He promised us.

And now, 26 years later, he’s delivering in glorious hi-tech, hi-spectacle Arnie style.

With great fondness, not to mention an unapolegetically nostalgic glint in my eye, and lavishing words I’m tempted to suggest only a true cinephile would ever muster, I recall, like it was only before lunch, the day back in ’91 I first beheld this movie.

Hunkered down in the 7th row in a pre-cuptray era upholstered seat, my head tilted up all the while to the big screen with five mates from my old school days alongside me, I had no idea at the time what I was about to see unfold before me would leave every previous movie I’d ever seen, to that point in my life, in its entirely gob-smacking wake.

That day, I and everyone else in that cinema, were transported to an eye-popping liquid-metal-themed dimension as we bore witness to never-before-seen moments in movie-making technique. I knew at the time what I was seeing were things no human being had ever seen in a movie theatre before. When the whole mind-shatteringly stunning shebang was over, I insisted on staying until the very last credits (and they were a longin!) simply because I was too mesmerised to move.

James Cameron’s cinematic tour de force was the film that first introduced commercial audiences to the imagination-bending look of fully realised ‘morhping’ effects, seen later that same year in Michael Jackson’s music video ‘Black or White’. History may record the movie Willow (1988) as the film that first employed detailed digital morphing, but Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the true red-carpet unveiling. When the Oscars that year were handed out for Best Visual Effects there was this movie and shining daylight second. For back in the day, this was as flash as a Polynesian rat with a gold tooth.

Now I’ve revealed myself for the tragically devoted fan of the original movie I am (or is it more the memory of the original I’m in awe of ?) here’s what’s doing.

In a move that will no doubt bring lighthouse smiles to the faces of many that were there on the frontline back in ’91, cinemas around the country and worldwide are showing a newly put together 3D version of this sci-fi action movie treasure. In Brisbane, Event Cinemas are playing host for, as they say, “a strictly limited season”.

In what is seen by some as a move to tide film-goers over until the release of Cameron’s Avatar 2 (rumoured to be using 3D filming technology that won’t require audiences to wear glasses), it definitely puts the Cameron brand back on display in the interim. The original Avatar (2009) for me was like death by a thousand cuts (ie. it was dissapointing to the point of painful) so this new incarnation of Arnie at his peak will possibly be my gift to myself. That is if I decide to chance tarnishing the memory of the original by actually going along to see it.

Ps. A special thought for the King of Comedy Jerry Lewis, who passed away this week, aged 91. His film WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT (1970) is still my all-time favourite comedy. R.I.P. Jerry Lewis.

Remember him here

And here