Jason and the Argonauts
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Movie Reviews of Jason and the Argonauts
Movie Review: FIVE STARS JUST FOR THE TALOS SCENE!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie absolutely mesmerized us when it first came out and we saw it on the big screen. The Skeleton Army (HOW did he do that?) which was simply amazing, then the Harpies who scared me to death but the best of all the adversaries Jason has to fight is Talos.
On the first part of his journey, Hera, is his protector and accompanies him as the masthead of the ship, the Argo, tells him of an "Isle of Bronze" where he and the Argonauts can get food and water, but warns him he is to take NOTHING else from the island...nothing.
Of course, Hercules wanders off with another sailor and they come upon a gallery of HUGE ENORMOUS GIGANTIC (have to really give this the fanfare it deserves) statues of the Titans, ancient gods represented here in these bronze statues.
Hercules discovers a door in the base of the statue of Talos, and he goes inside and finds treasure; huge rubies, emeralds, diamonds, gold, pearls, everything...then remembers Jason's warning.
He sees an enormous (yes, everything is giant size, after all, these are the Titans!) needle and takes it, figuring it has no value but would make an excellent sword, and then the fun begins.
They barely make it out of the room when they hear one single creak. One. Then another. And another. Next thing we see is Talos, stiffly and with great slowness due to his vast size, climbing down off the pedestal. You literally cannot believe anything of this size can even move...This is not only a shock, it is, IMO, one of the most mesmerizing moments I have ever seen on film. Harryhausen was not only a Master of stop motion effects, he took great pains to create the exact right MOVEMENT for all of his creations...
Watching this giant bronze statue creak stiff-legged around the island, and at one point end up standing with one leg on one side of the opening to the little gulf, the other leg on the other side and here we have the Collossus of Rhodes, is just fascinating, and just as incredible to see today as it was back when it first came out.
He has, of course, no emotion or expression on his metal face at all, which lends even more horror to this foe. Finally Jason opens a tiny opening on the back of Talos's ankle and liquid starts pouring out...
He falls, crushing one of the sailors who had gone back to retrieve Hercules's needle, killing him.
When the Argonauts finally depart, Hercules remains on the island, refusing to believe his friend has been killed, overwhelmed with guilt.
Hera tells Jason that Hercules has gone as far as he can with the crew and has other tasks to do for the gods, and they must abandon him.
Watching Hera talk to Jason, as the figurehead, with her eyes opening and closing, is another treat to see.
The Harpies are truly horrific but relatively simple to catch, as we see.
My brother, Tracy, liked the Skeletons best, and we just loved this movie and still do today, 43 years later.
treat yourself, your kids and anyone else you know who has a good imagination to what movies were like when done by Ray Harryhausen, and before CGI ruled the screens.
Movie Review: A cult classic that deserved to be a mainstream one
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, Todd Armstrong is not very impressive as Jason - rumour has it that he got the role because he knew someone big at Columbia - his uncle or something like that.Apart from that, the movie is a classic. Starting with the obvious, I doubt anyone can find a movie made until then - 1963 - and even much later that can match "Jason and the Argonauts"'s technical brilliance - not only in the realm of stop-motion animation.
Two sequences stand out - Talos and the skeleton fight. Both are not only brilliantly executed from the technical point of view, but their build-up and atmosphere - helped by Bernard Hermann's score - is fantastic. But other scenes - like the one with the Triton and the one with the harpies - are also way beyond anything made at the time. This is indeed Ray Harryhausen at his very best.
But there are other good points besides the technical ones. As a life-long Greek mythology buff, I felt that "Jason" was one of the very few movies to convey the right atmosphere. It's much superior to Harryhausen's later "Clash of the Titans" in this respect. The scene where the princess goes to Hera's statue to ask for protection, with Hera appearing in the guise of a priestess soon afterwards, and the scene where Hermes reveals himself to Jason - those are the best proofs that the movie was written and shot by people who really understood and cared about Greek mythology, in my opinion. "Clash" isn't very good at that, although the recent "The Odyssey" is.
In some ways "Jason" hasn't aged very well; some dialogues and some performances seem a bit corny now. And although Todd Armstrong was the worst of all, other actors weren't well cast, either.
The DVD edition is very good, with excellent extra features, including the John Landis interview of Ray Harryhausen and the documentary on his careers - the latter extremely valuable for some glimpses of Ray's early work.
One thing bothered me a bit. Both in the interview and in the documentary there was a defensive attitude, saying that stop-motion animation should be seen with "imagination" or something like that - presumably to preempt comments of those who belittle stop-motion-animated figures in comparison to today's computer animated ones.
I couldn't disagree more. Of course "Jurassic Park"'s dinosaurs are more realistic than anything that could be achieved via stop-motion animation. And the latter can indeed look phony sometimes. But at its best - as in the Talos and skeleton sequences - it was and is a very convincing *special effect*, meaning that audiences were supposed to believe what they were seeing.
Moreover, to say that computer-animated dinosaurs are more realistic than dinosaurs animated by a master of the craft is like saying that photographs are more realistic than paintings by the old masters.
Movie Review: Great Sword and Sandal flick with the epic aftertase.
Summary: 5 Stars
It is a crying shame, but I don't think that they could ever do a film like this. It rides the coattails of the other "sword and sandal" epics of the late 1950's and early 1960's, but it combines that style of epic pageantry with Harryhausen's stop motion magic. This film mesmerized me as a little kid, and I am glad that the copy to DVD is of such a high quality.I think the opening fanfare and drums that get me. You know that this is an important story, and are guided along by the mock Greek frescoes that foreshadow the story.
I have to say that this is an incredible adaptation of the story of Jason. It is a McGuffen story, but set in ancient Greece with the gods being alive, well, and interested in human affairs. The do take some liberties with the story to modernize it here and there, but the essence is in tact, and that is what we are after. The sets and costumes are incredible, with the only drawback being the rather lumbery Talos. I think that this is the only place where the special effects become really obvious, but hey, this is what life was like before George Lucas.
One modern element in the film is Jason's strong humanism. I'm all for human empoweremt, sicne weak people are easier to control, fool, exploit, and they are rather boaring to be around. But the funny thing is, is that every time Jason mutters a humanistic platitude, the gods step in and save his bacon. I think the funniest moment is when he is apotheized to Olympus and says that he doesn't need the gods help. This shows man at his best and worse-he is self sufficient and trying to do all within his power to get his job done, but his stupidity and arrogance before the divine.
Jason's humanism doesn't bother me, because, as a person of faith, I believe that humanity is created in God's image, and as a Christian, I believe that God took on man's image. The line between man and God isn't as far as we may think.
Another gem is the interplay between Hera and Zeus. Hera is the lead female in this movie, not Medea. She is a strong woman without being a dominatrix. In fact, the type of interplay that she has with Zeus is the type of relationship that long-married couples have. They read each other's mind, and can barb each other without being barbarians. Beneath it all, really love one another.
My favorite scene is when the disguised Hera is in her temple and talking with Pelias, who has just killed Jason's mother. She says, "The gods abandon you, Pelias," then she disappears. That scene still sends chills up and down my spine.
Yes, this film is not a textbook on archeology, and is not an adequate substitute for boning down on Homer, but if you want a good clean fantasy flick, you can't go wrong with this film.
Movie Review: Harryhausen's Biggest Monster Hit
Summary: 5 Stars
We refer to Star Wars as a George Lucas film, ET as a Steven Spielberg film, and Terminator as a James Cameron film. It's always "a [director's name] film."
Unless it's a Ray Harryhausen film. Because Harryhausen's spellbinding creations are always the real stars of his films, his name just has to come ahead of the director's. And nobody, but nobody will ever question that departure from protocol.
For the uninitiated, one viewing of Jason and the Argonauts will help you understand just what I mean. Employing the painstakingly difficult, low-technology method of stop-motion animation, Harryhausen delivers a fantasy-adventure that's absolutely breathtaking. Jason, leading an intrepid band of warriors that includes Hercules himself, encounters the seven-headed Hydra, the winged Harpies, the metallic 200-foot-tall Talos, the Merman Demigod Triton, and a band of sword-wielding skeletons. Not only are the creatures brought to life, they interact with the humans with seamless, eye-popping realism. And remember, this is a 1963 film.
How difficult is stop-motion animation? To give you an idea, Harryhausen took four and a half months to complete the skeleton battle scene, which lasted just over three minutes in the final edit. As for the Hydra, Jason had it easy. All he had to do was slay it. The really difficult task was Harryhausen's: he had to bring it to life, keeping all seven heads in constant, menacing motion.
The difficulty of this method naturally brings about the temptation to take short-cuts, moving the creature a centimeter here and there instead of the needed two millimeters. But Harryhausen worked hard at his craft, spending long nights in his studio to achieve the most realistic movements possible. And get this: he worked ALONE. Throughout his career, he NEVER had a staff or even an assistant.
So it was only fitting that in 1992, Harryhausen was honored by the Film Academy with a Lifetime Achievement Award. It was, to my mind, a long-delayed recognition. After the awarding, the emcee paid his own tribute: "Some say Citizen Kane, some say Casablanca, I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film of all time."
The emcee: a guy named Tom Hanks.
Movie Review: IT STILL "WOWS" ME!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Back in the late 1980's i remember driving down Woodward Ave. in Detroit and seeing an old, boarded up movie theater. On the Marquee was "jason & the Argonauts". Now I don't know if the theater had been closed since the 1960's or if maybe they were having a revival but it gave me a smile everytime I saw it because this was one of my all-time favorite fantasy films. Jason, played by Todd Armstrong, is the rightful ruler of the throne of Thessaly which has been usurped. To win the throne Jason and his men must undertake a perilous quest to find the legendary Golden Fleece. It is based strong on ancient Greek myths as Jason and his crew do battle with Winged harpies, the seven Headed Hydra, and Talos, the gigantic iron Golem who somewhat resembles the Colossus of Rhoads. In fact Special Effects wizard Ray Harryhausen stated in reviews that the Colossus was the inspiration from Talos who in myth wasn't that large.
Perhaps the most famous segment is when King Aeetes uses the teeth of Hydra to bring to life several skeletons to battle Jason and his men. The meticulous animation in this part is legendary as the real-life actors battle seemlessly against opponents who were not there and were added in later. The time it had to take to animated all these skeletons moving and interacting with the real actors is mind-boggling. The same goes for the battle with the Hydra which harryhausen stated was particularly hard because you had to move the seven heads each a little bit in every frame and if he got distracted he'd forget if a head was moving back or forward. That attention to detail is just incredible.
It's not a great film in terms of the acting. Not much above, if at all, any of the sword and sandal films of that period. But it's Harryhausen's wizardry that really sets this one a part and makes it a classic.