Seeing 'Jason and the Argonauts' on the Big Screen!

Jason and the Argonauts at Shin Bungeiza. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Tonight (Tuesday, October 3), I saw Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts (1963) for the very first time -- and what a way to see it for the first time! It was on Ikebukuro's Shin Bungeiza theater's big (and I mean big!) screen. I couldn't find the format for the screening listed anywhere, but a staff member told me it was a 2K DCP (digital projection). 

Looks like Harryhausen's friends came out to support this screening. Photo by Brett Homenick.

As a kid, I was a big fan of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) with its rousing score, memorable monsters, and exciting action. But Jason and the Argonauts always looked to me like a "less than" version of 7th Voyage, so I guess I was never interested in checking it out. I saw bits and pieces of it here and there growing up, but never the whole thing. Admittedly, after finally watching it tonight, I don't think I missed very much.

Most of the action sequences aren't that exciting, and the mystical creatures aren't that compelling, either. Talos isn't bad, but he really poses no threat so long as you can outrun him (which every character in the film can easily do). Near as I could tell, Talos only manages to kill one character, who pretty much only has his own stupidity to blame for it. 

The Hydra had some potential, but it does nothing and is dispatched easily. The Hydra sequence was a fairly stark reminder of how unconvincing Harryhausen's animation was at capturing the movements of humans. For all the tut-tutting Godzilla movies get from stop-motion purists about their "fake" effects, it makes me wonder if any of these dynamation superfans have actually seen a stop-motion movie.

I suppose some of them might try to argue that Harryhausen put more thought and effort into carefully animating his action scenes, as opposed to, in their thinking, throwing a guy in a monster suit and letting him stomp around a miniature set. But that's not the point. Something either looks fake, or it doesn't, regardless of how much effort was put into creating something that looks objectively fake. 

Besides, none of these purists ever apply such a standard to Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Alien (1979), or any other movie they are quick to praise as a classic that also makes liberal use of monster suits. 

(No offense intended to most stop-motion fans, of course! I've just dealt with my share of hardcores who never missed an opportunity to trash tokusatsu and praise dynamation as superior in every way when, quite frankly, nobody asked their opinions on the subject.)

I will say, though, that the final battle with the skeleton warriors is quite impressive. In fact, in some shots they simply look like living skeletons and nothing like the stop-motion creations that they actually are. So I will give Harryhausen a lot of credit there. The only drawback is that the battle more or less comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying end by having the skeletons voluntarily fling themselves into the ocean. I guess the filmmakers couldn't conceive of a more dramatic conclusion to their climax. 

Overall, I thought Jason and the Argonauts was just OK. It certainly isn't a bad film by any means, but I think it essentially matched my fairly low expectations, which I was hoping it wouldn't. I would recommend The 7th Voyage of Sinbad over this one in a heartbeat. 7th Voyage is a truly an excellent fantasy film and gets my vote as Harryhausen's best movie.