In the 1980s, fantasy films were common but not always great. Many films got mixed reviews but have built an audience after the fact (Willow, Legend, Excalibur). Other films got polarizing reviews and are still much debated (Conan the Barbarian). A handful of films received good reviews if not great ticket sales (Dragonslayer, The Princess Bride). Ray Harryhausen’s final film, Clash of the Titans, fits closest to the first category.
In a 1988 BBC mini-documentary, young filmmaker Peter Jackson cited Harryhausen as one of his early inspirations. His early unfinished amateur films included an attempt to remake Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (Sibley 311). In a 2017 Tate Etc. article, Jackson cited the troll scene in The Fellowship of the Ring as his “Harryhausen scene” and elaborated on how Harryhausen’s work informed his approach to the trilogy.
“I wanted to make my ‘Jason’, or my ‘Sinbad’. My partner Fran Walsh and I toiled for a while on original fantasy story ideas, before settling on the idea of adapting The Lord of the Rings instead. The Lord of the Rings is my ‘Ray Harryhausen movie’. Without that life-long love of his wondrous images and storytelling, it would never have been made – not by me at least.”
“Peter Jackson on Ray Harryhausen”
While Jackson doesn’t cite Clash of the Titans in the above description, his fascination with Harryhausen’s work makes it a good bet that he saw the film. The fact that Clash of the Titans is arguably more cult film than classic—at least compared to the two films that Jackson mentions, Jason and the Argonauts and Sinbad—makes it an important film to consider in contrast to Lord of the Rings. It represents Harryhausen’s last effort, made when fantasy films were polarizing fans—creating expectations that Jackson would have to deal with, as seen in the excerpt from the following 1998 interview.
“[Interviewer:] Here’s one of the chief fears from fans, and lots of them are curious about what you think. Fantasy film has been with us straight from the beginning. It has been mined by Korda, Fairbanks, Harryhausen, Pal, etc. At that time their films were quite successful. But in the last twenty years the fantasy film has nose-dived into granite. What is wrong with the modern fantasy film, what is missing, and how is this going to be any different from the parade of fantasy duds that have been kicking sand in the face of fantasy lovers for a generation now?
[Jackson:] One of my chief reasons for wanting to spend nearly 5 years of my life making these films has been that I don’t think that fantasy has been well served by cinema. So I agree with your comments. I can’t get into a deep debate about the last 20 years of fantasy, but have been disappointed by the films as well. Either the style has been wrong, or often the scripts have been terrible. Starting out with strong scripts (and we are obviously dealing with great material) will put us ahead of a lot of other fantasy films. Not making the movies self-consciously fantasy will help too.”
“20 Questions with Peter Jackson”
Jackson’s love for Harryhausen, combined with a clear need to take fantasy cinema in new directions, informed his Lord of the Rings trilogy in many ways.
Looking at Clash of the Titans alongside Jackson’s trilogy shows the balancing act. Several key elements in Clash of the Titans
parallel themes or plot ideas that Jackson explored—many ones that appear in Tolkien’s text, so one can’t make a clear case that Jackson planned to emulate Clash of the Titans. However, the movies still explore some similar ideas—creating what scholar Brenton Dickieson would call “resonant moments” that don’t show clear influence, but are still worth exploring.
Immortals Interacting with the Mortal World: Gods and Elves
The Clash of the Titans opens with a dramatic scene of Perseus and his mother being abandoned to the sea, then cuts to the Olympian gods (Zeus, Thetis, Poseidon, Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera) discussing the mortals’ fate. As one would expect for Greek gods, they wear white togas and speak in a disaffected, formal manner. The style parallels Jackson’s style for his Lothlorien elves—beings living ceremony-filled lives in pastel-colored buildings and carrying an otherworldly attitude to the outside world.
Like Jackson’s elves, Harryhausen’s gods are divided on whether to get involved with these mortals who come to their attention. Zeus makes the deciding choice to get involved because (like Elrond reforging Narsil after he realizes his daughter Arwen will not leave Aragorn), it becomes a family matter. Perseus is his son. Later, he curses Thetis’ mortal son Calibos creates more intrusions. Thetis relocates Perseus to Joppa, after which he throws a wrench in Calibos’ plans to control the city. As with the elves’ interaction with Sauron that makes the One Ring possible, the interactions of mortals and immortals can have wide-ranging negative and positive effects.
As in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, these otherworldly immortals become aware that the mortals’ adventures mean big changes for their way of life. More interventions—Zeus sends Perseus magic armor, Athena sends Perseus a clockwork owl to advise him—follow as Persesus’ adventures advance. After taking care of the Kraken, which Poseidon originally controlled, Perseus stands victorious. Zeus exults in his son’s victory, but the other gods are more concerned. Thetis calls Perseus “a dangerous precedent. What if every day there were heroes like him? What if courage and imagination were to become everyday mortal qualities? What would become of us?”
Zeus replies, “There would be no need.”
The Return of the King ends with Elrond, Celeborn, Galadriel, and the other elves leaving. The world no longer needs them, for the age of man has come. They depart, aware that while the time of their glory is gone, a new good age has arrived. The world is in good (if different) hands now.
Dark Yet Pitiful Villains: Calibos and Gollum
Along with these thematic resonances, there are moments when Harryhausen’s plot or characters resemble territory later covered in Jackson’s trilogy.
Thetis’ son Calibos is certainly Gollum-esque. His crimes have led to him becoming deformed. By the time Perseus arrives in Joppa, Calibos lives away from civilized people in a dark, wet space (a marsh).
Despite their crimes, both figures prompt pity. Perseus chops off Calibos’ hand at their first meeting but lets him live. Later, Andromeda notes her pity for Calibos and asks why Perseus let him live. Perseus replies, “Perhaps because I, too, felt pity.” When Frodo and Sam capture Gollum, Frodo chooses not to leave him to die or kill him: “Maybe he does deserve to die. But after seeing him, I cannot help but pity him.”
Sadly, Perseus’ pity for Calibos leads to no redemptive twist. After Andromeda’s mother incites Theta’s rage and the Kraken threatens their city, Calibos interferes with Perseus’ plans to destroy the Kraken. After Calibos continues to chase Perseus, the two men finally fight, and Calibos loses.
Given that Calibos earlier has a chance to leave Perseus alone and live his own life elsewhere, his death feels justified. Still, the different ends perhaps show the worldview difference between the merciful Judeo-Christian worldview of Tolkien’s material and the stoic Greek paganism inherent to Perseus’ story: an enemy may be pitied, but life is still a brutal struggle where some survive and the rest wither.
While Harryhausen accomplishes some great pathos through Calibos’ story, Clash of the Titans is not fundamentally a very tragic or serious film. Jackson and Harryhausen mix comedy and seriousness in different ways—ways that hearken back to Jackson’s concerns about self-conscious fantasy.
Pomp and Pretense: Serious and Self-Conscious Fantasy
Harryhausen had experimented with gentle camp in his earlier fantasy films. Like many genre films of the period—from Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments to Terence Fisher’s Gothic horror melodramas for Hammer—Jason and the Argonauts doesn’t aim for a consistently serious tone. There are moments of comedy, moments of terror, and moments of brash battle fun. Zeus particularly appears as a humorous character, amused by (and almost sassing) Jason in their conversations.
Some humor also comes with age. Anything “stagey”—monologues about prophecy, elaborate repartee, overdressed villains calling the guards and declaring the heroes will be tortured forthwith—in Jason now feels humorous. Cinema has moved away from theatrical presentation methods and style, rendering those conventions silly over time.
Even conceding that theatricality on film feels funnier today than it did at the time, the fact remains it’s hard to make a fantasy story like Jason or Clash of the Titans or Lord of the Rings without making some scenes pretentious and therefore laughable. The inevitable monologues about prophecies, fate, and adventure, can drag or become ridiculous.
By 1981, Harryhausen seems to have concluded he couldn’t make those scenes too serious, so he’d create a tongue-in-cheek feel instead.
Sometimes the gods seem serious, other times childish—when Perseus receives magical gifts, Zeus calls out through a magic shield, “No! Try me first!”
Ridiculous jokes appear in the script—when Perseus tries on his magic helmet, and his friend Ammon can’t see him, Perseus yells, “I’m invisible! Can’t you see that?”
Characters sometimes seem smart, sometimes foolish—like Ammon pointing at a sword and saying, “Look! A sword!”
Corny visual comedy abounds—Athena’s mechanical owl, Bubo, sometimes helps and sometimes falls off trees. At the movie’s conclusion, Bubo holds a crutch as if his clockwork wing will heal by itself.
There are also some deliberately overripe performances—most notably the three witches whom Perseus consults, cackling and broadcasting every action with hand waves, like the villainous healers in Ken Russell’s The Devils.
None of Harryhausen’s humor makes The Clash of the Titans a satire. It doesn’t invert genre tropes like The Princess Bride does to make a point (“Who said life is fair? Where is that written?”). However, the silliness makes it perhaps a commentary on Harryhausen’s past films—he seems to have grown tired of trying to beat fantasy’s capacity for pretentiousness, so he opts for humor instead. As Jackson would say, Clash of the Titans is very much a self-conscious fantasy.
Jackson avoids the self-conscious humor route through several methods. For one thing, he partitions the humor so it only affects certain characters. The hobbits (save Frodo) behave foolishly to create slapstick or say foolish things, but they’re the only ones who can be considered childish. Gimli’s humor is different—gruff bravado, battle comrade repartee. Meanwhile, Gandalf and Aragon laugh at the hobbits’ behavior but are essentially dramatic characters.
Jackson follows the same rule that Walt Disney used in his animated films: there can be some childish characters providing comic relief (the dwarves, the talking mice, the good fairies) as long as lead characters (the princesses and princess) are played straight. Frodo and Aragorn are the straight men, Pippin and Merry and Sam the comic relief.
Beyond making sure the humor only affects parts of his fantasy films instead of affecting everything, Jackson also creates a particular kind of suspense that Harryhausen rarely uses.
Making Exposition Suspenseful: Cinematography Techniques
Given that a key struggle with fantasy films is making the potentially pretentious or dull feel interesting, it’s worth considering how Jackson handles such scenes differently than Harryhausen.
Clash of the Titans uses a formal cinematography style similar to most of Harryhausen’s earlier films. The camera occasionally moves in for closeups but rarely rotates or cuts away—and while Harryhausen’s earlier films may have taken this approach due to limited camera tech, Harryhausen had the capacity for more advanced camera and camera work by the time he made Clash of the Titans.
Jackson showed his love for fast-paced camera work in his very first film. Bad Taste started production in 1983 (two years after Clash of the Titans premiered) and was filmed over four years with a ragtag team of volunteers working with an ever-expanding script. Despite its tiny team and cost, it includes moments like a camera in a tree spinning in a nearly 180-degree arc… to watch one man running in a straight line through a forest.
By the time Jackson made Lord of the Rings, he had somewhat reigned in these impulses. However, he still used many close-ups, sweeping camera angles, and cameras alternating between characters for simple scenes. In The Return of the King, the camera gently sweeps up and around the stairs as Arwen dashes up them to confront Elrond about a vision showing her future son. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the camera closes in on Elrond’s face as he recalls how Isildur refused to destroy the ring (cutting to the scene, then back to Elrond’s face now in dramatic closeup). Even in perhaps his most Harryhausen-style shot (a continuous shot of Théoden de-aging in The Two Towers), Jackson refuses to use a stationary shot of the special effects doing their magic. He cuts between the special effects and surrounding characters observing the effect (to Eoywn, to Aragorn watching Eowyn, to Gandalf watching Eowyn embrace Théoden). In other words, Jackson makes scenes more visually interesting by using his camera as much as possible—making even exposition scenes feel complex and exciting.
Jackson also looks for ways to include battle scenes or shocks in these scenes. Tolkien portrays the Council of Rivendell as melodramatic but essentially peaceful; Jackson adds Gimli’s axe exploding as he attempts to destroy the ring, and the discussion descends into a shouting match. Théoden’s transformation is played like an exorcism scene (punctuated with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas fighting Wormtongue’s associates). In Tolkien’s book, Wormtongue flees unharmed after Théoden’s transformation; Jackson has Théoden nearly killing Wormtongue and Aragorn stopping the king’s sword.
Jackson repeatedly punctuates scenes by adding a verbal or physical fight, using violence to keep things exciting. It’s an approach that a horror filmmaker would think of before anyone else—save maybe an action director like Mel Gibson, and Gibson’s bloody action approach to filmmaking does resemble Jackson’s work. Jackson stated several times that Braveheart influenced his approach to Lord of the Rings (“20 Questions”). Both directors have also been discussed as inserting horror into other genres—more than one writer has compared Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ to horror cinema (for example, see Richard Walsh’s essay “The Passion as Horror Film”).
Understanding Lord of the Rings as a fantasy film that steals ideas from the horror filmmaking playbook is key understanding what separates Jackson from Harryhausen.
Filming Monsters: Fantasy and Horror Approaches
Jackson and Harryhausen are kindred spirits in that they love their monsters. The difference is that Harryhausen may have let that love overtake him—perhaps because he humanized them. Robin Bailes recounts how Harryhausen’s early acting training affected how he animated monsters—creating little movement and facial features that “make his creations more than menacing monsters.”
Furthermore, Harryhausen’s iconic animatic style (dubbed Dynamation) generally involved keeping the camera stationary for battle scenes and effects shots. For example, the camera stays in one place as a stop-motion Calibos steps up from his throne and cracks a whip. The same occurs when Perseus fights giant scorpions, ropes Pegasus, fights Cerberus, and when he slashes Medusa’s head off.
The stationary camera gives viewers time to gaze at his handiwork and appreciate it. Giving viewers time to gaze at the effects also means they have time to notice how the special effects have aged. Medusa is the most frightening monster in Clash of the Titans, primarily because she’s mostly in shadows.
Harryhausen uses different cinematography techniques for the Medusa scene than the rest of the film, showing he knew how to imply a monster when he wanted to. As Perseus and his men explore the crypt, they see nothing. Sand falling from the ceiling startles them—a buildup followed by a false threat, what horror fans often call “a Lewton bus.”
When Medusa does appear, it’s all implication. Audiences see a shadow of her tail. Then her shadow on a wall. Then her, but draped in shadow. These techniques may seem obvious for a character who turns other characters to stone (if other characters shouldn’t see her, don’t show her). However, not every filmmaker uses these horror techniques—for example, Christopher Columbus has her appear in full lighting in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Harryhausen uses the horror filmmaker’s “implied is more frightening rule” for the scene—and perhaps as a result, it’s the moment that most fans remember best.
Beyond the Medusa scene, Harryhausen avoids using horror techniques to create suspense. There’s some atmospheric dark lighting when Andromeda meets Calibos in his swamp realm, but nothing horror-esque. Compare these swamp scenes to the ones that Harryhausen’s contemporaries at Hammer Film Productions created in films like The Mummy.
Jackson delves much deeper into horror techniques for his films. From Bad Taste onward, his approach to the camera is to keep it moving. Hence, he either implies the monster (viewers don’t get a good look at Shelob until far into her scenes in The Return of the King) or keeps the camera in motion to avoid getting a good look at the monster.
In what Jackson called his “Harryhausen scene,” the cave troll in The Fellowship of the Ring, the troll isn’t obscured by shadows. However, the camera moves around the troll almost constantly. If the camera isn’t moving up the troll’s back or zooming in and out of its face, it’s following other characters with obstacles (pillars, rocks) obscuring a full profile view of the troll.
Jackson’s refusal to give viewers a good, long, unmediated look at his monsters means two things. Functionally, it means viewers react to the effects, but don’t have enough time to ponder them—avoiding the “these effects haven’t aged well” trap. Stylistically, it shows Jackson combining his love for Harryhausen with other influences: his first finished film, Bad Taste, was a horror comedy.
Jackson and Harryhausen love monsters, but only one became interested in horror filmmaking. Yes, Harryhausen’s 1950s monster and alien films (20 Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) may loosely fit into the horror genre. However, those 1950s films were always more science fiction and disaster than horror. Yes, Harryhausen contributed monsters for one of Hammer’s films. However, the Hammer film he contributed to was the adventure film One Million Years B.C. His best-known movies were fantasy-adventure fare (Jason, Sinbad, and various films based on H.G. Wells and Jules Verne’s material).
In contrast, Jackson started out trying to make Harryhausen-style fantasy films but never finished those projects. His first finished project was Bad Taste. While many audiences know him best for fantasy-adventure fare (his King Kong remake and the Lord of the Rings trilogy), he cut his teeth making horror films like Bad Taste, Braindead, and The Frighteners. Some would argue that Braindead is his best film after his Lord of the Rings trilogy. He approaches fantasy films as someone who has traversed genre lines, borrowing techniques to apply them in new places.
Jackson’s cinematography resembles horror filmmaking more than any other approach because it is built on limited audience perception, creating more fear. As Stephen King suggested in Danse Macabre, a monster is always scariest when you’re in a closet and hearing it approach—once you see the monster, your mind can find ways to cope (117).
While implying a monster (obscuring it in shadows) is the clearest application of this principle, it’s not the only one. It also applies to how well audiences see a monster. Sam Raimi, a key influence on Jackson’s early films, also cut his teeth making horror films (in his case, the Evil Dead films). Evil Dead series star Bruce Campbell observed that Raimi likes to distract audiences from fully seeing some of his monsters—for example, in Evil Dead II, when a giant monster head that the crew dubbed “the Rotten Apple Head” appears dramatically in a cabin:
“… as soon as the head makes its appearance in the cabin, a gale force wind starts, lights flash, papers waft around the room, he’s using variable speed on the shutter, and you don’t see the Rotten Apple Head normally. It always has an anamorphic lens stretching it this way or that way.”
—Bruce Campbell interview in The Evil Dead Companion (227).
Jackson employs the same concept—letting viewers see his monsters, but not very well. He keeps the camera in motion, giving viewers little chance to see his elephants, trolls, or spiders in detail. Through these techniques and others discussed (punctuating scenes with violence or camera cutaways), he keeps the tension going all the time—a trait a horror filmmaker would think of before anyone else. How do you keep viewers engaged? Give them a good jolt… or teach them to expect a jolt, but not enough information to tell when the next jolt will come.
Final Thoughts: Lord of the Rings as a Genre and Game Changer
Harryhausen remains a crucial filmmaker in fantasy cinema and a key influence on Peter Jackson.
Looking at Harryhausen’s final film gives an interesting look at areas where (intentionally or not) Jackson’s storytelling parallels his work.
At the same time, Harryhausen and Jackson embody two different approaches to filming fantasy cinema’s toughest sequences (making exposition scenes interesting rather than pretentious, making monsters exciting without viewers critiquing how special effects have aged).
Harryhausen directs as someone fundamentally interested in fantasy-adventure literature, leading him to unabashedly show his monsters in all their glory. Jackson loves fantasy adventure. However, Martin Stollery’s comments about his influence and contemporary Mel Gibson equally apply to Jackson: he traverses genre lines, even between “previously quite distinct genres and subgenres” (249). As Gibson traversed the genre lines between action and horror and Christ film in Passion of the Christ (Stollery 247-249) and traversed the genre lines between historical drama and exploitation revenge thriller in Braveheart, Jackson traverses the genre lines between fantasy and horror in his Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Given Jackson’s 1998 interview where he discussed dealing with fantasy cinema’s fall from grace, understanding why his Lord of the Rings trilogy worked so well requires realizing he took a solution that Harryhausen avoided. Harryhausen was content to make a self-conscious fantasy, taking a hint of horror but never breaking genre lines, lovingly lampooning the genre on his way out. Jackson took a more serious approach and broke the lines between fantasy and horror wide open, mixing genre styles to create something new and shocking. In doing so, he honored his influences while pushing fantasy filmmaking somewhere new. Sometimes the best storytelling is about finding that combination of understanding the old rulebook, building on one’s love for past masters, but willingly writing a new rulebook for a new time.
Sources Cited
“20 Questions with Peter Jackson.” Herr de Ringe Film (originally posted on Ain’t It Cool News), August 30, 1998. web.archive.org/web/20200318230526/https://www.herr-der-ringe-film.de/v3/de/news/tolkienfilme/news_19946.php
Dickieson, Brenton. “CSL: LMM, C.S. Lewis and L.M. Montgomery (L.M. Montgomery Series).” A Pilgrim in Narnia, May 3, 2018. apilgriminnarnia.com/2018/05/03/csllmm/.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. Gallery Books, 2010.
“Myth Maker: The Fantasy Films of Ray Harryhausen.” Directed and edited by Graham Trelfer, written and presented by Robin Bailes. Dark Corners Review, June 24, 2020. youtu.be/VJZDLP_spIg.
Sibley, Brian. Peter Jackson: A Filmmaker’s Journey. HarperCollins Entertainment, 2006.
Stollery, Martin. “‘Squint against the grandeur’: iconoclasm and film genre in The Passion of the Christ and Hail, Caesar.” Pp. 247-264 in The Bible Onscreen in the New Millennium: New Heart and New Spirit, edited by Wickham Clayton. Manchester University Press, 2020.
Walsh, Richard. “The Passion as Horror Film: St. Mel of the Cross.” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture Vol. 20 Issue 1, 2008, pp. 2-2. utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jrpc.20.1.002.
Warren, Bill. The Evil Dead Companion. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000.