1992, the T2 posters with the "coming soon to theaters" tagline appeared in magazines, but the subtitle was not translated.
The film hit the theaters and subsequent video releases officially as Terminator 2: Final Match. Nowadays it's official translation is indeed Judgment Day. However, 'Judgment Day" subtitle did not come as a sudden revelation of incorrect translation - since Jonathan Mostow's film was announced in 2003, the title "The Final Match" did not really fit anymore so the movie finally got a direct translation to 'Judgment Day' (interestingly, as a side note, in Poland, James Cameron's Aliens received a subtitle, because there isn't a plural word for Alien in Polish. So it's known over there as Aliens: Deciding Clash, somewhat similar subtitle to that of T2)
So T2 came out as Terminator 2: Final Match, but interestingly, even its tag line was changed from "It's Nothing Personal" to "In the name of Justice" for some reason...
While the movie took an extra months to hit theaters than in most other European countries, it was already available on VHS in the same summer of '92! It was long before there was any possibility of purchasing movies, so the VHS rental places were always packed and T2 was an absolute smash hit that was flying off the shelves. Magazines showed T2 as no.1 in video rentals right away, and that was something everyone had felt.
Once T2 appeared in Poland, it was on everyone's tongue. Adults around and older siblings of mine and my friends were talking about it, everyone wanted to see it and those who did were so ecstatic about it that you couldn't wait to see it even more. So why didn't we? The movie was constantly being rented and unavailable all over. Even in big, multistory VHS renting places you had to sign up to be in line to get a copy and that continued for weeks! A friend of my teenage sister managed to get it because her father was a cop, and subtly used that fact to move up in line. Since her family rented it for 2 days, she gave it to us after they saw it on the first day so we could see it on the second. Entire family gathered around that late summer evening to experience the already legendary T2, and we were as wowed as everyone else.
Below are few screencaps from the first VHS release of T2 in Poland by Imperial Entertainment. Now, you might ask why am I posting screenshots from a VHS tape while everyone has the film on Bluray or DVD. Well, the screenshots are meant to show the aspect ratio (It's standard 4:3) and the color timing for the curious ones, as it does differ on many releases (See HERE). The night scenes look close to the first worldwide VHS versions, although the screenshots I have are from a copy with slightly washed colors. But I did see scenes from other copies and the look of this version reflects the look of the film on any other standard VHS I’d say. Color wise, most of it seems to match Skynet Edition bluray most with its purple tint in some scenes, but perhaps due to the stronger reds on VHS? Yet in some scenes the blue is untinted and soft. It’s also interesting to see it in that aspect ratio nowadays
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was shot on Super 35, which means, a larger image was captured so it can be refitted to different formats later. So, for example, for a near-square TV set, they didn't just chop the sides from the widescreen format, they actually reframed each shot and the square format reveals more footage. Visual example:
Here's an aspect ratio comparison between this VHS and the Skynet Edition or 4K/3D bluray for the curious ones. As you can also see, the colors are pretty close to the Skynet Edition.
Interestingly, some VFX shots aren't expanded
Anyway, back to 1992:
After I finally saw the movie I revisited all the magazines I had, took out the posters, stickers and any articles with T2 I could find. The film blew audiences away all over the world. Its release on video was a cover feature in many magazines
My first piece of merchandise was a sticker from November '91 issue of Popcorn, which had the iconic promotional image that was heavily used in US, but only scarcely in Europe (and at the time of the release only three times in Poland, including this sticker). I thought that image is the coolest thing ever, and I still think it's arguably the best promo movie imagery out there
The film's release on VHS (movie theaters weren't yet that popular really, and the cost of admission was equivalent to renting about 7 movies on VHS) was also heavily promoted by its Polish distributor, Imperial Entertainment. Other than full page ads in magazines, they also produced T2 plastic bags. So that's the unique promo item from Poland (nearly each country has some)
I also always loved, even back then, the contrast between this gigantic sequel and the original. While the first one kind of passed under the radar there (my friends didn't believe there was a first film and argued the '2' in T2' stood for the number of Terminators in the film) and aside from one tiny corner rental place, the first movie was unavailable in all VHS rental places, even the big chain ones, while the sequel was the most expensive movie ever made, film history changer, and a phenomenon everyone of every age and gender wanted to witness. Everybody knew it and it was available prominently to rent everywhere.
The press, especially German one, kept T2 heavily in public eye for at least an entire year after the movie's release, by including multiple posters and updates on Arnold, Eddie, Linda and Robert
It has become and remained my all time favorite film and engraved the name James Cameron in my mind, especially since the very same year I saw magazine articles about him. Up until the late 90's I was an absolute diehard fan, watching it regularly. Then of course, when life gets busier, you switch schools, you move to another continent, you go to college, start work, become adult - those passions sit comfortably more or less on a backburner until you settle down and finally have a chance to revisit them as a completely different person. And while 95% of the movies I loved so much as a kid were completely underwhelming (and some even better than I remembered, such as Jaws or Jurassic Park), and the so called nostalgia films were mostly either cringeworthy or average at best, T2 blew me away yet again just as much as when I first witnessed it, but for (mostly) different reasons. I was blown away by the epic scale and feel of the film, it's human story, characters, it's look - the stunning Oscar nominated cinematography of an Oscar winning Adam Greenberg just continued to take my breath away the more I studied it. The symbolism of the film, the visual subliminal storytelling, its pace, the shots, the music. This film feels like an epic journey, it feels like you're part of that 3 day story. You can almost feel a breeze, a breath of wind during the scenes in which Sarah reflects back, watching the Salceda family. It's an Epic that continues to wow new generations and continues to impact pop culture. I showcased the film's highlights HERE
T2 even taught me English. How? Well, in Poland at the time, the voices of the actors weren't replaced by the native actors as they were in Western countries. Instead, a narrator read the dialogue over the original audio which for me is much better than having some foreign actors replacing the original voices and changing the performances. It sounds comical. The best thing about the narrator is that you could hear most of the original dialogue so you were able to hear the original and the narrator translating it. If you knew the film by memory, you knew it by memory in two languages, and with a 2 hour worth of dialogue, your English was actually pretty good. The narrator voice was also pretty good, as he sounded very much like the trailer guy Don LaFontaine, and he was the most prominent narrator/voiceover in the country.
Poland also got the comic book adaptation and Randall Frakes' novelization. The comic adaptation, weirdly enough, was titled "Terminator: Day of Final Judgment" and was of course a reprint of the Marvel Comic. The Novelization did have correct translation as the only T2 related media at the time, and was simply translated to "Terminator 2: Judgment Day". But, as always with everything those days, there is something odd about it. The cover is a painting of the Terminator shooting the minigun in the Cyberdyne window. But it seems like its a painting done on the actual photo, and bizarrely only Terminator's head, arm and the fire from the minigun are painted (and a floating head above)
Now on to the issue of it its release date in Polish theaters. So imdb and Wikipedia all have May 1992 listed as Polish premiere date. I'm confident that is not correct. First of all, it is documented, as shown above, that as of June of 1992 T2 was the most rented VHS in Poland, so it was already on VHS prior to the publication, which would point out May as the release date of the VHS in Poland, as oppose to the theatrical release. We know for sure it was on VHS at some point by the time June rolled in, so it went from theaters to VHS in less than a month? Unlikely.
The other thing that didn't gel was that all the reviews of the film by Polish critics in various Polish magazines were all in February 1992 issues. Some magazines from January 1992 has T2 promoted as "coming soon to theaters", and back then it took a while for the magazines to get to the press, so my guess would be that T2 premiered in January of 1992, that's why in February issues every magazine had a review on it. After digging further I found a photo of a theater showing T2 during its original Polish theatrical run, and you can clearly see it was indeed taken during winter. So there you go, it all makes sense now
The cover for Terminator 2: Judgment Day on VHS didn't really change much anywhere in the world. As far as the original releases, Italy had the poster drawn instead of photographed, and UK had a T-1000 edition but that's it. So the Polish version is nearly identical to the US one (sans two different images on the back, mirror imaged), other than having clamshell like every VHS there. I'm not gonna translate the back of the tape because it's a word for word copy of what's on the standard US version. Since the film was such a huge hit with great promotion, there were tons of copies circulating in the country, so they're neither hard to find nor expensive.
