If you’ve ever been to a movie theatre between the months of June and August, chances are you owe Stan Winston a debt of gratitude. You know how the effects in the Terminator series were awesome? You know how Jurassic Park blew your mind? You know how even though Small Soldiers sucked, the little animatronics were pretty good? He did all of that.
Stan Winston was the weird kid who spent all his time in class building little models out of sticks and ignoring his English teachers. And while he went on to make millions of dollars, his English teachers exhausted their meaningless existences in the same tiny room reading the same eight books to endless waves of ungrateful brats. Score one for Stan.
Only now he’s dead. I’m sorry to report that Stan Winston passed away a few weeks ago of a massive heart attack, although his death wasn’t reported until this week, as most of his friends had assumed it was just a spectacular special effect. This confusion was compounded by the fact that Mr. Winston had rigged his body with astoundingly lifelike animatronics. In fact, it’s been reported that through a combination of robotics, miniatures, and seamless CG integration, Mr. Winston will actually be officiating his own funeral.
But before that ghastly event unfolds, I thought this would be a good time to look back on some of Stan’s most generous contributions to film, and what we might have been stuck with if he hadn’t stepped in.
Most Notable Addition: Upgrading the effects significantly enough to give me nightmares about dreadlocked, squid-mouthed monstermen for the remainder of my childhood.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: The movie was pretty terrible with him, and without him you’ve got no predator, which would basically reduce the movie to Danny Glover policing Los Angeles. And we’ve already got Lethal Weapon for that.
Most Notable Addition: The hands in question and, indirectly, the death of Vincent Price.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: First of all, the title would make no fucking sense. Secondly, Johnny Depp’s character would just be a really quiet, whiny goth kid, and it would be a lot harder not to cheer when he gets beaten up.
Most Notable Addition: Showing us why Toy Story opted to go all-CG, and successfully developing dramatic tension between two six-inch high dolls perched atop an electrical transformer.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Yet another installment in the Chucky tradition of dolls gliding across floors, never moving their mouths, and shaking as if held by a grip just off camera.
Most Notable Addition: Providing the most gripping visual evidence ever of Darwin’s theories, and helping to prove that reading isn’t dead.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: It probably would have stayed a book, where it belonged. Apes and lasers don’t mix on film; just ask the producers of Laser Chimps: The Reckoning.
Most Notable Addition: Finally turning Jude Law into a literal sex machine, and building all of the freaky half-robots that get tore up in the robot derby.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Considering that the only things I remember from A.I. are the awesome-looking robots and an incredibly lame, drawn-out ending, I’d say a shitty movie.
Most Notable Addition: The wicked medieval version of the Iron Man suit Stark builds in the terrorist encampment.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Still awesome, but with far less potential for action figure branding and live action role-play.
Most Notable Addition: Mutating human flesh at his own hideous whim, distorting the form of man to a degree never before witnessed on film and rarely matched since, and causing me to actually poop in my pants a little bit.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: It would have just been called John Carpetner’s The.
Most Notable Addition: Making Danny DeVito look markedly more hideous than usual.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Batman and Robin. Or, alternately, the “classic” Batman, when the penguin looked like an oil baron and sported a monocle and purple cummerbund. I can’t decide which is worse. No, wait, I can: Batman and Robin.
Most Notable Addition: The decision to make Alan Rickman look like an alien by giving him a prosthetic forehead. As all Star Trek fans know, this is the only true indicator of an alien species.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: They might have given him antennae or claws or some shit, and that just don’t fly.
Most Notable Addition: That T-Rex that chases them in the jeep? Not CG. Winston actually built a remote controlled, two-story animatronic T-Rex. Which we can only hope he then used to terrorize everyone on set.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Watch a movie from the 90’s that relied totally on CG for its effects. Didn’t hold up, did they? The fact that we can still watch Jurassic Park and be awed by the dinosaurs is thanks to Winston at some point shouting “Fuck you! I’m building it!”
Most Notable Addition: The assumption that a robotic society would fashion itself after our skeletons instead of what we actually look like.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Without the robot skeletons to fall back on, there’s a good chance the filmmakers would have just used actors to play all of the robots, and then what would you have? Answer: Battlestar Galactica. Which might not have been so bad, actually.
Most Notable Addition: The technology to make rubber look constantly wet.
What The Movie Would Have Been Like Without Him: Well, the guy who actually designed the look of the aliens, H. R. Geiger, would still be around, so I’m thinking they would have just used cardboard cutouts. Of course, Geiger’s etchings also included many depictions of robot babies strapped into a device that forces them to perform felatio (I’m not joking; look it up), so it was probably best that Stan was there to modulate the content.
Thank you, Mr. Winston, for everything. Here’s hoping that by the time I get to Heaven, you’ve constructed enough animatronic robots, dinosaurs and aliens to make it actually worth my while.
When not blogging for Cracked, Michael designs and operates a robotic doppleganger who is head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!
Last 5 posts by Michael Swaim
- The 10 Most Devastating Insults of All Time - December 1st, 2008
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September 22nd, 2008 at 12:45 am
MMmmyeah, I’m gonna call bullshit on the Jurassic park one. When it’s eating the jeep, it’s an animatronic, but when it’s running it’s mos def CGI.
And by mos def CGI, I don’t mean “most definitely” CGI. I mean it is the rapper and sometimes actor Mos Def. CGI stands for “Charismatic, Godlike, Intelligent”.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:35 am
[...] [...]
July 18th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Is she very rich? I heard that she is flirting with a handsome college guy on Black Sugarmommy d o t c o m, it is an online dating site on which the wealthy sugarmommies seeking younger boyfriends.
June 29th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I’ve just shat a brick.
Kudos to you Panzier, +1 interwebz.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Nah that was Kurt Vonnegut.
“It was beautiful that as he ate something foreign burst from his stomach. And the crew member was dead.
So it goes.”
June 27th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
And didn’t Yeats write about the creature from Aliens?
June 27th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I think I just turned into Lord Byron.
“As I partook a stroll in the town I came upon a creature of frightening menace. T’was no man, but machine? Of mechanical workings? Or was it a creature of stars far from our own? Indeed, with it’s face concealed by a covering t’was impossible to tell.”
That’s Lord Byron, 18th century poet, describing a Predator.
Booyah.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Whilest reading your comment Ross, I got totally tickled at your use of “whilest”.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I walked past a gadget shop whilest in the city today, and in the window they had a life-size, intricitly detailed model of a Predator. The thing was so lifelike and terrifying (complete with giant hunting spear and gun) that it was probably breathed on from the afterlife by Stan Winston himself.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
No she is not one of mine, but I am willing to meet her.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Is sweet julia one of yours, glendoor42? You should put her in line.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
They are all ugly monsters! I hate ugly things, especically ugly men! I like big handsome guys I met @___ P l u s M e e t . c o m____, where many big beautiful women, big boobs women, big booty women and big manful guys mingle and seef fun, friends, romance&love together!
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:39 am
Well, Thanks.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
Oh yeah? Well I don’t think you’re a monkey!
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
And I don’t think kingmonkey is an actual monkey. I just think he thinks he is. I could be wrong though.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I don’t, but I imagine kingmonkey +1 does.
Had two different people come look at my puppies and didn’t buy, fuckers.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
@Glendoor: If you have pix of a monkey in a moose costume fucking your wife you should post them pronto. The stuff I’ve been jerking off to lately’s getting old. That sounds pretty spicy.
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:24 am
Should read “and he has sex with my wife “.
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:13 am
Casnadia is more a state of mind than anything else and the only person I remotely know there is the King of Casnadia and he has sex with wife on a fairly regular basis from what I’m given to understand.
The national sport in Casnadia is backyard wrestling and Casnadia only claim to fame is a patented wrestling move called the Casnadia Destroyer. (Paranoia!!!)
Their form of government is an absolute monarchy and their King is a monkey plus one.( an extremely witty and literate monkey though). I have no idea what plus one means, but through written correspondence with Casnadia’s King I surmise it is his penis size.
The King also has a manservant named Gregory.
The King also claims to be the father of at least two of my children until they fuck up , like wreck all of my vehicles, then he disavows all claims to them.
Also, I don’t know if the King is a moose guru or not, but I have heard he likes to wear a moose costume when having sex with my wife.
Finally, I believe the King and my wife one day have secret plans to go to rodeo clown school in Montana and spend their golden years fending off bulls.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Glendoor, what the hell is a “Casnadian?” Where is this mythical land of Casnadia (or is it Casnada)? Are the inhabitants of this strange land moose gurus? Is their knowledge limited to just moose, or only antlered creatures, or perhaps all ruminants? Are unicorns included? Does the Alaskan DNR know of, or enlist the help of these experts?
Dammit, man! You simply cannot make mention of such a magical place and not offer up the answers to these imperative inquisitions!
June 20th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I think Giger’s work is pretty awesome, but then again I’m a sick bastard.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Fair well Stan, cinema won’t be the same without you.
Although touching as this article is, it’s also wrong.
Firstly, Stan only did the Dog Thing for John Carpenter’s The Thing. Rob Bottin did the rest (Although I think the Dog Thing is probably the best effect of the movie).
Secondly, Giger (Rhymes with “eager”) didn’t seem to have a problem sculpting the Alien himself for the first film, and Carlo Rambaldi did an awesome job on the mechanics for the face. You should’ve said, in the “What we would’ve had without him:” bit, “An alien Queen that pissed itself during the climactic fight.” I shit you not; when Rambaldi made his life-sized Kong for the 70s Kong remake, that’s exactly what it did. While they were filming.
Yes, folks: somewhere, there is footage of Kong wetting himself.
Lastly, Stan didn’t do Galaxy Quest OR Small Soldiers. Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc did the effects for them.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:12 am
AND I meant couldn’t goddammit!!!
June 20th, 2008 at 12:11 am
I meant did come from a Cracked commentor. ( I did not say we couln’t be mistaken , just that we are always right.)
June 20th, 2008 at 12:08 am
You know I thought Ray Harryhausen wasn’t dead but being that the fact did not come from a Cracked commentor( who are normally always right, just ask me and I’ll tell you ) and not a Cracked blogger ( who while funny, are not known for the veracity of their facts)
I took it at face value.
Shows what I get for listening to a Casnadian in non moose related matters.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I think Stan Winston’s amzing, and I think that practical visual effects will be poorer with his loss, but the special effects for “the thing” were done by Rob Bottin, who’s also great. And thankfully not dead.x
June 19th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Talking of the exaggerated-death-reports Harryhausen, his next film appears to be called “War Eagles” which IMO rocks even harder than laser chimps.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Oh, Stan, we will miss you.
Also, I’m 98% positive that the “Fuck you, I’m building it!” is what actually happened. (Mostly because it makes the story of the two-story t-rex infinitely cooler.)
Also, Swaim, great post. Kudos.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
sorry meant to say “Knew about”
June 19th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
DAMN who is this fat bitch to start bitching about ugly guys? I think she might need to lower her standards.
Also, I never new about this guy until now. Thats a helluva career
June 19th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Pumpkinhead really should have been on this list. Not only did he make the creature, but he directed the movie. A many of great talent, may God bless his soul.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Winston rather, sorry, I’m still half-asleep.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I loved the fact you could imagine Stan Wilson as this oversized geeky kid. He’s working away in his studios, working on the project for The Thing, thinking to himself “yeah, so, I can get the guy’s head to decapitate itself, but it needs something extra. *snap* I got it! Mechanical spider legs!”
There has to be some level of immaturity and humour involved in making horror movie models. Like the sensibilities of both a stoner high school kid and the biggest nerd in existance.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:54 am
They are all ugly monsters! I hate ugly things, especically ugly men! I like big handsome guys I met @___ P l u s M e e t . c o m____, where many big beautiful women, big boobs women, big booty women and big manful guys mingle and seef fun, friends, romance&love together!
June 19th, 2008 at 1:23 am
The delay in reportage is outlined in the post. Some reading may be required.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:47 am
And it was multiple myeloma.
Are we talking about the same person?
June 19th, 2008 at 12:45 am
A few weeks ago? He died on the 15th.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
R.I.P stan.
monkeys and laser go together like peaches and cream*, by the way.
*the new single, disraeli queers by peaches featuring “the clap” [clapton] is out on monday.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
@maxicanyon: I let google correct it for me.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
This is my favorite Swaim blog. I had no idea Winston did Small Soldiers or Galaxy Quest. I know this is a pointless mention, but the guitarist of Tool worked for Mr. Winston’s Studio back in the day.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
@Swaim Oh..Well…Uh… Do you validate parking? Cause I’m late for this thing..
June 18th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
you looked him up and didnt notice that his name is giger and not geiger??? ignorants!!!!
June 18th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
… I’ll never look at H.R. Geiger’s art again. I saw the babies, I saw them and now my eyeballs burn.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I think he did do Doom, yeah. There’s a sketch online of his of one of the Doom monsters that’s pretty ridiculous. The man was a gifted artist.
As for the fellating babies, I saw a series of them in a big H.R. Geiger etchings book of my Dad’s. And….I was scarred for life. Does anyone remember Dark Seed? It was an adventure game designed by H.R. Geiger…for the PC, back in the 90’s. Totally bizarre.
And JT, they scaled my posts back from four a week to three a week several weeks ago. The fact that you didn’t notice till now just proves to me that our love wasn’t up to the challenge of a long-term commitment.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I have all the Laser Chimp action figures, including the much sought after Flingin’ Jack, the movies memorable wisecracking grenadier.
Mr. Winston was equal parts awesome and even more awesome. His effects made good movies better, and awful movies visibly less awful (didn’t he do Doom 3?).
Thanks for making me sad, Swaim. I still hadn’t gotten over the death of Ray Harryhausen.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Good tribute Swaim. The film industry is worse off because of the loss of Mr.Winston.
Have you seen the director’s cut of ” Laser Chimps: The Reckoning.” The scence where the chimps get the lazers is much more thoroughly explained and there is a additional 6 hours of footage that totally make the movie.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I can’t find the fellating robot babies! I never thought I’d ever have to say that…again.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Fuck you Swaim. We dont see or hear from you for 2 days, and you thing you can just walts right back into our online lives like nothing has even happened? You hurt us when you didnt show up yesterday. We were crushed. But we pulled ourselves together and went on with life. So how dare you come back and stir up these emotions. We we doing just fine without you. So leave, we dont care anymore.
Please dont go baby, We’re sorry. We still love you.. God, why must you play with our emotions..
June 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
He’s now making two-story animatronic angels in Heaven…