FEATURE: Ray Harryhausen and the Importance of Movie Magicians

Neither positive nor negative, the reality of the computer effects landscape today is simply too enormous to dismiss.  Computer effects offer enormous latitude to filmmakers, allow storytellers to imagine larger than ever before, and provide audiences with sights that would be unfathomable only a few decades ago.  Viewers can now peer into fantasy worlds of impossible complexity and realism.  Worlds of Earthly (and Middle-Earthly) warfare, an outer space overpacked with interstellar shootouts, revenging avengers, wizard duels, spindly blue cat-people, and of course, countless disaster pictures that now have to destroy the entire planet (2012, Knowing) to feel significant at all.

The trade-off, it seems, is that fantasy spectacle, for so long a precious commodity in cinema, is now so constant and overwhelming that it verges into tedium.

One of the most important elements of Ray Harryhausen's talent was its rarity.  There was nobody else who could do what he did, with his imagination and his love for the the monsters he made, and that made his movies worth celebrating.  Not only did he painstakingly bring puppets to life by manipulating them frame-by-frame - Ray imbued his puppets with a genuine sense of character.  They react.  They consider.  Some of them have character arcs, communicated entirely through body language, as with the alien in 20 Million Miles to Earth and the baboon in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.  While Ray was turning his skill into an art, the rest of the world retreated to more cost-efficient, less time-consuming special effects like "slurpasaurs" (modern-day lizards, usually with sails taped to their backs) and rubber men-in-suits.

The films Ray crafted with the help of producing partner Charles Schneer weren't always winners.  His early sci-fi efforts, like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and It Came From Beneath the Sea, rely too heavily on his creations.  There's no human element to the stories and, more importantly, little of the exuberance to be found in his later fantasies, where the swashbuckling cheeriness allow his imagination a better sense of place.  The grim atomic fears of something like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms dampened his creative spirit.  The tales of Greek and Arabian myth set him free and resulted in genre classics: Jason and the Argonauts, his Sinbad trilogy, and swan song Clash of the Titans.

After Clash, Ray retired from the cinema, right around the time that Industrial Light and Magic was planting the seeds of the digital revolution, using computers to generate monitor displays in films like Star Wars, Alien and Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.

As a child, I grew up hearing the name Ray Harryhausen, along with names like Dick Smith, the makeup artist who made the devil come to life in The Exorcist.  And Willis O'Brien, who brought beauty to a beast in King Kong.  Stan Winston was another.  Carlo Rambaldi.  Rick Baker.  Phil Tippett.  Dennis Muren.  Tom Savini.  Lon Chaney.  Jack Pierce.  The men who gave us gods and monsters.  More importantly, the men who took the lifeless and gave those creations a sense of soul.  These men were heroes to me, and learning how they accomplished wonders was one of the key moments in my life of cinema.

Much of these artists' work has transitioned, over the years, to the computer bank, to the heavily staffed production house and that's okay.  Few of these men worked exclusively by themselves - Stan Winston founded his own studio, after all.  And I don't mean to diminish the thousands of effects artists who work every day to bring dreams to life.  I just hope the children watching movies today can be as excited as I was.  My worry is that they'll grow bored by the excess of creatures and dreamscapes, or that they'll say "Oh, computers did it."  Seeing the men behind the curtain made the movie magic more special to me.  Fantasy, sci-fi, and horror creations became a gift from one fan to another, and that personal connection could help lead to the next great generation of effects wizards.

I hope kids, both boys and girls, see something that blows their minds, something that makes them skim the credits and jump online and learn a name like Ray Harryhausen, or Rick Baker, or Richard Taylor, or Henry Selick.  I hope some of those kids learn how to bring their toy dinosaurs to life, one frame at a time.  I hope they experiment with flip books and mix corn syrup with red food dye.  And if they have access to it, I also hope those kids goof around with After Effects or Maya and see what they can do with modern technology.

And I hope that they know that it's okay if a special effect is a little ragged around the edges, so long as it's made with love and imagination.

Note: Ray Harryhausen died May 7th of 2013.  He was 92.  I first saw Jason and the Argonauts when I was nine years old.  It remains one of my favorite movies of all time.