Monday, May 25, 2009

Seeing how far we've come

.
Probably because this is hitting the theaters ...




... the SciFi channel was running this all day long today:




I caught the tail end of one episode, and another was just starting when my seven-year-old son walked in and asked me what I was watching.

Me: This is a TV show I used to watch when I was a kid like you. We used to watch it on Saturday mornings.

My son: What's happening to those people?

Me: They're getting taken away to the Land of the Lost, where dinosaurs and lizard people live.

My son: What happened? Did they get shrunk first? 'Cause that's just a little creek.

Me: No, the special-effect world was much bigger then.



I don't think he bought it.

3 comments:

AlanDP said...

Both my kids enjoyed seeing some of those old shows.

I'm never going to watch the movie. I don't understand why they have to make a stupid comedy movie from what was a serious show. It was made for kids and the FX are primitive, but so what? It addressed complicated concepts such as parallel dimensions, degenerated races and alien/human contact, just to name a few from what I saw yesterday.

It could have been made into a great movie, but unfortunately people expect sexy and stupid, and that's what they get.

Albatross said...

Yes, I was drawing a distinction between the special effects in the original show and that in the movie, but you're right that another distinction can be made in the seriousness of the subject matter. It's easy to laugh at the FX in the TV show, but they really did try to address some sobering topics, not least of which is being separated from all you know as you are cast off in a strange and dangerous land.

The movie will most likely be funny, but that's probably the best way you could do a remake of "Land of the Lost" if only because everyone remembers the cheesy opening and the puppet dinosaurs of the TV show. If you wanted to do a serious remake, you would probably have to come up with a whole new approach that was similar to, but not just like, the original.

Keith Alan K said...

After reading this post I spent too long watching another marathon on Sci-Fi channel.
When did the Dad escape and 'Uncle Jack' take his place?
Probably around the same time the credits changed from just Wesley to Wesley Eure because no better offers were coming in.
I don't remember seeing Uncle Jack at all back in the day, but then I probably hit puberty around that time.
The Sleestak leader is totally Ho Chi Minh--Not wise enough to have been Mao.
And they never made any new stop-action dinosaur footage even after getting renewed year after year despite the bad colors and contrast NEVER matching--Sid & Marty were some cheap SOBs.