Would this be a good way to use special effects to portrait Cthulhu on screen?

[Unimatrix Q]

1. Make many different and contrasting renderings of Cthulhu (or another eldritch abomination you want to depict in a movie or video game) using cgi.
   
   
2. Blend the renderings and/or change them very rapidly into each other as fast as possible.

What do you think? Would that be a good way to demonstrate their mindbreaking alienness on the screen?

 

[JD]

I thought he just looked like this?

 

[Unimatrix Q]

I thought he just looked like this?

I like this painting, but as most of the lovecraftian artworks and depictions of Cthulhu, it misses the point of hinting at the otherworldly and mindshattering alienness that Lovecraft tried to convey in his stories by using allegories and vague descriptions.

Here's a passage from Call of Cthulhu:
"The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own."

And of his effect on humans seeing him with their own eyes:

"Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously."

"After that Johansen only brooded over the idol in the cabin and attended to a few matters of food for himself and the laughing maniac by his side. He did not try to navigate after the first bold flight, for the reaction had taken something out of his soul."

 

[JD]

Going by that, I think the best way to approach it, would be to just not show him, and base everything just around how people react.
So if Cthulhu is never directly described in the text, where does the image of the big green guy with wings and mouth tentacles come from?

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Going by that, I think the best way to approach it, would be to just not show him, and base everything just around how people react.
So if Cthulhu is never directly described in the text, where does the image of the big green guy with wings and mouth tentacles come from?

The description comes mostly from a bas- relief of him/it that appears in the story:

"The bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; for although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing. And writing of some kind the bulk of these designs seemed certainly to be; though my memory, despite much familiarity with the papers and collections of my uncle, failed in any way to identify this particular species, or even to hint at its remotest affiliations.

Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background."

Yeah not showing Cthulhu is one possibility but searching for a creative way to use special effects to at least hint at his unfathomable strangeness is another one. Which could even bring something new and fascinating on the screen instead of going the easy way and avoid the difficulties.

 

[JD]

Ok thanks.
I think your ideas could be an interesting way of doing it then. Kind of a constantly shifting, warping form? Maybe you could kind of stick to a very vague outline of he traditionally appears.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

There have been some recent movies that have done an alright job of portraying Lovecraftian style deities and creatures. Some that spring to mind are Guillermo del toro's Hellboy with it's portrayal of the Ogdru Jahad. All we really see of them is their eyes and later their tentacles when they are freed from their crystal prisons. Frank Darabont's The Mist, especially the gigantic creature at the end. And finally The Void which had some terrifying old school practical creature effects and themes of man finding knowledge that he was not meant to have and being changed by it.

Personally i don't find the traditional octupi-dragon-giant depiction scary at all, especially since it's been turned into a plushy. My hope is that they might take from inspiration from somewhere like the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski ( I find his artwork truly terrifying and disturbing) and create a new interpretation that is completely otherworldly and that also taps into the primal reptilian brain.

 

[Relayer1]

I thought he just looked like this?

That just absolutely works for me...

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Ok thanks.
I think your ideas could be an interesting way of doing it then. Kind of a constantly shifting, warping form? Maybe you could kind of stick to a very vague outline of he traditionally appears.

Yeah, it would be a good idea to make renderings of the scariests depictions with some of them using the traditional form while others might not and blend them together and/or change them as rapidly into each other that the eyes don't have time to grasp what they see.

I think this is the closest way to get near to what an eldritch abomination would look like if they existed.

 

[Kor]

I like the stop-motion version in the "Call of Cthulhu" indie movie from several years back, which was meant to look like a 1920s/30s silent film.

Kor

 

[Gov Kodos]

There is no way to film what Lovecraft described since nothing is going to turn the audience into gibbering lunatics from beholding it.
(Insert target pulp film/series/icon to state otherwise)
That said, behold.

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[Redfern]

Gov Kodos! If you hadn't "inline linked" That short, I would have done so! I was so tickled upon seeing those a few years ago that I actually bought that hand puppet when I learned it was a mass market novelty. (It currently sits within arm's reach upon the left channel speaker of my PC as I type this reply.) Alas, when someone recently inquired about the toy, my "Googling" could not find any examples of it still being made for first time purchase, only resales on bidding sites.

I was so taken by the absurd concept of Cthulhu as a nighttime "call in" show that I staged some digital fan art.

The creator of the video shorts seemed to like it. Well, he said he did, whether or not he actually meant it.

 

[137th Gebirg]

The problem (and benefit) with Lovecraftian prose is that all of his monsters are described as “indescribably hideous”. Lovecraft wanted to scare you with your own mind. Nothing is more scary than one’s own imagination. Anything actually visualized in image or on screen falls woefully short of what our mind’s eye cooks up.

I still think In the Mouth of Madness was the closest thing anyone has ever gotten to capturing the true spirit of Lovecraft in film.

 

[theenglish]

In the Mouth of Madness is one of my favorite horror films for precisely that reason. As for portraying monsters, the best way would probably be something unethical...images overlayed on each other with a multicolored strobe light effect that would probably literally make it extremely difficult to watch possibly inducing epileptic reactions in those susceptible.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

More horrific to an audience than an actual depiction might be to suggest more and more strongly that their consciousnesses have already been absorbed by Cthulhu and he is just biding his time before choosing to torture them at his will. For an example, read the short story "A Colder War" by Charles Stross.

ETA: "A Colder War" is available to read in its entirety online:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

Enjoy it until Cthulhu's lidless gaze turns upon you.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Gov Kodos! If you hadn't "inline linked" That short, I would have done so! I was so tickled upon seeing those a few years ago that I actually bought that hand puppet when I learned it was a mass market novelty. (It currently sits within arm's reach upon the left channel speaker of my PC as I type this reply.) Alas, when someone recently inquired about the toy, my "Googling" could not find any examples of it still being made for first time purchase, only resales on bidding sites.

I was so taken by the absurd concept of Cthulhu as a nighttime "call in" show that I staged some digital fan art.

The creator of the video shorts seemed to like it. Well, he said he did, whether or not he actually meant it.

I think Cthulhu sounds like Art Bell *cue chase by giorgio moroder*

 

[Unimatrix Q]

In the Mouth of Madness is one of my favorite horror films for precisely that reason. As for portraying monsters, the best way would probably be something unethical...images overlayed on each other with a multicolored strobe light effect that would probably literally make it extremely difficult to watch possibly inducing epileptic reactions in those susceptible.

Yeah, that's a really good way to come near to how Lovecraft described his entities and actually quite similar to what i proposed.