In chronological order.
As with many successful anime tv series, Speed Racer started on the printed page. Tatsuo Yoshida’s original manga Mach GoGoGo (serialized between 1966 and 1968) emerged during Japan’s rapid modernization and automotive fascination. A product of its time, it combined elements of heroic storytelling, spy thrillers, and science fiction, inspired by both James Bond and Japanese racing culture. It followed Go Mifune (translated as Speed Racer in English), a hotheaded but honorable young driver who dreams of becoming a world-class racer with his technologically advanced Mach 5 car. Yoshida’s art was clean, dynamic, and expressive, prioritizing kinetic energy and sharp contrasts to match the speed-driven plot. The manga was unabashedly aimed at boys, with themes of courage, family loyalty, and justice, but it also delved into espionage, sabotage, and betrayal. The mysterious Racer X, secretly Speed’s brother, exemplified the manga’s melodramatic and moral complexity.
The anime version of Mach GoGoGo, titled Speed Racer in English, was a cultural milestone in the USA when it aired in syndication starting in 1967. Translated and dubbed by Trans-Lux Television, it became one of the earliest anime series to achieve mass American exposure. Its recognizable theme song, stilted dialogue, and frenetic pacing helped engrain it in the American pop culture memory, albeit more as camp than drama. Though typical of its era, the animation was limited, with repeated sequences that would make the show appear cheap to modern audiences. It also had some sort of moral simplicity, with episodes ending with clear lessons about perseverance, courage, and loyalty.
One thing that it introduced to Western audiences was the team structure typical of many anime, a core group of characters representing specific archetypes. A main hero (young, idealistic protagonist), a father figure (mentor, leader, or actual parent), an older brother figure (rival, protector, or mysterious ally), a token female (often love interest, emotional anchor, or action girl), and a little kid and/or pet (comic relief, mascot, or symbolic innocence).
Despite technical shortcomings, the anime was groundbreaking for its influence on later Western perceptions of anime and created a dedicated fanbase that saw Speed as more than just a race car driver. He was a symbol of virtue and speed in a chaotic world. That was never recaptured by the reboots made decades later.
Speed Racer X (1993), produced by Tatsunoko and dubbed by Saban Entertainment, was mired in legal issues and aired only sporadically before being pulled. Tonally, it tried to modernize Speed while maintaining the campy flair. Unfortunately, it failed to resonate with either original fans, who saw it as inauthentic, or a new generation, who found it bland and formulaic.
Speed Racer: The Next Generation (2008), a CGI animated series produced by Nickelodeon, was meant to tie into the live-action film’s release. The concept, a futuristic school for racers run by an aged Spritle (that was Speed’s younger brother), was conceptually odd and tonally confused. It felt more like a marketing product than a genuine creative endeavor. Poor writing, stiff animation, and weak characterization ensured it was quickly forgotten.
And then we have the live-action film Speed Racer (Wachowskis, 2008), a colossal disaster. It was a surreal experiment that failed both commercially and critically. Its ambition was undeniable, attempting to create a hyperreal aesthetic that mimicked anime visual grammar through CGI. The film was loud, saturated with candy-colored visuals, and jam-packed with kinetic action sequences that seemed torn from a video game more than a racetrack.
Not often do so many things go wrong in a single movie. Let’s list just a few. Visual Overload: The film’s hypersaturated palette and constant digital movement overwhelmed viewers rather than immersing them. Narrative Incoherence: Despite a relatively simple story, the movie was weighed down by flashbacks, tonal shifts, and overwritten dialogue. Mismatched Casting and Tone: While some performances (notably John Goodman and Susan Sarandon) showed warmth, the film veered from childish slapstick (Spritle and Chim-Chim) to heavy-handed anti-corporate allegory, never settling on a target audience. Disregard for Realism: The film’s physics-defying races and rubbery CGI cars removed any stakes from the action. It bombed at the box office, grossing $93 million on a $120 million budget, and was swiftly labeled a misguided failure.
Instead of embracing the stripped-down emotional clarity and kinetic storytelling of Yoshida’s manga and anime, the Wachowskis imposed a convoluted mythology. They turned Speed Racer into an epic, when it had always been a serial. They also tried to blend Looney Tunes humor (chimpanzee antics) with dark critiques of corporate corruption and existential racing philosophy. This tonal split alienated both children and adults. And the hyper-CGI aesthetic made everything feel intangible. Speed’s struggles, victories, and relationships felt like simulations rather than real emotions playing out in a grounded world.
Speed Racer, as a property, has endured because of its iconic characters, archetypal storytelling, and unique place in the history of anime. But nearly every attempt to revive or reinvent it has stumbled, none more extravagantly than the Wachowskis’ 2008 film. That disaster, while visually innovative, serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-intellectualizing simple source material. What Speed Racer needs isn’t another reinvention, it’s a return to the track: fast, fun, and fearless.
In chronological order.
After playing the Avernum Trilogy again, I decided to go back to the old classic Wasteland and its official and unofficial sequels. It was a bit more complicated than I expected. But before getting into that, let me try to untangle the serpentine saga of these games.
The history of the Wasteland and Fallout series is a tale of creative ambition, intellectual property disputes, and the persistence of a vision across decades and studios. It begins in 1988, in the twilight of the Cold War, when Interplay Productions released Wasteland, a groundbreaking post-nuclear role-playing game published by Electronic Arts. Set in a desolate American Southwest after a global thermonuclear conflict, Wasteland was one of the first CRPGs to offer a persistent world, moral complexity, and consequences for player choices. Its blend of bleak survivalism, dark humor, and open-ended gameplay laid the foundation for what would become a genre-defining legacy.
Despite its success and critical acclaim, Interplay found itself unable to produce an official sequel. Electronic Arts owned the Wasteland name, and negotiations between the two companies failed to secure a path forward. In response, Interplay attempted to carry the spirit of Wasteland forward under different guises. One such project was Fountain of Dreams (1990), a supposedly spiritual successor developed by EA without Interplay’s involvement. Set in a post-apocalyptic Florida, it was poorly received, criticized for its bugs, weak writing, and lack of polish. It was a pale shadow of its predecessor. Another would-be successor, called Meantime, was in development at Interplay and intended to use the Wasteland engine in a time-traveling storyline. However, the project was ultimately canceled, partially due to the declining commercial viability of the Apple II platform.
Unable to continue Wasteland in name, Interplay instead reimagined its thematic core. By the mid-1990s, the team led by producers like Tim Cain and designers including Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson had harnessed the DNA of Wasteland into a new universe: Fallout. Released in 1997, Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game was the spiritual successor in everything but name. It retained Wasteland‘s gritty atmosphere and irreverent tone, and added a distinctive retro-futuristic 1950s aesthetic, as well as a unique SPECIAL character system (an acronym for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck). The gamble paid off: Fallout launched a franchise that would span decades, including direct sequels (Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas), Bethesda’s rebooted entries (Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 76), and countless mods and spin-offs.
Meanwhile, Wasteland itself remained dormant for over two decades, until the rights finally reverted to Brian Fargo, the founder of Interplay and head of a new studio, inXile Entertainment. With crowdfunding on Kickstarter and a strong nostalgic following, Wasteland 2 was released in 2014, delivering a true sequel to the 1988 original. It combined old-school turn-based combat with modern design sensibilities, and despite its rough edges, it was warmly received. Its sequel, Wasteland 3, launched in 2020 with refined mechanics, voice acting, and a snowy Colorado setting that pushed the series further into narrative sophistication.
My plan to replay all these games hit some obstacles. I do own all the Fallout games, but they are all for Windows systems, and I currently only have a Mac laptop. The Fallout series will have to wait. Fortunately, my Wasteland series is for Apple computers. Unfortunately, the first game no longer works with more recent operating systems. So my post-apocalyptic adventures will have to start with Wastelands 2. I will write about it here but it will take a while, because it’s a big game.
In chronological order.
I complain so often about the design of national flags that my friends dared me to explain my reasons. So here it is, my list of the world’s worst flags, following an elimination process.
A national flag should be a clear identifier of the country. If the flag gets confused with another flag, it fails miserably in its mission. Flags that are too similar to other flags are the first to be eliminated.
Indonesia and Monaco basically have the same flag, with just a slight difference in the shade of red. Poland is the Indonesia flag upside down. All three are nixed.
Romania and Chad also have the same flag. Now replace the blue stripe with a green stripe and you get a big mess of African flags. Guinea has red, yellow, and green stripes. Mali has green, yellow, and red stripes. Cameroon is just the Mali flag with a yellow star in the center. And Senegal is the same flag but the star is green. Embarrassing. All six nixed.
India and Niger also have almost the same flag. Another two bite the dust.
The Luxemburg flag is just the Netherlands flag with the colors faded. The Ivory Coast flag is just the Ireland flag flipped horizontally. El Salvador and Honduras also have almost the same flag, only the central emblem is different. El Salvador also gets penalized for displaying a coat of arms, but we will talk about that later. Another six get nixed.
New Zealand and Australia should be ashamed that their flags are nearly identical. Both feature the Union Jack and stars. New Zealand has four red stars with white borders, while Australia has six white stars. They also get penalized for the Union Jack, but we will talk about that later. Both get nixed.
Any of the flags in this next group would be a good flag if they were unique. However, someone decided that all these countries should have the same flag with different colors. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are all nixed.
Palestine and Sudan are in the same situation, with flags that are too similar. And then there are the Balkan countries with variations on the same theme that are not dissimilar enough: Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Another seven nixed.
Just on the issue of uniqueness, we have eliminated thirty flags. On to the next problems.
It’s a universal standard that national flags are rectangular. Not a square, not a triangle, not other fancy shapes. You can vary the ratio of the rectangle, but it has to be a rectangle. That nixes the flags of Nepal, Switzerland (it would have been a good flag if it was rectangular), and the Vatican.
A country can have a flag, a coat of arms, and a map. But don’t mix them. Don’t put your map or your coat of arms on the flag. Also, don’t put the name of the country on the flag. It’s a flag, not a label. So let’s nix the following offenders: Afghanistan, Andorra, Belize, Bolivia, Brunei, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Spain, and Venezuela. And Cyprus, the only country to put a map on the flag. That was a lot of flags. Let’s add a few more. It’s not only the name of the country, just don’t write anything on the flag. It’s supposed to be a visual representation, not a placard with slogans. I’m talking to you, Brazil, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Next on the list, don’t put a flag inside your flag. It’s usually the Union Jack that gets used this way. Look at Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Tuvalu. And don’t blatantly copy the idea from other flags. Liberia and Malaysia attempted to emulate the United States of America but ended up with an inferior version of a flag that is not even particularly good.
Did I eliminate all flags already? Not even close. There are many left, although some of them are just plain ugly for different reasons: too many conflicting and/or repeating colors (like Central African Republic, Comoros, Seychelles, Uganda, and Zimbabwe), unpleasant angles (like Eritrea, Guyana, and Marshall Islands), unnecessary frames (like Grenada and Maldives), and funny mascots (like Dominica and, again, Uganda).
Yes, I’m picky, and this is all a matter of personal taste. So, you may ask, what are the flags that I find pleasing? Well, usually the minimalist ones. For example, Albania, Barbados, Canada, and Palau all have just two colors and one symbol. Among the ones with stripes, I like Greece (just two colors and an interesting geometric arrangement), Chile (it reminds me of Mondrian), Cuba (good contrasting colors and shapes), and Ukraine (just two stripes with well-chosen colors).
But to me the very best are the most minimalistic ones (again, just two colors and one symbol): Japan and Vietnam.
In alphabetical order.
Yokai are a category of supernatural monsters from Japanese folklore. They encompass a wide range of beings, from mischievous spirits to fearsome monsters, and are often associated with strange phenomena and unexplained events. In the late 1960s, Daiei Studios created a trilogy of films with this theme, managing to make each one distinct from the others, much like the yokai themselves.
Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (original title: Yōkai Hyaku Monogatari, literally One Hundred Yōkai Tales), released in 1968, is the first in the trilogy. Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda (better known for his work on the Zatoichi series), the film combines Edo-period ghost storytelling traditions with practical effects and folkloric imagery, weaving a moralistic parable into a tapestry of the supernatural.
Although it often suffers from tonal inconsistency and dated effects, 100 Monsters holds historical and cultural importance as an early cinematic attempt to visualize Japan’s rich folkloric tradition of yokai through live-action. The film bridges classical kaidan (ghost story) aesthetics with the more commercial jidaigeki (period drama) and tokusatsu (live-action films or tv shows that make heavy use of special effects) traditions of postwar Japanese cinema.
At its core, 100 Monsters is a morality tale disguised as a ghost story. A greedy land developer and a corrupt magistrate team up to destroy a tenement and sacred shrine to build a brothel, disregarding both the law and spiritual taboos. Their actions include disrupting a traditional hyaku monogatari (one hundred tales) ghost-story gathering, in which participants extinguish one candle for every story told.
The narrative progresses slowly, focusing more on human greed, oppression, and sacrilege than on the yokai themselves. In fact, supernatural events are mostly confined to the third act, creating a stark contrast between the mundane and the uncanny. The film uses yokai as agents of karmic justice, as the eventual supernatural vengeance is not just a horror spectacle but a cosmic rebalancing against injustice.
The effects, while primitive by modern standards, rely on a mix of suitmation (actors in costumes), puppetry, and practical trickery. The yokai designs are based on classical emaki (picture scrolls), particularly those by Toriyama Sekien. This dedication to traditional imagery gives the creatures a unique cultural authenticity rarely seen in Western monster films of the same era. Among the yokai we see the classics kasa-obake (the hopping umbrella ghost), rokurokubi (the woman with a stretching neck), and noppera-bō (the faceless ghost).
Akira Ifukube (best known for scoring the first Godzilla) provides a subdued yet ominous score that complements the restrained pace. The use of silence and ambient sound also enhances the tension, particularly in scenes leading up to the yokai appearances.
However, the film struggles to maintain a consistent tone. The slow buildup and excessive focus on corrupt landlords and local politics, while thematically relevant, may test viewers’ patience. This makes the final act, where yokai finally appear, feel both rewarding and too little, too late.
Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (original title: Yōkai Daisensō, literally The Great Yokai War), also released in 1968, is the second entry in Daiei Studios’ yokai trilogy. Directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda and released just months after 100 Monsters, this sequel pivots dramatically in tone, structure, and style. Where 100 Monsters was a slow-burning, moralistic kaidan (ghost story) steeped in atmospheric dread and karmic retribution, Spook Warfare gleefully transforms the yokai into active protagonists in a supernatural adventure. The result is a surreal genre mashup: part horror, part tokusatsu action, part children’s fantasy, and entirely sui generis. While it lacks the moral depth and thematic gravity of its predecessor, Spook Warfare succeeds through sheer visual invention and its unprecedented commitment to yokai spectacle. It’s campy, chaotic, and utterly unique.
The film opens in ancient Babylon, where a demon named Daimon (styled after a Western vampire or necromancer) is awakened from a long slumber. After arriving in feudal Japan via a possessed statue, Daimon promptly kills a magistrate and assumes his form, ruling the town with dark magic and feeding on human blood. The local yokai detect the foreign presence and begin to mobilize in defense of their homeland.
This east-vs-west supernatural conflict propels the plot. Unlike the minimal yokai presence in 100 Monsters, here the yokai are fully active agents with personalities, motivations, and even battle strategies. They unite, squabble, and fight like a supernatural resistance force.
But Spook Warfare takes a sharp turn toward the whimsical. While still set in a historical period, the film eschews the moody austerity of 100 Monsters for a playful, even goofy tone. The yokai are no longer eerie omens of spiritual judgment, they’re now folk heroes. This tonal shift broadens the film’s appeal to younger audiences while also reflecting the growing popularity of yokai in children’s media, particularly through the work of manga artist Shigeru Mizuki. This comes at the cost of emotional depth. Themes like cultural identity, tradition, and collective resistance are hinted at but rarely explored in detail. The film is more about fun than fear, more spectacle than story.
A potentially deeper layer lies in the framing of the villain. Daimon is explicitly foreign: Babylonian, vampiric, with Western-style robes and magic. His invasion of Japan and possession of a magistrate could be read as an allegory for cultural intrusion, colonialism, or postwar Westernization. The yokai’s defense of their native land might represent a kind of folkloric nationalism: Japan’s traditional spirits defending cultural identity against a foreign evil. Yet the film doesn’t explore this with any real nuance. It’s more a structural motif than a fully realized allegory.
Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts (original title: Tōkaidō Obake Dōchū, literally The Haunted Journey Along Tōkaidō), released in 1969, is the third and final entry in Daiei Studios’ trilogy. Co-directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda (Spook Warfare) and Kimiyoshi Yasuda (100 Monsters), the film returns to a more somber, morally grounded tone reminiscent of the first film, diverging sharply from the colorful playfulness of Spook Warfare. It is less of a yokai showcase and more of a traditional jidaigeki (period drama) with supernatural overtones.
This fusion of ghostly folklore with a grim tale of vengeance and redemption makes Along with Ghosts the most narratively serious and dramatically intense of the trilogy, but also the least fantastical. While its yokai elements are used sparingly, they remain thematically integral, acting as both symbolic and literal agents of justice.
The film opens with a treacherous act: an old man witnesses the murder of a courier before he can deliver crucial legal documents meant to stop a criminal gang, and then is he is also murdered. His young granddaughter, Miyo, becomes the target of the villains, and the film follows her perilous journey along the old Tōkaidō Road as she seeks safety and justice. A wandering swordsman with a mysterious past, closer to a ronin archetype than a folkloric figure, comes to her aid.
The yokai in this entry are peripheral but potent. Unlike in Spook Warfare, where they’re protagonists, or in 100 Monsters, where they’re manifestations of spiritual retribution, here they are ghostly echoes that haunt the edges of a brutal human world. Their appearances are minimal and atmospheric, usually connected to locations desecrated by violence or injustice.
The narrative structure is more conventional: a straight revenge-pursuit drama with clear moral stakes punctuated by moments of supernatural intervention. The emotional center is Miyo, whose innocence and suffering lend the film its gravitas. As with the previous two films, Along with Ghosts frames its story around the consequences of moral corruption. The film is a condemnation of human cruelty, particularly that inflicted upon the vulnerable, like women, children, and the elderly. The yokai are not the cause of fear, they are the consequence of wrongdoing.
Stylistically, Along with Ghosts is darker, more violent, and less fantastical than its predecessors. The directors employ a muted color palette and minimal musical scoring to create an oppressive and eerie atmosphere. Much of the film takes place in forests, graveyards, and rural roads, giving it the feel of a ghostly travelogue through haunted Japan.
The adorable child actress playing Miyo (Masami Furukido) delivers a notably moving performance. Her fear, tenacity, and innocence are all convincingly rendered. The ronin protector (Kôjirô Hongô), while archetypal, provides a stoic counterbalance and channels the genre conventions of the silent defender. The villains, as in many jidaigeki of the era, are unambiguously wicked, cowardly, greedy, and contemptuous of tradition. Their downfall, precipitated by ghostly visitations, feels less like plot convenience and more like the fulfillment of cosmic justice.
So 100 Monsters was a folkloric sermon inside a kaidan (ghost story), Spook Warfare was a tokusatsu yokai adventure that played like a Saturday morning cartoon, and Along with Ghosts was a revenge road drama with yokai as haunting punctuation marks. In this sense, the trilogy moves full circle: from dread, to spectacle, back to dread but now filtered through tragedy.
In chronological order of first publication.
After watching Ray Harryhausen’s three Sinbad movies (see Traveling with Sinbad and Ray Harryhausen), I wanted to rewatch Jason and the Argonauts, and this week I did just that.
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) remains one of the most enduring cinematic retellings of Greek mythology. Not because of narrative accuracy but because of its visionary special effects, evocative score, and mythic tone. Though the film adapts the ancient myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, it does so with considerable creative liberty, transforming the story into a fantasy epic for mid-20th-century audiences. At the heart of its enduring appeal is Ray Harryhausen’s groundbreaking stop-motion animation and Bernard Herrmann’s thundering orchestral score, all set against the sun-drenched ruins and coastlines of southern Italy.
The film draws from the Argonautica, by Apollonius of Rhodes, and other classical sources but condenses, modifies, and sometimes wholly invents elements of the myth. Key figures from the legend are present (Jason, Pelias, the Argonauts, Medea), but many of the events are streamlined or altered.
Some things align with the myth. Jason’s mission to retrieve the Golden Fleece to reclaim his throne from the usurper Pelias. The divine involvement of Hera, who acts as Jason’s protector and benefactor, consistent with some classical sources. The encounter with Phineas and the harpies and the passage through the Clashing Rocks are lifted directly from the Argonautica.
However, the gods are simplified, functioning more like chess players than characters within an epic cosmology. Hera and Zeus appear as a bickering couple who watch Jason’s progress from Mount Olympus, a device more aligned with modern narrative convenience than classical theology. Characters like Hercules are reduced to brief side roles and comic relief rather than the tragic, complex figures of myth. Medea’s character, crucial in myth as both a helper and later a tragic antagonist, is largely sanitized. Her betrayal of her people and the dark magic she employs in the original are omitted. In a way, she is reduced to a passive romantic interest. The climactic battle with the skeletons has no basis in the original myth but brilliantly replaces the more prosaic theft of the Fleece.
These alterations are not flaws but rather necessary cinematic inventions to fit the tone and pacing of a family-friendly mythological adventure. The film is not a literal transposition of the myth, but is mythic in spirit, compressing sprawling source material into an archetypal hero’s journey, which, for many viewers, is Greek mythology, or at least its cinematic avatar.
The special effects in Jason and the Argonauts represent the apotheosis of Ray Harryhausen’s career. Using his patented Dynamation technique, he infused life into creatures of myth in a way no live-action or early CGI could. Four sequences, in particular, stand out.
Talos, the bronze giant who guards the treasure of the gods, is rendered with a weight and presence that convey true menace. His creaking joints and inhuman movement evoke the unsettling uncanniness of ancient statuary come to life. His death, bleeding ichor from his heel as he topples into the sea, is visually and emotionally stunning.
The Harpies are terrifying in their grotesque, birdlike design and relentless torment of the blind prophet Phineas. Harryhausen manages to elicit pathos for Phineas while showing off the harpies’ chaotic and disruptive power.
The Hydra is a marvel of design, even if misplaced in this story (it was not Jason who fought the Hydra, it was Hercules who did it as part of his Twelve Labors). Although the stop-motion animation of so many moving heads is a logistical feat, Harryhausen controls the scene with elegant pacing. The monster’s defeat directly leads to the summoning of the skeletons.
The Skeleton Fight is perhaps the most famous Harryhausen sequence. This sword battle between Jason, his companions, and seven skeleton warriors raised from the Hydra’s teeth took four months to animate. It is a masterclass in timing, choreography, and spatial storytelling. The skeletons are more than visual tricks. They seem cunning and malicious, and their coordination with live actors is astonishing. Unlike most modern effects, Harryhausen’s creatures feel tactile. They occupy the world of the actors, enhanced by careful compositing and clever blocking. The monsters are the drama, not mere obstacles.
Bernard Herrmann’s score for Jason and the Argonauts is monumental, brooding, and filled with heroic grandeur. Known primarily for his work with Hitchcock (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds), Herrmann here brings an entirely different register, one inspired by classical modes and Wagnerian brass. Talos’s theme is a percussive, ominous motif: mechanical, slow, and unrelenting, matching the statue’s unholy animation. The skeleton battle is scored with whirling strings and jarring dissonances, emphasizing the unnaturalness of the combat. The love theme for Jason and Medea is restrained, evoking Greek antiquity without slipping into Romantic cliché. Herrmann’s use of brass and percussion gives the score a ceremonial, almost religious tone, appropriate for a tale driven by gods and fate.
While set in mythic Hellas, the film was primarily shot in southern Italy. The choice lends the movie an authentic Mediterranean atmosphere unmatched by Hollywood backlots. The architecture and ruins seen throughout the film ground the fantastical story in a recognizably ancient world. The First Temple of Hera at Paestum (used in the harpy scenes) is particularly striking. Its weathered Doric columns and open spaces are both majestic and desolate, reinforcing the tragedy of Phineas’s blindness and torment. Rather than building sets, the film uses these ruins to suggest timelessness and the lingering shadow of divine presence. Palinuro and the Amalfi Coast stand in for various seascapes and island vistas. The jagged cliffs, sun-bleached rocks, and deep blue waters give the journey a convincing epic scale. The cinematography (by Wilkie Cooper) captures these locations with painterly composition, highlighting both the natural beauty and eerie grandeur of the ancient world. In this sense, the movie has more visual fidelity to Greece than most later productions filmed in studio-heavy settings.
Jason and the Argonauts is not a scholarly retelling of Greek mythology. It is a cinematic myth in its own right. With its blend of spectacle, artistry, and archetypal storytelling, it embodies the timeless spirit of heroic adventure. While scholars may balk at its liberties, and purists may miss the tragic edge of Medea’s betrayal or the complexity of Hercules’s presence, the film captures the awe and terror of encountering the unknown, the monstrous, and the divine. It is perhaps best remembered not for its plot but for its moments: Talos turning his head, the Hydra writhing in battle, the skeletons crawling from the earth. These images, combined with Herrmann’s music and the ancient stones of Paestum, transcend fidelity to myth to become a modern myth of their own.
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