One of the oldest sayings of actors is never take a role with an animal or a child, because you’ll always get upstaged. That’s where the Disney+ series is currently stuck–they created a character in The Child (aka Baby Yoda) that we’d all probably rather see more than Pedro Pascal’s title character. Yes, The Mandalorian is back this weekend with the first episode of Season Two, more than welcome fun in the year of COVID-19 and real-life, high-stakes politics. The series is full of Easter eggs and good throwbacks to the original trilogy, the prequels, bits and pieces of the entire franchise. But the plot for the season opener is a retread of themes and scenes from last year, light on our favorite young green-eared friend.
As in any creative industry, as much as Hollywood is rife with successes, far more projects barely make it past the idea stage. Others make it through preliminary steps only to get left behind, most never heard of again. Decisions are made, offers are given, and you move forward. The fact that Tom Selleck rejected the role of Indiana Jones is a famous footnote to movie history. Most recently Amanda Seyfried recounted rejecting the role of Gamora in the Marvel films. A Mouse Guard movie made it through pre-production before getting stalled. For every successful project, how many others are left behind? If you’re as iconic as filmmaker Ray Harryhausen, you might have even more projects left in the discard pile than others. Those might-have-been projects, rejected ideas, and even scenes that made it beyond mere idea to concept art come together in John Walsh’s new look at the auteur and father of stop-motion creatures, Harryhausen: The Lost Movies.
Ray Harryhausen’s creations were cutting edge for the first century of cinema, their creator a special effects visionary who found his niche in fantasy worlds, via films like One Million Years B.C., Clash of the Titans, and Jason and the Argonauts. Documentarian John Walsh met with Harryhausen, who died in 2013, to film a documentary about the filmmaker, and along the way he chronicled 70 projects Harryhausen considered but did not go through with, including script and concept art material. Some of these are projects he was asked to participate in and couldn’t find a fit, or films he passed up for other projects, including films anyone could see translated by Harryhausen, like Conan, Tarzan, King Kong, Moby Dick, John Carter of Mars, and Beowulf. Then there are those surprises fans could only dream about, like Harryhausen’s take on The Empire Strikes Back, The Princess Bride, Dune, or X-Men. Harryhausen: The Lost Movies provides fans with a glimpse into Harryhausen’s involvement in these projects, some with photographic clues of how his input might have resulted in very different films.
Pulling together some never-been-seen-before artwork, sketches, photos, and screencaps of test footage from the Harryhausen Foundation archives, Walsh creates a scrapbook of sorts, an artist’s sketchbook. Harryhausen considered every other major classic fantasy and fairy tale to utilize his brand of special effects storytelling. He created test footage for H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, but his letter to Orson Welles was not answered. His alien designs from that footage are in this book.
This Wednesday Dynamite Comics will take on a reboot of the fierce and beautiful she-devil with a sword, Red Sonja. We’ve previewed Issue #1 and were happy with the result–full of swordplay and the mythic dialect you’d expect from the heroine originally found in the pages of Conan the Barbarian. The big news is that the new series is written by Gail Simone. Known for many comic book series, but particularly her gutsy Batgirl and Wonder Woman, Simone’s fans will find her Red Sonja a worthy new addition to the pantheon of strong women characters in comics. With some nice classic Conan-style artwork by Walter Geovani, Dynamite will no doubt have a winner with this new series.
Simone’s Red Sonja story has bits and pieces of archetype characters and settings. In Issue #1 keep an eye out for a new take on Akira Kurasawa’s classic save the village story. She also includes enough backstory to allow new readers easy accessibility to the character and her medieval high fantasy world.
