Review Detail

I've always considered 'Jason and the Argonauts' to be a fun enough movie, but the reality of watching it never quite lives up to the movie I recall in my head. While 'Jason' is a really excellent showcase of Ray Harryhausen's stop motion work... its pacing and performances haven't aged well.

Well now The Scribbling Man has assembled the film as I thought I knew it. What once felt like plotty filler in between effects sequences, now actually feels like momentum building. And all without betraying it's status as a fanedit. The cuts and the pacing feel genuine. I love how the effects blossom as the movie goes along, starting with the awakening of Talos all the way through to the battle with the Hydra. It's funny, for all the warranted hype surrounding the skeleton battle - and the fact that I've seen the film 2 or 3 times before - I guess I was so wrapped up in the story this time that I forgot the film ended on that sequence. Perhaps it's because these sword and sandals fantasies tend to blur together for me, or perhaps because I was so taken by The Scribbling Man's work smoothing out the stop motion, especially on the seven-headed Hydra sequence, which feels like it would be the grand finale in any other film.

And it's The Scribbling Man's smoothing of the stop motion which brings this fanedit to the next level. The effects now feel so natural without taking anything away from the great work Harrhausen did. This honestly feels like an excellent tribute to the man and I think if the technology had existed he would have utilized whatever he could to achieve smoother motion, much like the "go-motion" effect that Phil Tippet perfected in films like Robocop 2 and Willow. Props to the Scribbbling man for isolating the stop motion creatures so his tweaks didn't ruin the movement of the other elements in the shot.

All in all this film is blast. Going forward, it will not only be replacing the original as my go-to version, but I will likely be going back to this edit more than I would the theatrical cut. Amazing job.