For those fans who saw the recently released Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D Trailer; one of the noticeable tweaks/changes was that of stuntman Peter Kent digitally having his face mapped over with Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s for the drainage canal chase sequence in the movie…
Originally Peter Kent wore facial prosthetics (applied by Jeff Dawn and created by Stan Winston Studio) to give him the facial features and jaw line of Arnold Schwarzenegger to make audiences believe it was in fact Schwarzenegger’s Terminator T-800 character driving away from a tow truck explosion just mere meters away.
Peter Kent wore a special fire retardant back panel leather jacket to add extra protection from the heat blast, scenes which followed other notable stunts of Peter Kent jumping into the canal itself and doing a near miss crush against the canal wall before doing a side transfer to to lift Edward Furlong’s stunt double Bobby Porter for the character of John Connor from the dirt bike; all done on the back of a Harley Davidson.
We decided to ask stuntman, Peter Kent himself, how he felt about the face swapping technique which was used for Terminator 2: 3D and his statement is very amiable:
The original intent was to double him. That’s the job. The mask was originally used because back then as it was the only way to get closer to the Arnold look. Especially as that shot dwells for so long and the bike jump is also in slow motion. So it’s understandable that with newer technology those flaws might be cleaned up and made to reinforce the character better. I, and everyone else will always know it was me. It’s rated #9 of the all time greatest stunts in film by CNN, so I’m pretty proud to be included in such great company. I’m not sure about my truck transfer but as it’s a dark side shot perhaps Jim decided to save the money. This bike jump and tunnel escape etc is straight on.
So there we have it Terminator Fans; of course we will always know it was Peter Kent, but even Peter Kent himself feels that if this digital trickery reinforces the character of the T-800 with the available technology of today then it is a good thing in the great scheme of telling the Terminator story.
The truck transfer will also be digitally altered (Schwarzenegger face swap) according to Terminator Fan Daniel Yanez;- he wrote an TheTerminatorFans.com an honest review of T2 3D from the screenings he saw in Argentina!
It is also highly possible that had this technology been available to James Cameron in 1990/1991 that he would have used this type of technique for the stunt scenes back then.
While we have seen the internet stating that some fans might be outraged with James Cameron tweaking things, this could be the limit unless he has left a few surprises for fans which he did not address at the Terminator 2:3D Q&A at the Berlin Premiere of Terminator 2: 3D. What James Cameron has done with T23D is far from what George Lucas did with the original Star Wars remasters, Cameron is hardly CGI’ing characters into frames that were not there before or inter-splicing never before seen complete CGI rendered scenes into the movie, though Terminator is a different style of franchise and a different formula from Star Wars movies,- Mr Cameron thankfully has his head screwed and bolted down with firm lug-nuts for Terminator 2 3D.