The movie wasn't about fantastic or outer-world monsters, even though it is sci-fi. It was about the internal ones the characters harbored inside. All the wrong men can do, however intelligent, educated or highly skilled they may be. We saw enough of that creature to give us fright and not a thing more. Anything else would've been off the mark, distracting and perhaps even cheap.
First of all, I wasn't asking anyone to give their opinion about whether it was appropriate to show the squid or not. I was asking whether anyone knew the behind-the-scenes reason that the squid does not appear on-screen - whether it was a conscious artistic decision or a consequence of going over-budget. In other words, what was the producers' intent originally? Answering my question does not necessarily involve debating the wisdom of showing the squid or not...but I suppose we're already digressing.
Second, I don't think your logic makes much sense. If it's better for monsters to be unseen, why not be consistent and depict all of the manifestations in the same way? Why even show the jellyfish and the sea snakes (both of which receive abundant screen time), but not the squid?
Oh goodness, if it's done in the novel, it must be reproduced to the letter in the filmed adaptation.
No, I don't think that the movie should have reflected the novel perfectly (in some ways, I think this movie is actually better-paced and better-written than the novel). In the novel, the squid attacks the protagonists four times, and some of the attacks were ridiculous and unbelievable - twice, the squid chased the protagonists through the habitat with the tentacles. I would not have wanted to see something like that in the movie. I would have been satisfied if the characters simply looked out through the portholes and saw the squid approach during the second attack, and then we saw glimpses of the squid wrapping itself around the habitat and shaking it.
When you're making a cinematic adaptation with the budget that this movie had (and remember, "Sphere" had an extremely large budget for its time), there are certain things that seem normal to expect. And actually showing off the monster is one of those things to expect. In a movie like "Forbidden Planet" (which, of course, "Sphere" rips off), the monster is more effective when it's unseen. In a movie like "Sphere", which obviously spent a ton of money on the F/X to depict the other manifestations, the squid's (almost) absence seems like a cop-out.
Why put effort into building something that would be used as a prop for but a few scenes?
Once again, your logic might as well be applied to any movie, or any of the creature props in this movie. In case you weren't aware, the special effects crew for "Sphere" constructed a mechanical sea snake that was 10x larger than its real-life counterpart. The puppet was used in exactly ONE shot - the close-up of the creature when it bites at Dustin Hoffman's helmet. That seems like a bigger waste of money to me than spending money on the squid.
Your logic seems even more dubious when one considers that - as I pointed out earlier - we DO in fact see a brief glimpse of the giant squid passing by a porthole in the habitat (though only the tail and dorsal fins are visible). This sequence indicates that the digital F/X team actually went to the trouble of creating a computer-generated giant squid just so that it could be shown in this scene. If you're even going to go to the trouble of modeling/rendering the squid at all, why get so little use out of it?
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hejbreovojemojmail
13 years ago
Hm. Interesting. I haven't seen the 'Forbidden Planet' in... over a decade I believe. But from what I recall, the protagonists were by some freakish turn of events able to summon creatures from their nightmares into reality. And yes, there was an invisible giant one too. Hah. I always had this feeling while watching 'Sphere' that it reminded me of some other creation I could not properly name. Thanks for that trip down the memory lane.
Maybe that is our answer. If they were using that film as inspiration for 'Sphere' then it makes perfect sense why the Kraken received no close-up. But somehow I don't think it'd be that easy to solve this conundrum.
As for the animatronic snake and jellyfish, why use them and only bits of the squid creature.. I could give you my interpretation, but you don't seem to want that. There could be a myriad of reasons.
What I do know for sure is that I would not have liked it. I took 'Sphere' primarily as a psychological horror movie with a healthy dose of SF. The deep ocean from the movie seemed like a corridor between the warping effect of the Sphere and the 'security' provided by the exploration vessel. I believe they simply paired the unknown with the exotic (the ocean + Sphere + squid), and grotesque (but still somewhat believable) with the real-life (the seeming safety the interior of the vessel provides + fire + the human condition + tangible spooks). They kept fears separate.
I don't know. You and I care about different things here. You care about why they did it, I care about if it had an effect.
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