Mighty Joe Young – 1998
I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed by the effects in this movie. First it is important to note that this is a Disney remake of the 1949 RKO Special Effects nominee of the same name, and they did a fine job of modernizing the story. It goes without saying that the effects are far superior than the stop-motion animation that was used in that film, though for all that, the 1949 film’s effects were pretty awesome for that time.
But now we have CGI to help create a gorilla with gigantism, as opposed to a giant gorilla like King Kong, and blue-screen to replace the rear-projection of the 1940s. The problem is that this movie came out in 1998 and I expect better compositing from a big-budget blockbuster from Disney Studios. That’s not to say all the blue-screened shots were bad, but enough of them caught my attention as to merit mentioning. Sometimes Joe just didn’t seem to belong in the environments in which he was placed.
And there was the scene in which Joe picks up Bill Paxton by the leg and shakes him around a little. I can’t put my finger on exactly what looked wrong with the image in motion, but there was a jerkiness about it that made Paxton look just as fake as the gorilla holding him. They would cut to a close-up shot of Bill’s face as he hung up-side-down, and he looked fine. But then they’d cut back to the wide shot, and he looked a little fake again.
In my research, I learned that most of the shots of Mighty Joe in the film were accomplished using a man in an elaborate monkey suit with a very realistic radio-controlled animatronic gorilla mask. The man inside the suit, John Alexander, acted in front of the blue-screen with lots of miniaturized sets and props. For the most part, he did just fine as he mimicked the movements and mannerisms of a real gorilla. But there were too many times in the film when the animal moved a little too much like a human. Sure, he was supposed to have near human-level intelligence, but his body was still supposed to be that of an ape. But I’ll be the first to admit, this didn’t happen often and it is a minor complaint.
So the fifteen-foot, two thousand-pound gorilla was really the movie’s big thing. But there were other effects that were notable. The scenes where Joe is running through the streets of Los Angeles were pretty cool, as was the helicopter chase. The unnecessary sequence where Joe demolishes a car was interesting, though not particularly special. The climax found Joe at a carnival where a fire breaks out, as opposed to an orphanage, as in the 1949 film. The climb to the top of the burning Ferris Wheel to save a trapped child was cool, as were the shots where it came crashing down. All in all, not bad but also, nothing to get too excited over.