You know, if it were made today "Dead Men..." wouldn't be nearly as good... there would be so much compositing and CG voodoo placing Rigby Reardon actually
in those old movie scenes that it would destroy the charm.
The beauty of "Dead Men..." was that had none of that... made
only with new footage intercut with the old stuff... with clever angles, body doubles, duplicated lighting, and flawlessly recreated sets. And pretty darn seemlessly. Pretty clever story construction, too.
Actually, that movie looks better on TV than it did in the theatre. On the big screen there was a noticeable grain difference in the old footage vs. the new... but on a television screen you barely notice it.
The only thing that bothers me about it is the blaring wall-to-wall music score... which I'm betting was done because 30 years ago (almost) they didn't have quite the technology we have today that would have allowed them to cleanly remove the music track from the old clips... so a new loud track was overlaid to more or less blot it out.
Still, a great film though...still makes me laugh. The scene where Steve Martin makes the coffee is worth the price of admission alone.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com