Monster of the Day #1639

Updated on October 12, 2017 By Ken Begg 11 Comments

I guess people were generally disappointed with It’s final appearance in the mini-series. It’s nearly impossible to bring ‘the ultimate evil’ or whatnot to the screen and not have that be so (see Lovecraft). In a book your imagination fills in what you fear, on screen it’s concrete and right there and it’s hard to overcome that.

Really good CGI spiders might be one area where computer effects have it over props.

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  • Ericb

    Though it was more “absolute indifference” than “absolute evil” and obscured by fog the giant beast at the end of The Mist was pretty chilling

  • Beckoning Chasm

    There’s a tendency as technology improves to “show more.” The creature in the first “Alien” film was scary as Hell because you never really got a good look at it (until the end). It was all whirling limbs and pipes and such.
    Compare the two versions of “The Blob” as well. The first one was, IMHO, much more frightening because you never really saw what it did to people…it was sure implied but only a little shown. The remake on the other hand went all out in Blob effects and, again IMHO, removed a lot of the frightening aspects of the creature.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Also, I’m not a special-effects expert, but that is a terrible compositing job. The background is soft-focus and the spider is hard-lit and darker. It’s the very definition of “sore thumb.” Did they not care or did they run out of money? I’d actually be interested in reading a “making of” article on this.

  • bgbear_rnh

    We’re going to need a bigger shoe

  • When I spider walking across the cavern I knew she was nothing but trouble.

  • Man, Charlotte really let herself go!

  • Marsden

    All they need to chase that off is a pet pigeon

  • Ericb

    The whole “evil guvment”, bioweapon origin of the blob in the remake didn’t help much either.

    Oh, and Mr. Scott, you completely ruined the Lovecraftian mystery of the “space jockey” from the original Alien with your explanation of him and the alien in Prometheus.

  • zombiewhacker

    Somewhere far-off in the Shire, Samwise Gamgee is smirking to himself right now, “Ha! You call that a giant spider?!”

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Yeah, that bothered me. It’s as if he sees something mysterious and enigmatic and says, “I must have an explanation for this, and it must be bland and uninteresting.” I think he must be like John Frankenheimer, completely at the mercy of the script and unable to tell a good one from a bad one.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Yeah. Ungoliant from LoTR is what the ‘It’ spider /should/ have been.