It has been 67 years since one movie helped change everything about the fantasy movie genre, and it helped invent an entire subgenre in the industry. Before this movie arrived, most of the fantasy genre’s biggest hits were primarily fairy tale adaptations like Beauty and the Beast, family movies like The Wizard of Oz, and horror movies like Frankenstein. However, everything changed in the 1950s, thanks to one man. While Ray Harryhausen was using a technique that King Kong used to incredible effect, it was this brilliant, practical stop-motion effects artist who helped change everything that fantasy movies could accomplish. It all started in a film released in 1958, called The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Released in 1958, Nathan Juran directed The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which, in reality, is more connected to the legendary Third and Fifth voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. In this movie, Sinbad has several major encounters with monsters, including a giant cyclops, a dangerous snake-like being, animated skeleton warriors, and several large monstrous creatures, before finally encountering a chained dragon.
It took Ray Harryhausen 11 months to create all the stop-motion effects for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and it changed fantasy movies forever. It was here that Harryhausen created his Dynamation label, which he used for several future movies. The Cyclops and Dragon battle in the film was one of the most inventive and awe-inspiring moments in any fantasy film. Following this groundbreaking masterpiece, Harryhausen then perfected his techniques in movies like Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans.
7th Voyage of Sinbad Led to Fantasy’s Most Inventive Hits
Image Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Just five years after he helped create the creatures in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Ray Harryhausen mastered his stop-motion animation techniques and helped make the movie Jason And The Argonauts. When the Oscars awarded Harryhausen with an honorary Oscar, no less than Tom Hanks announced at the ceremony that Jason and the Argonauts was the greatest movie ever made.
Names like Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, George Lucas, John Landis, and Nick Park have said that Ray Harryhausen influenced their filmmaking. Without the work in Harryhausen’s movies, the world might not have Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies or the fantastic creatures in George Lucas’s Star Wars movies. Lucas even said he never would have tried to make Star Wars if it weren’t for Ray Harryhausen’s movies.
Modern-day stop motion movies, such as the Aardman movies by Nick Park and the Laika films like Coraline, owe their entire existence to the technique’s mastery at the hands of Ray Harryhausen. It all started 67 years ago with the groundbreaking The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
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