By Jake Hjort, Contributing Writer
Welcome back, fellow time travelers, to another edition of 20th Century Flicks! This month, in a continued effort to check classic cinema off of my list of shame, I’ve delved back to 1963 to watch Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts. With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey taking over the world, I wanted to explore another historical Greek epic and figured there was no better choice than this classic adaptation of The Argonautica, the 2300-year-old poem attributed to Apollonius Rhodius.
The film opens with Pelias (Douglas Wilmer) usurping the throne of the Thessaly, in the process killing one of the king’s late daughters in the temple of Hera. 20 years later, Jason (portrayed by Todd Armstrong, voice dubbed by Tim Turner), the late king’s heir, intends to get revenge against Pelias by seeking out the golden fleece, a mystical symbol of power and authority. With the help of the goddess Hera (Honor Blackman), Jason assembles a crew of Argonauts, including renowned hero Hercules (Nigel Green), and sets sail on his quest. Along the way Jason and his Argonauts must combat the colossal bronze statue Talos, rescue the blind seer Phineas (Patrick Troughton) from harpies, and navigate through a narrow channel plagued by disastrous landslides. During that last trial, Jason rescues Medea (portrayed by Nancy Kovack, voice dubbed by Eva Haddon), a priestess of Hekate and daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis (Jack Gwillim), the current possessor of the golden fleece. With Medea’s help, Jason and his crew are able to steal the fleece, battling a hydra and Aeëtes’ squad of reanimated skeletons along the way, and return back to Greece.
I haven’t mentioned his name yet, but Ray Harryhausen is the real star of this film. An animator and special effects guru, Harryhausen is responsible for the various monsters and trials that Jason and the Argonauts face during their journey. These effects, largely achieved by blending stop motion animation with the live action performances of the actors on the screen, have aged incredibly well and hold up better than those in many films more modern than this. There are four major effects set pieces in the film: Talos, the harpies, the hydra, and the skeleton warriors. To me, the real standouts are Talos and the skeletons. Talos is a powerful, lumbering behemoth, chasing after the argonauts as inevitable as a force of nature. The combination of the animation and the sound effects of the creaking metal make him feel like a real threat, an actual giant on the beach with those soldiers. The skeletons, on the other hand, are fast and get right up in the face of Jason and his crew, battling them as they attempt to escape with the fleece. I cannot imagine the amount of work it took to choreograph the swordfights between the animated skeletons and the real-life actors because this is one of the most awe-inspiring action sequences I’ve ever seen on film.
Given how impressive these effects look in 2026, it must have been absolutely mind blowing to see this on the big screen over sixty years ago. This may not be the best film ever made, but it is exactly what movies are meant to be. A sprawling adventure taking you to far reaching corners of the world with great heroes and ancient legends seemingly brought to life. This is truly a transportive experience in which you can see the filmmaking techniques of their time being stretched to their absolute limit.
One debate that has seemed to have plagued this film and many others like it that tell ancient, cherished stories—most recently reignited by Nolans The Odyssey—is the need for strict accuracy in these adaptations. Now I’m no classicist (though I have always been a mythology nerd), but personally I think that these debates are all rather pointless. I don’t expect Jason and the Argonauts to be a perfect recreation of the original myth any more than I want The Lord of the Rings films to be a word-for-word adaptation ofTolkien’s novels. Every medium of storytelling has its own unique alphabet and language, and changes need to be made when translating from one medium to another. Furthermore, the morals and themes that resonated with the people of ancient Greece several millennia ago may not resonate with a modern audience, so is it not a good thing to maintain the heart of the story while breathing new life and meaning into it? Many of these stories began as oral legends, passed down from generation to generation and changing with different storytellers, not establishing a single “canon” until one poet or playwright wrote them down.
Jason and the Argonauts is a classic sword-and-sandals epic featuring some of the coolest effects ever put to film. This is a truly special breed of movie—one that we only get once or twice a generation—and I’m thrilled to be writing this at a time where another of these generational epics seems to be taking over the world. It may not be perfect, but it is truly magical, and in my opinion that’s an even harder feat to achieve.
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