News

It’s been 25 years since James Cameron. In hindsight, it was always destined to be a monster hit. In the moment, that didn’t seem so certain. Revisit Empire’s original 1998 feature exploring the making of a movie that defied all the odds – and once again proved that age-old adage: never bet against James Cameron.

When James Cameron was a boy, living in the tranquil suburbia near Niagara Falls, Ontario, a neighbour’s son stole some of his toys. James was naturally upset. But instead of bringing the matter to the attention of his parents, he decided to take more direct action. He raided his dad's toolbox, climbed the garden fence and began to saw through the branch that held up his rival's prized tree house. Later, as the kid's father tried to repair the damage, the whole structure, pop and all, crashed to the ground. You get the feeling...

With the upcoming release of Wes Anderson’s stop motion animated Isle of Dogs, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the art form that has been used for over 100 years. Its evolved over those years, and shaped the way we watch movies. Before the introduction of CGI, stop motion animated sequences were special effects. If you needed your hero to fight a monster before say–Jurassic Park–you went to the stop motion department to bring that scene to life. Stop motion is still a special effect, the phrase just has a different meaning today.

Even with the growing use of CG animation, there is a place in film for stop motion animation. Stop motion is an art form that Thomas Edison used, yet still has clout today. My first conscious experience with stop motion came from the late great Ray Harryhausen. In first grade...