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Six Technological Marvels That Were (or Will Be) Forgotten

By Matt Prigge

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Nov. 28, 2007

Beowulf

Don Juan (1926): The Jazz Singer may have been the first film with synchronized dialogue sequences, but sound in some form or another had been around for at least a year prior. To wit: This dashing comic adventure--with John Barrymore as the serial romancer--was the first to use Vitaphone, the sound-on-disc technology that later powered Singer. Like F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, Don Juan didn't have dialogue, but it did have an orchestral score and synched-up sound effects--a worthy innovation, though not enough to give it Singer-like popularity.

Becky Sharp (1935): Rouben Mamoulian's skimpy adaptation of Vanity Fair would be totally forgotten if not for this fact: It was the first film released in three-strip Technicolor. Just 'cause it's first don't make it special.

Bwana Devil (1952): What makes this cheapie featuring Robert Stack and man-eating Ugandan lions stand out from the '50s B-movie horde? It was the first color film released in 3-D.

The Robe (1953): How to Marry a Millionaire was the first film to be made in the rectangular CinemaScope format. But Henry Koster's lumbering biblical epic wound up released first, making it clear 'Scope was little more than a cheap stunt to lure viewers away from their fancy new TVs.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001): The technically impressive but ultimately pointless art of creating photo-realistic computer-generated actors was first used in this filmic extension of the game series. Too bad no one bothered with the script, eh? A notorious box office bomb, the film lost some $120 million--though that apparently wasn't enough to dissuade director Robert Zemeckis ...

Beowulf (2007): As he did with The Polar Express, Zemeckis took a familiar source, not to adapt, per se, but to use as a rough template for some technological gimmickry. The performance-capture technique from Final Fantasy (and Express) again returns. Maybe by 2030--when Zemeckis makes his all-digital A Tale of Two Cities--its attempts to mimic human movement won't look ugly or creepy.