Ask Movie Slate - The Island of Doctor Moreau by jamescorck  
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Ask Movie Slate - The Island of Doctor Moreau  
by jamescorck  
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Fan Art / Digital Art / Drawings / Movies & TV©2019 jamescorck  
#kirin #unicorn #wiggles #yak #original_character #digital_illustration #ask_movie_slate #the_island_of_doctor_moreau (show more)  
Featuring: :iconask-wiggles: as Doctor Moreau and :iconssjcharon: as Chelinequus the test subject.
 
This piece was both a lot of fun to draw but also quite of a pain in the ass. Figuring out the composition for it took way longer than actually drawing the piece itself. The original idea was to include five characters in it, one of them being a seapony version of my gryphon guy, Jamesy. Now, I wanted this to be set in the laboratory, surrounded by green lit monitors, just as it is right now, but I wanted Jamesy to be inside a fish tank. No matter what I did for it there was no way to comfortably place him in the scene. He always looked like an after thought. If you want to see some of those WiPs, check out my Twitter or my Tumblr, they’re all terrible.
 
So I scrapped him. I removed him and all of a sudden the composition was an awful lot better. This is probably one of the most darkly lit pieces I’ve ever done, but I think it fits with the original concept of Doctor Moreau that Richard Stanley was going for. And speaking of which…
 
“The Island of Doctor Moreau”. Good grief, where do I start? Lets just say right away that I don’t like this movie at all. It’s not even a “so bad it’s good” kind of movie, this isn’t anywhere near the realm of the guilty pleasure for me. I get no pleasure out of watching this absolute turd of a film, and not for lack of trying. I’ve seen it several times, rented it from the video store all the way back in the late 90’s, and I couldn’t find anything interesting or fun out of it. It has an uninspiring start, the characters are all purposefully unlikeable (especially Val Kilmer at one of the lowest points of his career), Marlon Brando doesn’t give a toss about anything, neither does poor David Thewlis, and the effects of the movie overall go from passable to downright mediocre, which is a shame because this is Stan Winston’s studio working in this film! There is literally nothing of value in this movie, which feels like a complete waste of time from beginning to end. This isn’t new, nor am I the only person who thinks that about the movie. There’s always stinkers, and the 90’s were not strangers to producing some massive stinkers, but out of all of them this one is definitely on the top.
 
This has been my opinion on the movie for years, and it’s still is, but it’s more than worth to bring up a documentary that premiered in 2015 titled “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Doctor Moreau”, which explains very well what the hell happened during the whole production. While my feelings towards the original film are still unchanged, it’s fascinating to find out why everything went wrong. Marlon Brando was just dealing with the grief of his daughter’s suicide, which is why he didn’t give a shit about the movie. Val Kilmer was (and still is) a selfish prick more interested in bullying people in the set than making a movie. And the original director and writer went from being the head of the project to become an extra hiding behind a beast costume and sneaking around the movie he originally started up. All while the insanity of the shooting spiralled down into absolute madness, and the money from New Line Cinema went to be spent in parties, drugs, booze, and Scalextric racing tracks. The documentary is currently on Amazon Prime, and I recommend you guys to go see it, it’s really good.
 
“The Island of Doctor Moreau” is one of the worst movies ever made, and the only value one could get out of it comes from what happened behind the scenes rather than what the camera managed to capture. And what the camera captured was a fragmented mess with no heart, no point, no brain and no purpose, other than being released in theatres if only to mitigate the massive financial flop that the producers were facing, had they not released the movie. Good thing they produced Lord of the Rings a few years later.
 
You can check Movie Slate’s post on Tumblr right here.
 
You can also check the Making of Post right here.
 
Please, let me know what you think of it in the comments. I appreciate and every single one I receive.
 
Thank you!