George Waggner's 1941 film
The Wolf Man was a breakthrough feature that set the standard for depicting werewolves in film. The 2010 remake, however, will most probably not have the same legacy. Despite the tremendous improvements in special effects and make up, the original film's transformation was, in my opinion, a lot more powerful than today's CGI and computer engineered transformation. What the original film did was take the little resources they had and used a stop motion type effect to capture the transformation from the feet up. Sure, this doesn't look quite as impressive as a full shot of Benecio del Toro instantly transforming from man to beast, but it did enough to captivate audiences at the time and create a pretty scary monster. This years movie simply did not have the originality and that "it" factor that it takes to be a good horror movie. What I mean is that most good horror movies go as far as they can to show us something we've never seen before. Not necessarily even special effects, but just something we do not expect - this is what makes horror movies scary to us. While it may have looked impressive and cost a lot of money, the transformation in the remake was just completely unmoving. Never at any point was I shocked or scared at what was going on, I just felt like I was seeing a guideline to using cheesy special effects. The original
Wolf Man exceeded movie-goer's expectations and broke barriers to create a monster that will forever live on in the horror movie world - something the remake just couldn't do.
George Waggner's 1941 film The Wolf Man was a breakthrough feature that set the standard for depicting werewolves in film. The 2010 remake, however, will most probably not have the same legacy. Despite the tremendous improvements in special effects and make up, the original film's transformation was, in my opinion, a lot more powerful than today's CGI and computer engineered transformation. What the original film did was take the little resources they had and used a stop motion type effect to capture the transformation from the feet up. Sure, this doesn't look quite as impressive as a full shot of Benecio del Toro instantly transforming from man to beast, but it did enough to captivate audiences at the time and create a pretty scary monster. This years movie simply did not have the originality and that "it" factor that it takes to be a good horror movie. What I mean is that most good horror movies go as far as they can to show us something we've never seen before. Not necessarily even special effects, but just something we do not expect - this is what makes horror movies scary to us. While it may have looked impressive and cost a lot of money, the transformation in the remake was just completely unmoving. Never at any point was I shocked or scared at what was going on, I just felt like I was seeing a guideline to using cheesy special effects. The original Wolf Man exceeded movie-goer's expectations and broke barriers to create a monster that will forever live on in the horror movie world - something the remake just couldn't do.
very thoughtful blog. I too like the earlier version better. I think we sometimes depend too much on CPI and forget the human element in the story.
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