Some may instead call it stealing–which is understandable–but I think that there’s some innovation involved, if you look close enough.
When you’re working with a limited budget, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. Gerry Anderson’s “Space: 1999″ was at the time, the most expensive series on television, but if you had to work with special effects, model making in particular, you sometimes had to make do with whatever you could throw together.
I mention this because I happened to be watching Luigi Cozzi‘s (credited as ‘Lewis Coates’) Starcrash, which is recycled in more ways than you could possibly imagine
Most of it, thankfully, having little to do with any Gerry Anderson production.
If you look at the image above, which is a screenshot from the film, you’ll see what looks to be the command module from an Eagle, the multi-purpose space craft from “Space: 1999.”
Which looks that way because that’s exactly what it is.
It’t not unusual for model makers in science fiction films to use off-the-shelf parts to build their ships, though they usually do better disguising the fact.
I also happened to notice that the soundtrack was by John Barry (if a production ever seemed to buy legitimacy, then this was it), which if you listen carefully sounds remarkably like his theme to Disney’s “The Black Hole” in places.
In fact, if parts of the “Starcrash” soundtrack replaced that which was used in “The Black Hole,” it would have benefitted, because there’s some beautiful music, most of it more subtle than that used in the Disney film.
Here’s the trailer for Jonathan Liebesman’s “Wrath of the Titans,” the sequel to Louis Leterrier’s “Clash of the Titans,” which is itself a remake of a 1981 film by Desmond Davis. Liebesman also directed “Darkness Falls,” which took a great idea–the story of the Tooth Fairy, and her murderous attachment to the collection of teeth, and made it into something that was–on the whole–somewhat boring.
Leterrier is a director I tend to like, particularly after his work on the reboot of Marvel’s “The Incredible Hulk,” though “Clash” left me a bit cold.
It could have been because of the terrible post-conversion 3D; it could have been that the coolest thing about the entire movie was The Kraken, pictured below.
This is despite the original creature being created by the stop-motion special effects genius, Ray Harryhausen, while the update is composed of little more than pixels and many anonymous man-hours.
I am a little hesitant about “Wrath,” though I hope the finished film lives up to the trailer.
