10 / 10
Jason and the Argonauts is Ray Harryhausen’s masterpiece. Don Chaffey directed it. Todd Armstrong plays Jason. Nancy Kovack plays Medea. Honor Blackman plays Hera. Niall MacGinnis plays Zeus. Bernard Herrmann composed the score in his fourth and final collaboration with Harryhausen. The film made approximately five million dollars on a less-than-three-million dollar budget and is one of the foundational fantasy adventure films. Tom Hanks has said publicly that this is the best film ever made and that he has never been able to convince anyone else of this. The reviewer at this site is closer to Hanks’s position than to the position of those who think Hanks is exaggerating.
The film stages the Greek myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece across approximately a hundred and four minutes. The talking ship’s prow. Hercules’s encounter with Talos. The harpies harassing the blind prophet Phineas. The clashing rocks. The hydra. The skeleton army. Each set piece is one of the best sequences in fantasy cinema. Together they constitute a cumulative masterclass that has not been equaled.
The Skeleton Army
The skeleton swordfight in the third act is the most famous sequence in Harryhausen’s career and one of the most famous sequences in any fantasy film. Seven skeletons emerge from the soil of Colchis, armed with shields and swords, and attack Jason and two of his Argonauts. The sequence runs approximately three minutes of screen time. Harryhausen took roughly four and a half months to animate it.
The technical achievement is the coordination of seven independently animated skeletons interacting with three live actors who had filmed their fight choreography months earlier. Every skeleton has to move correctly relative to every other skeleton and relative to the actors. The choreography is staged so that each Argonaut faces multiple skeletons and the audience can always tell who is fighting whom. The sequence is the single most labor-intensive piece of stop-motion animation in any feature film of the era.
Harryhausen later said the skeleton fight was his personal favorite of his career. He was right.
For Writers
A signature sequence in a creative career is usually the one that took the most labor relative to its runtime. The skeleton fight is three minutes that took four and a half months. The lesson is that the work that matters most often costs the most. If you find yourself doing the calculations and concluding that the labor is disproportionate to the output, you may be looking at the most important thing you will produce. The disproportion is the signal.
Talos
The bronze giant Talos is the film’s first major creature sequence. Hercules and Hylas have broken into the treasure chamber of an island temple. The titanic bronze statue Talos comes to life and pursues them. The sequence is staged with a slow, mechanical menace. Talos moves with the weight a bronze man of that size would actually have. His joints creak. His shadow covers the ground. His death, when Jason removes the plug at his ankle and lets the ichor drain out of him, is one of the most haunting deaths in any creature feature.
The choice to give Talos a clear vulnerability the audience learns about from Hera’s earlier exposition is the kind of payoff structure that most monster films do not bother with. The plug is established. The plug is removed. The giant dies. The film has earned every beat of the sequence by the time it concludes.
For Writers
A creature’s specific vulnerability, established early and exploited late, is more satisfying than generic combat. Talos’s plug is established before the audience needs it and used when the audience has been waiting for it. The lesson is that setups for major payoffs should be planted at substantial distance from their use. If you tell the audience about the vulnerability and then have it exploited five minutes later, the structure feels mechanical. Plant the seed and let it grow.
The Gods
The film’s framing device is Mount Olympus, where Zeus and Hera watch Jason’s quest on a large basin of water and intervene selectively. Niall MacGinnis as Zeus and Honor Blackman as Hera play the gods as parents whose interest in mortal affairs is both genuine and exhausted. The film’s argument is that the gods are real, that they intervene, and that their interventions are limited by their own rules and disagreements.
The gods are not benevolent. They are not malevolent. They have favorites. They have rivalries. They have a fixed set of interventions they are allowed to make per hero, and Hera has used most of hers by the third act. The mythology is treated with the same rigor as a procedural drama treats its institutional rules. The audience can keep track of what the gods can and cannot do at any given moment.
For Writers
Supernatural beings work better when they have rules they must follow. Jason and the Argonauts gives the gods a clear system of intervention with limits. The audience can predict what the gods can and cannot do. The lesson is that powerful entities in fiction become more interesting when their power is constrained. Unlimited power is boring because the entity always wins. Limited power forces the entity to make choices, which makes them characters rather than plot devices.
Craft Note
Don Chaffey directed. Jan Read and Beverley Cross wrote. Ray Harryhausen animated and co-produced with Charles H. Schneer. Bernard Herrmann composed the score, his fourth and final Harryhausen collaboration. Todd Armstrong as Jason. Nancy Kovack as Medea. Honor Blackman as Hera. Niall MacGinnis as Zeus. Released June 1963. Approximately three million dollar budget. Approximately five million dollar initial gross. Filmed in Italy. The skeleton fight took four and a half months to animate for approximately three minutes of screen time.
The Verdict
10/10. Ray Harryhausen’s masterpiece. The skeleton fight is one of the great sequences in cinema. Bernard Herrmann’s score is one of the great fantasy scores. The film treats Greek mythology with serious respect and produces a result that has not been bettered in sixty-plus years. Watch it. Watch it again.
FAQ
How long did the skeleton fight take to animate?
Approximately four and a half months for three minutes of screen time. The sequence is one of the most labor-intensive in stop-motion history.
Was it really Harryhausen’s favorite?
Yes. He said this multiple times in interviews across the remainder of his career.
Is the Bernard Herrmann score one of his best?
Among his strongest fantasy work. Some critics rank it above his Hitchcock scores.
Why did Todd Armstrong’s career not continue?
Armstrong worked steadily but never became a star. He had drinking problems later in life and died in 1992.
Is the ending complete?
Yes. The film ends with Jason and Medea sailing away with the Golden Fleece. The Greek myth continues from there into the tragedy of Medea and Jason in Corinth, but the film does not adapt that material.
Was a sequel ever discussed?
Yes. Various sequels were discussed across the 1960s and 1970s. None were produced. Harryhausen moved on to other mythological adaptations.
Should I watch this?
Yes. One of the best fantasy films ever made.