ALL SCI-FI

[Pow]

R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots by Karel Capek, (1945) was a unused idea of Ray Harryhausen.

Ray always had a fascination with machines and robots. Written in 1920, the story centered around a factory that creates robots that mankind had no interest in completing. Newer models are being designed and begin thinking for themselves. The more advanced robots decide to overthrow their human makers and kill them. In the epilogue, Alquist, the former head of the factory and only human survivor, sends two robots who have fallen in love out into the world, saying to them, "Go, Adam. Go, Eve. The world is yours."

The story would certainly lend itself to Ray's form of stop-motion animation. Ray decided not to develop it further in favour of continuing his work on his Fairy Tails series which was more realistically budgeted and achievable. In the years that followed, Ray thought that the freshness of this idea was gone --- with so many robotic and android films around, he felt the subject was cliched.

Harryhausen: The Lost Movies by John Walsh.

Karel Capek's idea was fresh and exciting back when he originated it in 1920. However, Ray was quite right in his estimation that over the years that the concept became used constantly, and not just in movies. It's adapted to literature, comic books, and television.

Colossus: The Forbin Project did it wonderfully in 1970, fifty years after R.U.R. was published. The movie was unique enough from R.U.R in that it wasn't about robots but a master computer. And the American computer, after linking up with the Soviet computer Guardian, doesn't kill humankind but let's humans know that they no longer rule the Earth. It was a variation on the famous Capek book, but it clearly shared the universal theme of machines rebelling against humans and taking charge.

"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" was Star Trek's take on robots eliminating their creators. Battlestar Galactica & Space: Above & Beyond both had the theme of human created androids rebelling against their makers.

So while the theme is indeed a universal one, it can be done in new and original ways. Because it has been done and redone so often in media, writers do have the challenge of finding a fresh and original take on it, instead of simply and lazily churning out a stale rehash of the concept.

Perhaps Ray could have come up with a new approach to this oft used concept, or hired a talented writer to properly develop it and put a new twist on an old idea?

The other possible challenge would have been, depending when such a film was made, Ray creating scenes of the human-sized androids in the same scenes with actors. Placing Ray's marvelous stop-animated creations side-by-side in a scene with living actors wasn't at all easy do pull off in a seamless manner.

I was tremendously impressed with his 1973 film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad with the battle of Sinbad & his men against the statue Kali. The fight really does a splendid job of placing the live actors right in the same scene as the Kali statue. Had Ray ever tackled R.U.R., it wouldn't have been until 1973 that he could have successfully pulled off actors and his models occupying the same space fairly well.

Perhaps he and a writer might have been able to come up with a compelling story, and had he been able to secure a proper budget, Ray would have delighted us with his take on robots out to rule over humankind. Knowing Ray's films though, I assume he would have had a happier ending to it all.

[Morbius]

Thanks for the post, interesting.

[Pow]

You're welcome, glad that you enjoyed it.

[Bud Brewster]

______________________________________________

Perhaps I've got the wrong idea about the concept, but it seems like Ray would have to create a lot more animation than he casually does.

Ray's movies are composed of exciting moments which are well-worth waiting for, and they're created by editing together brief stop motion shots. The shots were often no more than five seconds long — but even these brief shots required 120 frames.

Valley of Gwangi includes about twenty-seven minutes of animation, which means Ray shot 38,880 frames of stop motion!

A story that includes numerous scenes of humanoid robots as characters which interact with live actors would be a daunting task.

But that's just my opinion.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[tmlindsey]

As much as I like Ray's work, I don't think he would have been a good fit for R.U.R..

The amount of animation that would have to be done would be staggering. Unless they switched back-and-forth from animation to men in suits, which gives...mixed results, to say the least.

I think limiting the animation to a few, specific characters makes it more memorable since you can put more emotion and depth of performance into them than one could with a mass of robots.

Plus, Čapek's "robots" are not mechanical devices, but are artificial biological creations that can be mistaken for humans. More like the Replicants of Bladerunner than Robby the Robot. So there's no real "need" to animate them. Not that I probably wouldn't have loved a Harryhausen version as a kid
_________________
"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"