Last Friday, one of my coworkers — a bright guy in his mid-twenties whom I quite like, but often struggle to find common ground with — asked if I knew when Clash of the Titans was coming out.
“Sure,” I replied, “the next time I go to my video cabinet and get the DVD.”
Big laughs ensued. The kid was talking, of course, about the upcoming remake of the Ray Harryhausen classic, while I was playing to my usual curmudgeonly, remake-hating persona.
Well, this humorous bonding moment led to a discussion of the original film, which my colleague had never seen, and he asked me if I’d recommend it. I told him yes, but qualified my opinion by advising that if he thought he might want to give Clash a try, he needed to keep in mind that it was a 30-year-old movie that was originally made for 12-year-olds. You see, I’ve been down this path before; I know how younger people usually react to the stuff I grew up liking.
Sure enough, I received a somewhat chagrined message from my coworker last night, saying he’d tried, he’d really tried, to watch the original Clash over the weekend, and he was sorry, but he just couldn’t get through it. The problem, not surprisingly, was the visual effects. They were just too antiquated for his jaundiced eye, too “phony-looking.” He simply could not suspend his disbelief long enough to enjoy the movie’s plot.
I was disappointed by his reaction, but not remotely surprised. Of course he had problems with the visual effects. The Damn Kids™ always do, don’t they? Actually, I guess that’s not fair… it’s not just the kids, as I know a lot of people my own age who snark on older films for the exact same reason. Even the groundbreakers and landmarks like the original Star Wars don’t look real enough to modern audiences anymore; ironic, considering Star Wars gave birth to the modern emphasis on visual effects, as well as the effects giant Industrial Light and Magic, which pioneered most of the digital technology that now dominates the field.
I guess I must be some kind of mutant, because I don’t have a problem with the things that bother other people about old movies. I’ll be the first one in the room to nitpick a plot hole or note that a movie had a good premise but was poorly executed, or that it had a bad premise and never should’ve been greenlighted in the first place. I’m not saying that I like everything without reservation. But I very, very rarely complain about surface-level trappings like visual effects. I seem to have a knack for simply accepting vintage movies and TV shows for what they are — vintage. The best that could be done at the time they were made, and given the constraints the individual productions may have been under in terms of budget, schedule, and available technology.
It isn’t that I don’t notice when the effects are primitive or unsuccessful. I’m not delusional, and — despite what the smart-alecks out there might be thinking — I really don’t revel in crap the way some connoisseurs do. But a movie that was considered good — or at least good enough — when it came out tends to remain that way in my eyes. Unlike a lot of the folks with whom I find myself debating this subject, I don’t expect a movie made in 1953 or 1977 or 1981 to look like Avatar, and it doesn’t matter to me that it doesn’t. (Actually, it’s a plus for me that old movies don’t look like Avatar, because I didn’t think the Big Thing du Jour was all that neat. Just about everything about Pandora looked like a damn video game, and to my eye, that’s more phony than rubber masks and model rocketships dangling from piano wires. But that, perhaps, is a tangent for another time.)
I’m not trying to make myself out to be morally superior because I like old movies and a lot of people — perhaps most people — do not. But I do get frustrated with the modern preoccupation with visual effects and whether or not they look “real.” (Not to mention the disconnect between what looks real to me, and what apparently is the current standard for real. But again, that’s a tangent.) In my view, being unable to watch a movie because it has obsolete visual effects is as illogical as not liking a flick from the ’70s because the cast is wearing leisure suits, or sneering at a movie from the ’40s because it was shot in black-and-white. That’s just how things were when those movies were made, and I personally don’t see why it’s such a problem that they don’t look like everything looks now.
Of course, I do know people who won’t watch ’70s movies because they can’t stop laughing at the clothes, or who turn up their noses at black-and-white, for no reason other than… it’s black and white. I once met a guy who actually believed there wasn’t any point in watching anything older then five years. Even something he’d once enjoyed was off the menu after five years, because he just knew it would now be “too dated.” I couldn’t have been more baffled by that theory if it’d been presented in Swahili.
You know, film preservation has thus far focused entirely on the physical, i.e., capturing the content from decaying film stock and getting it into a more stable medium. But I wonder if maybe it’s not equally important to work on the psychological aspect of preservation… because what good is it to save the content if no one wants to actually experience it?
I recently watched a DVD of the 1979 movie, Scavenger Hunt, starring the likes of James Coco, Scatman Crothers, Cloris Leachman, Roddy McDowall, Richard Mulligan, Stephen Furst, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Randall, Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames. It was as dated as a movie can get, but quite entertaining.
I noticed right away, however, that the plot lacked the sophistication of even today’s TV shows. Writing has come a long way. As far as the humor goes, I bet it was original, ground-breaking comedy for 1979, but looking backward, it was very predictable. From a 2010 perspective, everything they did has been done before. And while I can appreciate the film for what it was, I can see how modern audiences might find it lacking.
That said, there are a lot of today’s films that could do for some simplification. Crowded, overplotted stories are too common nowadays.
I can’t say I like prefer modern over classic films, or vice versa. I can appreciate both. And I’m curious to see the new Clash of the Titans. I’m sure they’ll overdo the CG, just like James Cameron did in Avatar and George Lucas did in the SW prequels.
Wow, Scavenger Hunt… there’s one I haven’t thought about in a long time. I remember seeing that when I was a kid. Didn’t know it was even available…
I don’t disagree with your comments about writing. By and large, writing is more sophisticated these days, at least on television. (I would argue that your average feature film these days is no better, and in many cases much worse, than comparable movies of the ’70s and ’80s. You can always find exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, storytelling in the movies these days is incredibly formulaic and, as you mentioned, overly complex for the material usually at hand. Or sometimes not complex enough, because filmmakers think we’ll be happy as long as there isn’t too much downtime between action sequences, as in dreck like the Transformers movies.)
As for whether something like Scavenger Hunt is going to be satisfy a modern viewer, mileage varies, as they say. My frustration really isn’t with the people who are at least willing to watch an older film but then find legitimate reasons not to like it, because I don’t like them all myself. (I probably wasn’t very clear about that in my entry. Sorry – I was up past my bedtime finishing it.)
What bothers me is when people dislike an old movie — or are unwilling to even give it a look, which really makes me crazy — because of, IMO, superficial reasons: the visual effects, the clothing and hair, the general “look” of the movie, whether it’s in black and white. I applaud you for looking past those factors to judge Scavenger Hunt on its true merits, whatever those may be. I seem to encounter a lot of people who just aren’t willing to do that.
(Incidentally, I’m willing to bet Scavenger Hunt wasn’t thought to be anything special even in ’79, or it’d be better remembered today… there was plenty of stale formula even 30 years ago, especially in comedies.)
As for the new Clash, yeah, it’ll almost certainly be more CGI than not, just like Avatar. The preview I’ve seen reminds me a lot of 300, actually. But the bigger problem for me isn’t the FX. (I don’t care much for CGI, but I don’t want to be a hypocrite and dismiss something purely because of its visual effects.) The thing that’s bothering me is that it looks, like so much of our so-called entertainment these days, relentlessly grim and downbeat. Everybody these days seems to think that in order to tell a grown-up story, you have to be depressing. Frankly, I’m tired of that crap — I went through my “dark and broody” stage in my 20s, and I’d like some good old-fashioned escapism now please. And I especially resent how recent remakes all seem bent on transforming the fun, swashbuckling movies of our youth into “sophisticated” serious (i.e., depressing) drama. I didn’t like the remake of Battlestar Galactica for that reason, and I have a hunch Tron Legacy is going to suffer from the same problem…
Perhaps the willingness to suspend disbelief decreases as the expectation of realistic visual effects increases. Even when stop-motion photography was cutting edge, nobody thought it looked realistic. It was a cool effect that allowed you to see something you couldn’t see in everyday life, like giant gorillas and giant scorpions (pretty much anything giant). Good CGI rises to the same standard. Indeed, when CGI tries to represent ordinary reality, it almost always looks stupid. Moreover, the willingness to suspend disbelief rests not on the quality of the effect but on the quality of the story or character. A couple weeks ago you showed a picture of Jim Henson with his hand up Kermit the Frog’s wazoo. Even such a picture does nothing to diminish my belief in the character. To borrow Derek’s point above, I think the real reason your friend couldn’t sit through Clash of the Titans is that the writing and acting are so damn bad compared to later movies (and I say this as someone who loved Clash of the Titans and watched it about 30 times).
I, for one, won’t watch the Clash remake because 1) I think most remakes are pointless attempts to cash in on a known brand, and 2) I don’t go to the movies any more anyway. Unless, of course, you happen to have it on your HDTV the next time I visit . . .
I think you’re exactly right about expectations, Robert… modern audiences are frankly spoiled by the ability of CGI to create a passable facsimile of, well, anything, so they’re unwilling to put in the imaginative effort required by older techniques like rubber masks and stop-motion. As you say, that stuff never looked literally real, even when it was considered cutting-edge, but we could believe it was real within the context of the film. Now, people — most people anyhow — seem to have lost that ability.
In a way, I suppose I’m no different than the old-timers who bitched that people had lost their imaginations after television made the radio show obsolete.
I won’t argue with your point about writing and acting and suspension of disbelief, except to say again that mileage varies (i.e., I still enjoy Clash of the Titans), and also that, for what it’s worth, my friend did specify that it was the effects that he had trouble with, not the performances or script. Although if I’d asked him, he probably would’ve dissed them too. 🙂
I actually acquired myself a copy of the old “Clash of the Titans” in anticipation of the new one. I can’t wait to see this film, primarily due to the memories I have of watching the original as a kid.
I will say that I agree to a great extent with what has been said regarding CGI. We’ve created an environment where reality and imagination are blending, and it’s no wonder that kids have a hard time unplugging and dealing with reality. When I wanted to escape as a kid, I did it with a book. Written words that turned into amazing images – inside my head. Yes, I know, those days are gone, but a little nostalgia never hurt anyone.
…a little nostalgia never hurt anyone
Good thing, Bob, or I’d have the equivalent of a nonstop gout attack every single day! 🙂
Jason – I know we have this “argument” every time you post about older media (“argument” in quotes because I’m not really arguing with you, you understand…), but I think the disconnect comes from comparing your past with your co-worker’s present, rather than your past with, say, your parents’ past (which is, in effect, what he’s doing).
When we were kids, special effects never looked real, so we accepted them as effects (as you said). Today, the effects often look so real that I’d assume kids don’t think of them as effects – they just think of them as, well, movies. So, when the guy on the screen pretends to be scared by the other guy wearing a rubber mask, it’s not “old fashioned special effects,” it’s just silly. Because the guy in today’s movie isn’t pretending to be afraid of the CGI effect, he’s pretending to be afraid of the monster.
My point (it had to be in here somewhere, right?): when you were twenty, were you as forgiving about what your parents considered “old movies” as you’re asking a current 20-year old to be about the movies of the 1980’s? I’m guessing not…
…when you were twenty, were you as forgiving about what your parents considered “old movies” as you’re asking a current 20-year old to be about the movies of the 1980’s? I’m guessing not…
Well, let’s see… when I was 20 — that would’ve been in 1989 — the most prominent decorative item in my bedroom was a poster for the original Day the Earth Stood Still, which was made in 1951, 38 years earlier. And it was for either my nineteenth or twentieth birthday that I asked for a copy of Rebel Without a Cause (1955). So, yeah, I’d say I was pretty forgiving of old movies when I was a kid. 🙂
I do take your point, however, and acknowledge that I’ve always been something of an oddball when it comes to this subject. But I never felt like I was all that odd — I used to encounter enough other people who shared, or at least respected, my tastes and interests that I actually felt kind of cool for liking that stuff. Any more though…
To be perfectly honest, Brian, the reason this old-media/new-media thing sticks in my craw is largely a matter of ego. I still like most of the movies and TV shows and music I grew up on, as well as the classic material I discovered after I got seriously into film history, and it bothers me that this stuff gets so little respect these days. I don’t quite understand why it is that I still find value in it while so many others — including peers who also grew up on the same stuff — do not.
As lame as this sounds… I wonder what it says about me that I’m still pleased by movies that everyone else seems to have decided are irrelevant, or obsolete. (This is probably tied in some way to my general dread of aging, i.e., maybe I like irrelevant, obsolete movies and do not care for more current stuff because I, too, am irrelevant and/or obsolete… or at least unable to adapt.) And quite frankly, it gets tiresome to always feel like I’m the lone defender trying to hold back the barbarian hordes…