This is pretty much my thought on the film as well, but I'd still be willing to see a teaser before making a firm decision on whether or not I give a damn about seeing it.
Clash Of The Titans (2009)
- Thread starter Technobuilder
- Start date
This is pretty much my thought on the film as well, but I'd still be willing to see a teaser before making a firm decision on whether or not I give a damn about seeing it.
Good point on Harryhausen NOT being the sole animator on "Clash". I had forgotten that. But -- he was the sole animator on Medusa -- and no small feat was she!
However, nobody is saying stop motion was never used again after Star Wars -- at least not me.
While I concur that stop-motion wasn't "finished off" -- it was not until The Nightmare Before Christmas that it was the DOMINANT technique used in a film...actual, traditional stop motion animation that is...
"Go-Motion" was the technique used in Dragonslayer and that was a technique of using a kind of puppet if memory serves -- it's been a long time...
But, I also concur on your questioning of the rationale for doing a "Clash" remake...
I'll have you all know that without stop-motion, we wouldn't have Wallace and Gromit. The film-making there (particularly The Wrong Trousers) is absolutely brilliant.
Eh. I was never too keen on Wallace et al, but yes, stop motion is nice. It's something I do hope doesn't go away for the time being, even if it is confined to animated features these days. Which is also nice as that's a very good medium for it.
You say that almost as if it's a bad thing. The film will definitely live or die on the success of the SFX if it intends to be true to Harryhausen; a generic, bland, run-of-the-mill SFX affair is in principle not a lot worse than a generic, bland, run-of-the-mill fantasy epic. Give me something my eyes can chew on and I might watch this, but otherwise not.
More like remaking a porn film with better sex. Or flashier sex. Or more sex. Anyway the sex is still the point, or sfx if one wants to make a dreadful segue; so that analogy doesn't work.
You say that almost as if it's a bad thing. The film will definitely live or die on the success of the SFX if it intends to be true to Harryhausen; a generic, bland, run-of-the-mill SFX affair is in principle not a lot worse than a generic, bland, run-of-the-mill fantasy epic. Give me something my eyes can chew on and I might watch this, but otherwise not.
Yeah even if stop motion was never completely believable, it always had it's OWN special realism that I really liked. That fluttery, jerky movement was kind of wondrous just by itself, and really made those creatures seem even more magical and otherworldly somehow.
Even the best CGI hasn't been able to replicate that, as far as I'm concerned. The giant trolls and dragons and monsters you see now might be impressive from a technical standpoint, but they just don't seem truly magical to me anymore. They always feel like the cold, artificial computer programs they really are.
Even the best CGI hasn't been able to replicate that, as far as I'm concerned. The giant trolls and dragons and monsters you see now might be impressive from a technical standpoint, but they just don't seem truly magical to me anymore. They always feel like the cold, artificial computer programs they really are.
Here, here!!! ::applauds::
Even today, lots of productions still use a mix of CG and other techniques to create their effects. Lord of the Rings made extensive use of large-scale miniatures -- "bigatures" -- for cityscapes and the like. Terminator Salvation had lots of practical robotic effects courtesy of Stan Winston Studios. The British TV show Being Human creates its werewolf effects using old-school prosthetics and cable-controlled puppets.
Go-motion is simply a variant of stop-motion. It's still frame-by-frame animation of an articulated miniature; however, it uses (or used) motorized armatures and computerized motion control to impart movement to the miniature and/or camera during the exposure of each frame, thereby creating motion blur in order to reduce the jerkiness of the animated image. Dragonslayer was the debut of the technique, but it became standard at ILM and other studios until CGI took over.
Although it wasn't the first technique that was devised to add motion blur to stop-motion images. Long before Tippett developed go-motion, Jim Danforth created the appearance of motion blur by overlapping exposures of consecutive poses -- for instance, pose A would be shot on frames 1 & 2, then the camera would be rolled back a frame and pose B would be shot on frames 2 & 3, then pose C on frames 3 & 4, etc. Or you could overlap each pose over a larger number of frames for a greater amount of blur if needed. It was a very effective technique, and Danforth argued that it was more flexible than go-motion because it didn't require the miniature to be attached to motors and rods that limited the viable camera angles.
No, you're just misunderstanding the intent of the analogy. The point is that the draw of Harryhausen films isn't just the fact that they had special effects; it's the fact that they had Harryhausen effects. Perhaps it's hard to understand these days when there are so many companies doing FX work at a high level. But Harryhausen's animation was something unique, something that stood out from everything else around it. I mean, normally we think of the auteur of a movie as its director, maybe its producer, maybe occasionally its writer. But the primary attraction of the films produced by Charles H. Schneer was the work of Harryhausen. The FX artist was the undisputed star of the films. That was something unique. So remaking Clash without Harryhausen is kind of like remaking Sleeper without Woody Allen or City Lights without Charlie Chaplin or Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman without Abbott and Costello. When the whole point of the film was to showcase the work of a specific person, it's odd to do a remake without that person.
Although that doesn't mean it can't theoretically work if you find the right substance to take the place of the original focus. For instance, the original Ocean's Eleven was basically just an excuse for Frank, Dino, Sammy, and the rest of the Rat Pack to hang around Vegas and have a good time together. But Soderbergh found a way to remake it as a showcase for a passel of modern stars, and give it more of a story in the process.
The difference, though, is that you can't really replace Harryhausen. There's no single FX artist today who has that kind of star power or trademark style. Modern FX are made by large groups of people. There are still some "name" stop-motion directors -- Nick Park, Henry Selick -- but this isn't that kind of movie. The FX for the Clash remake are being done by at least four different companies, the only one of which I've heard of being Cinesite.
I'm just saying that you can't recapture the magic, the uniqueness, of Harryhausen in a modern context. Even if the effects look bigger and better and more convincing, they're more anonymous and not as unique in the context of the era.
In defense of CGI, it's still entirely created by human hands and human imaginations; the computer is just the tool they use. It renders the images for them, but it's human beings designing them, creating their shapes and colors, animating them frame by frame, fighting against the computer's desire for precision to give them realistic weight and texture and flaws, etc. And if they speak, it's human actors giving them voices and often providing their expressions through performance capture.
Christopher, you again expressed the same sentiments I had!
I agree completely.
I agree completely.
Not the same trailer I saw, but just found this on AICN.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43026
Sadly... No Kraken.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43026
Sadly... No Kraken.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
^^ Looks good.
My problem with some CGI is that though it may be really good, uor eyes can still see it's not real (and not just because our minds tell us the thing we see is impossible)
What I mean is practical effects still look like they were done in front of the camera. They look like real objects because they are real puppets or such in front of the camera.
For example, CG Yoda (who can of course do more stuff) compared to the puppet from the original trilogy.
Also, imagine remaking The Thing with CG. The latex and stage blood bursting and oozing turned my stomach. CG effects? Hell, I could still eat pizza while watching that!
My problem with some CGI is that though it may be really good, uor eyes can still see it's not real (and not just because our minds tell us the thing we see is impossible)
What I mean is practical effects still look like they were done in front of the camera. They look like real objects because they are real puppets or such in front of the camera.
For example, CG Yoda (who can of course do more stuff) compared to the puppet from the original trilogy.
Also, imagine remaking The Thing with CG. The latex and stage blood bursting and oozing turned my stomach. CG effects? Hell, I could still eat pizza while watching that!
No, I understand it, it just doesn't make sense.
It's remaking a porn film with intimate, creative sex with generic but brighter and flashier sex. Maybe you don't have Brigitte Bardot, maybe you have Paris Hilton. But a naked woman getting plowed into is a sex act regardless of her identity.
Right, I'm beating that ridiculous metaphor to a laughable extremity, but the SFX in a new film is still SFX. A porn film without sex is ridiculous in exactly the way a new, flashier Clash of the Titans most absolutley is not. The former does not work and does not make sense, the latter can do both.
If sex is the auteur and not the SFX, well, the Hilton/Bardot analogy qualifies. 'Less good' of a creative force is not the same thing as the absence of a creative force.
But you can create jawdropping and visually astonishing effects. Granted, this film may not have them, but with enough invention, skill and design, a very eye-candy pleasing movie could result.
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Yeah I realize there's still a lot of work and skill that goes into making those CG effects, but the end result still feels to me as cold and impersonal as something out of a videogame.
But who knows, maybe it's just the fact I KNOW it's a computer program that's making me feel that way. With stop motion characters, no matter how small the puppet or crazy the design, the fact it's an actual object in real space somehow makes it a lot easier to believe in.
It takes a much smaller leap to believe that tiny (but very real) puppet is a 200 foot tall creature than to believe a bunch of computer pixels is a real, 200 foot tall creature.
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
Future reviewer blurb predictions:
"Let's get Kraken."
"Look away or this movie might turn you to stone."
"Clashes with good taste."
"Don't remember these Titans."
"Let's get Kraken."
"Look away or this movie might turn you to stone."
"Clashes with good taste."
"Don't remember these Titans."
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
That trailer is completely and utterly stunning.
Really? I'm trying to see the potentially interesting movie "around" the godawful trailer.
I always prefered JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS myself, but I'm encouraged to see that this remake is not abandoning the more fantastic elements of the story. Bring on Medusa and the giant scorpions. (They can ditch the silly robot owl, though. That always felt more STAR WARS than mythic.)