Synopsis:
The remarkable career of the movie industry’s most admired and influential special-effects auteur, the legendary Ray Harryhausen, is the subject of Gilles Penso’s definitive documentary Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan. Leaving no doubt as to Harryhausen’s seminal influence on modern-day special effects, the documentary features enlightening and entertaining interviews with the man himself, Randy Cook, Peter Jackson, Nick Park, Phil Tippet, Terry Gilliam, Dennis Muren, John Landis, Guillermo del Toro, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and many more. These filmmakers, who today push the boundaries of special effects movie-making, pay tribute to the father of Stop Motion animation and films such as ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’, ‘It Came from Beneath the Sea’, ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’, ‘Mysterious Island’, ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and ‘The Golden Voyage of Sinbad’ – the films that enthralled them as children and inspired them to become filmmakers in their own right.
What We Thought:
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan is a must see for film nerds. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it highly educational.
If you don’t know the name Ray Harryhausen, there’s something wrong with you. I mean, you should. He’s a legend and he helped change movie making.
He was a stop-motion animation god. His hand made models and stop-motion filmmaking were used in iconic films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans (original not the remake) and many more.
Ray wasn’t a movie director and never made feature length films of his own. He did shorts and TV spots like Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood in the 50’s. But he would work on feature length films with his models and he personally did all the stop-motion animation. The layering he did and set ups are just mind blowing especially when you’re talking 50-60 years ago on some of these films.
His style of animation and special effects influenced dozens of the biggest named directors of the past 30 years. The documentary is filled with the likes of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Nick Park of Wallace & Gromit fame, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, John Landis and more. He may not have been at the helm, but you remembered his creatures and their segments in all the films he was part of.
The film made me sad and pine for the older ways of doing things. I hate most CGI and think it’s cheap filmmaking. I understand you can’t take your time to make a movie that way today because of costs, but seeing what he did by hand and how realistic it looked makes me wish we could still do it that way. I believe it was Spielberg who said in the film that a movie opens with 10,000 soldiers in a battle and audiences immediately know it’s fake and computerized. Ray’s work looked and felt real because he was a master craftsman.
I’ve seen four documentaries about filmmaking recently and Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan is just as good as the rest. I was happy to see a lot of his models and creatures are being preserved and kept in a museum. They are part of film history and need to be around for future generations. The bonus features are really good and you get to hear from other filmmakers about how his work influenced them. The documentary is…
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Bonus Features:
- Interviews with Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Peter Lord, Rick Baker
- 12 Interview outtakes with Joe Dante, John Lasseter, Nick Park and more!
- A message to Ray
- Deleted Scenes
- On the set of Sinbad
- Paris Cinematheque Q&A
- London Gate Theater Q&A
- Audio commentary with the filmmakers
- Original Trailer
- Ray Harryhausen Trailer Reel
Cast & Crew:
- Ray Harryhausen
- James Cameron
- Steven Spielberg
- Peter Jackson
Recommended If You Like:
- The Work of Ray Harryhausen
- Movie Documentaries
- Movie History
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