Jason And The Argonauts (1963) - A Very Cheesy Old School Hollywood Epic I REVIEW

Jason And The Argonauts (1963) - A Very Cheesy Old School Hollywood Epic I REVIEW

(Mild Spoilers)

By 

Ainsoph

You know the usual and ever recurring argument of “everything was better in the past”? As for how that applies to movies, I haven't seen enough old blockbusters to claim without a doubt that sentiment is only experience-based bullcrap, but sure this film is strong proof against it.  

 

The script was slightly more competent than i thought it would be. Going into this i thought it was gonna be a really sixties looking american bastardisation of the original epic the argonautica, of which i know a thing or two about, and yeah, its definetly that this is cheesy as fuck, really really fucking cheesy. But at least there was kind of an attempt of saying true to that grand epic tone of the poem and take it sort of seriously. I mean, it failed, cause the movie is laughable at times, but its at least an honest attempt.  

 

Even though some parts feel so weirdly staged like the the first place with trees and grass they saw and said fuck it lets shoot in here, there is some decent production value, as in setpieces, costumes, locations, battle scenes and of course special effects, scantly dressed women, formal tanned men, fake grey hair. You know, the whole sixties epic package. Especially cheesiness. Did i mentioned how fucking cheesy this was?  

 

Trigger warning for the film: At around 9:30 there is a white woman jumpscare. Be careful.  

 

This movie is kind of regarded as a masterpiece in special effects history, and sure the stop motion looks fascinating, its surprisingly present in the film, and the sequences involving it were definitely my favorite parts. The stone set piece was also pretty amazing mostly. They got pretty inspired with the set pieces here.  

 

Unfortunately, thats not all the effects present here, there is very qüestionable green screens, aparitions, deaparitions and other diverse bad uses, some of them remind of mexican telenovelas for some reason. I would say they aged poorly but 2001: A Space Odyssey came out only 5 years later and nothing in there looks as bad as this does, so ive always thought that argument its kinda bullshit. If something is well made today, it will be so tomorrow.  

 

Holy shit i lost it with that first olympus scene, that filter they added to make it look more godly was something. Yes the Gods are recurring characters and they really disrupt the flow of the story anytime we cut to them in heaven. They were really fucking boring. The movie does have slow moments, it drags after a while even with the changes they made from the epic. I just kinda zoned out.  

 

Speaking of technical issues.  

This movie has something strange going on where certain shots or scenes, the footage looked weirdly darkened and noisy as if they'd applied an extremely artificial filter that sucks the color out. It's super distracting.  

 

But nothing was as much a letdown as the ending, seriously, what the hell was even that? Were they planning to set up a sequel or something? Maybe they realized it was too hard to adapt the whole Argonautica, way too late into production, so they said “fuck it we are not adapting the rest of the story, lets just abruptly end it right now.” 

 

Entertainment, maybe not for the ages but still a time capsule of sorts, a rusty, interesting time capsule brimming with cheese.  

 

5.5/10 

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