A wide-ranging, informative and nicely generous documentary about the unsung – or perhaps more accurately, rarely sung – heroes of the monster-movie universe. Everything from King Kong to Avatar gets a namecheck, via Georges Méliès, Ray Harryhausen, An American Werewolf in London, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. We get an intense, and necessarily concise, account of the development of technique – how stop-motion evolved into animatronics and on to CGI.
This is very much a male universe – not a single woman is among the dozens of interviewees – with lots of head-shaking regret at the passing of the old puppeteering ways. (Phil Tippett, who worked on Star Wars, Robocop and Jurassic Park, even admits to sinking into depression-related illness after the arrival of computer imaging.)
It’s a film that packs a lot in, and covers a lot of bases. It will no doubt be of most relevance to genre aficionados, but illuminating nonetheless for anyone interested in contemporary film-making.
