Image Credit: Everett CollectionGetting pumped and ready to review the new Clash of the Titans, I of course went back to watch the original version. It would be fair to say that its special effects have not aged well. Then again, they were touchingly out-of-date even at the time. Made in 1981, Clash was the last movie to feature the special-effects magic of Ray Harryhausen (who produced the film), the wizard of stop-motion imagery whose heyday was the 1950s and ’60s, when he was known for the then-wondrous effects in movies like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and One Million Years B.C. (1966). (The latter film quickly found a place in pop culture as an automatic springboard for Raquel-Welch-in-a-loincloth jokes. Her effect was indeed special, though the movie also had some extremely cool dinosaurs.)
In 1981, the special-effects era — by which I mean, the all-F/X-all-the-time era — was just in its infancy, and Clash of the Titans, clunky and backward-looking as it was, had obviously been made to capitalize on the success of Star Wars. It even had a chirpy mechanical owl that was a shameless knockoff of R2-D2. At that point, however, Ray Harryhausen was swimming against the tide. In general, stop-motion imagery, with the grand and glorious exception of King Kong (1933), has a way of becoming almost comically dated with time. When you watch the classic 1964 TV Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, it now appears as if those little models of Rudolph, Herbie, and Yukon Cornelius are basically just standing still, with an occasional flash of movement. Harryhausen’s films, seen from the vantage of our era and its impeccably smooth digital imagery, look 10 times more herky-jerky now than they once did.
My personal favorite of his movies was always The Mysterious Island (1963), with its eye-popping parade of giant wildlife creatures (that crab! that rooster! those bumblebees! those fin-backed dino lizards!). It was much more fun to me than any nuclear-accident monster movie. The most stunning of Harryhausen’s films, by almost any standard, is Jason and the Argonauts, with its awesome skeletal armies. Harryhausen’s movies were outsize creature-feature fairy tales designed to bliss-out your inner child. And they did. By the time he made Clash of the Titans, though, his imagery no longer gave you that full, amazing storybook “Wow!” It was now lodged in a zone somewhere between wonder and kitsch.
Yet when I went back and watched Clash of the Titans again, what startled me is how well I remembered its mythical creatures, like Pegasus, the writhing winged horse, and Medusa (that’s her, pictured above), with her primitive face of rage. For 30 years, those Harryhausen visions have stayed with me. And I think one of the reasons for that is that they were handmade. Will anyone remember the new Clash of the Titans 30 years from now? Perhaps. But maybe not in the same visceral, graphic-brain-imprint way.
I don’t mean that as a slur against digital imagery. Much of it, too, has been indelible, from Jurassic Park to Spider-Man 2, from Titanic to The Dark Knight, from The Matrix to Avatar. Yet so many of our popcorn movies are so deluged with CGI that I often wonder if the sleek, untouched-by-human-hands quality, the sheer ease of computer-generated effects now renders them, in some ineffable way, less tactile, less memorable, less there. The example I always go back to is the first Star Wars movie, especially when viewed in relation to the busy-whizzy digital orgies that George Lucas cooked up for Attack of the Clones, etc. Much of the imagery in the latter films was startling — I always thought, incidentally, that the clone army was profoundly influenced by Jason and the Argonauts — but to me, none of it quite stuck. Whereas the famous shot that opens Star Wars (oops, I mean, Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope), with that spaceship gliding over your head, is something that no one could forget. It was accomplished with far more primitive means (scale models…what a concept!), and I can’t help but think that on some level George Lucas’s imagination was bolstered and freed by that relative technical limitation.
What do you think? Does anyone miss the days of pre-CGI special effects? Or am I just being nostalgic? And what’s your all-time favorite special effect in a movie, either digital or analog?
A good article summing up how sometimes CGi isn’t all that. For example, the best space battle scene ever remains Return of the Jedi which was all done with models and pyro. And yeah, great as the new Clash looks, Harryhausen was just an absolute genius.
M Weyer, I agree, that space battle in ROTJ was off the hook. I was just thinking about that the other day–all models and pyro!
I agree! And one of the best monsters is the Alien Queen from Aliens and the Rancor of Return of the Jedi. Also, made by human hands.
It just feels like they use CGI to the exclusion of everything that makes a great movie in my opinion. The writing, the acting, any real feeling of connectedness to the characters. I love it when CGI and writing and acting are wedded beautifully as in Terminator II. I hope Cameron really thinks about this in his next film
I think the issue with special effects today is that they effects take over the entire movie and some times that’s all there are; effects. If it’s done right it cane be amazing. Still, there is something to be said about the old school effects that kept all of us (my brothers and sisters) tied to Sunday afternoon television watching the battle scenes from Jason and the Argonauts. No matter how effects get better over time, that film still has the same affect and it’s timeless. Anyway, I’m a person who was not a fan of Avatar so go figure. I will be seeing Clash of the Titans though, I loved the original and I love Greek Methology…oh, and having Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkleson (just 3 of my fav actors) in one film doesn’t hurt either.
In regards to you distaste for Avatar, I agree. I felt I was watching two movies, one with a ton of cgi, and the other when the story switched back to the humans. It was very jarring and uneven in my opinion. I actually wish Cameron had taken a page from Lord of the Rings and used taller actors in make-up to create size difference with the characters. I never really felt anything for the Na’Vi, maybe because they were never really there.
I appreciate this article & especially your comment, J. Can you imagine if Peter Jackson had directed the 2010 Clash of the Titans?
No offense – but have any of you watched the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on a Vizio?! the Special effects look cheap and in the vein of all those New zealand produced syndicated Hercules-Xena shows. It was my first time watching those movies (Ohhhh the long painful agony) and I was stunned at how bad Jackson’s graphics looked dated only seven years later.
I’ve wtched LOTR on a Misubishi diamond series (which is better than any s**tty vizio) and they looked AWESOME!! You ckearly have no taste in movies (too long, those movies flew). Maybe you shold stick to Xena / Hercules or another crappy 3-d movie like Avatar.
I agree GG. Back before CGI good acting and storyline worked around the limited ability of special effects. Nowadays they use CGI to make up for weak acting and even weaker plots. The last 30 years we witnessed the evolution and now de-evolution of special effects laidened movies. The apex or perfect balance between acting, plot and special effects was the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Its been a downhill slide since then. You can almost hear directors yelling for more special effects to cover up the decline in acting and stories.
I like the new effects better now in that it makes for a more believeable experience. I don’t like it when they are overdone though. Avatar for example should have been nominated for best animated feature at the Oscars instead of best picture. That movie was more cgi than live action.
Agreed!
Using that logic: what two movies would you even put into the open spots if you did it that way. Since Up was 100% animated.
These are the rules for animated film according to the Academy:
An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of at least 70 minutes, in which
movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a
significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than
75 percent of the picture’s running time.
Agree 100%. Up didn’t try and pretend it was a non-animated movie, Avatar did.
I’d say the movies in my lifetime that I came out of telling everyone I knew that they had to see, based on the effects alone, were Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Titanic, The Matrix and Avatar.
Too many directors do stuff because they can now. You cite Jurassic Park, but the CGI was only used where absolutely necessary there, and that’s why it works. I once heard someone say you shouldn’t do a shot that you couldn’t do without CGI (this referring mainly to swooping camera shots), and I think I agree.
I agree movies shouldn’t rely too heavily on special effects over story, but they can still be great when used wisely. Old-school methods like models and actual physical effects shouldn’t be underrated though. I think the old Star Wars movies look better than the new ones because they couldn’t just use CGI for every effect they needed. It’s my big problem with movies like 300, that look completely like video games rather than a realistic experience. Nowadays, yeah, the effects tend to be underwhelming unless you go nuts like in Avatar. Years later, I still think the effects in a movie like Jurassic Park hold up suprisingly well. (I’m 19, so it’s not like I’m just set in my old ways. I can barely watch old Star Trek or Doctor Who because of their “special effects.”)
My mother loves Harryhausen movies, and I remember watching Sinbad, Jason & the Argonauts, and Mysterious Island as a kid…the giant crab in the last one was vaguely traumatizing. Anyone else?
double ditto!
Star Wars is a good example. When Leia’s ship and the star destroyer pass overhead in A New Hope–man, they feel REAL. They feel tangible. I NEVER got that feeling from the digital imagery in the prequels. (Yoda in Empire/Jedi and Yoda in the prequels is another example–darn it if that puppet just doesn’t work better for me!) At a certain point, digital imagery just starts to feel like a cartoon. The effects should always be in service to the story and script. That’s why the digital imagery worked in Titanic and Jurassic Park–the effects of the sinking ship and dinosaurs NEEDED to be developed to do the story justice. Too much of the Star Wars prequels, and many other CGI movies, feel like the other way around–doing CGI just for CGI’s sake.
True.
I agree with what is being said about that opening scene in Star Wars, but I feel that the Battlestar Galactica reboot made tangible imagery with their CGI space battles – the storyline and well-written characters give the viewers more investment in those scenes. As has been said already – the effects are not to blame, it’s the writing. And don’t knock Avatar too hard – the images of Pandoran creatures (the six-legged horses, etc) are as resonant for me now as Pegasus and the Rancor were when I was a child.
True that. Who gives a crap about stupid Battlestar Galactica re-make as if that isn’t the most overrated series of all time. And their CGI still stunk.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy came out after CGI became commonplace in blockbusters, but I think its images (Gollum, the fell beasts, the war scenes in the beginning of Fellowship, the end of Two Towers, and throughout Return of the King) stick in the mind in ways a lot of today’s popcorn movies don’t. Kudos, Weta et al.
Brian, I totally agree! I think part of what made the effects in the Lord of the Rings films so memorable is because they were used to add necessary elements to the story that could not have been done otherwise. They enhanced the story, they didn’t overshadow the story.
I agree. But one of the great things about the effects in LOR was they used CGI, as well as all kinds of old-school movie tricks: models, trick photography, etc. I think the combination of CGI with those older techniques was great. I wish more films would take advantage of this.
A good movie=good story, effects are just icing on the cake, they decorate it and sometimes make it taste better, but you can’t just have the icing. At least when trying to make a movie that becomes a classic and not just a flash in the pan. I love the original titans because its great storytelling, and if the new one wants to equal it in status then it needs to best the storytelling and not the just the special effects.
I always have said how well “Jurassic Park”‘s FX still hold up to this day. Too much CGI IS distractingly NOT real. Even JP’s sequels FX don’t hold up as well as the original’s dinosaurs.
You are absolutely right – the dinosaurs got worse with each sequel.
The CGI ‘artists’ignored a very basic rule -pattern flattens objects and takes away their dimensionality.
Adding all those superfluous stripes and folds of skin was their undoing.
And Jurassic Park even provides a quotation which we could apply to some modern f/x movies: “You were so preoccupied with whether you could, you never stopped to ask if you should” (or something along those lines)
Yes, Maggie. A thousand times yes.
Excellent point!
Well-said.
I love the old stop motion, which Geoge Lucas used to great effect in the Empire Strikes back-especially with the mechanical walking tanks, which lent themselves perfectly to the jerky quality of stop-motion.
Too much of today’s CGI imagery starts off with an inferior design (I’m looking at you, Kraken), and from then on, no matter how much detail and texture you ad, you’re just polishing a turd.
I agree with this article, some movies depend on the CGI nowadays, and the older movies depended pretty much on the skills of men like Harryhausen. I can still watch any movie he touched, all the older Godzilla movies, and movies such as the original War of the World, Beast from 20000 Phathoms etc etc etc and enjoy every minute. They felt real enough and bring back the child in most all of us.
What’s been lost is the “how did they do that?” effect. In the past, it was a combination of matte paintings, forced perspective, models, blue/green screen etc. Today, the answer is always the same: it’s a computer! It can still be effective if used in the service of the story, but it’s not as much fun as using imagination to suspend disbelief.
My husband was commenting just the other day that when he thinks back on Avatar he thinks of the Na’vi as cartoon people, not real. I think when your mind knows something is fake, it won’t let you forget it. And won’t let you feel fully immersed in that world. Which in the end is why we want to see most movies–escapism. Too much CGI can take that away from you.
I agree with you completely Lisa, and JLC above you. There is little mystery to the FX, and what we don’t know we will learn on the Special Edition DVDs. The wonder the first King Kong movie brought to audiences will never be experienced again, and that’s a shame.