Ray Harryhausen, one of the most important effects pioneers Hollywood has ever known, has died at age 93. He influenced an entire generation of filmmakers like George Lucas, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg.
The sad news was announced on the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page. He was remembered by his family as a genius for “being able to bring his models alive,” which he did for decades.
After seeing the original King Kong, Harryhausen was awed by Willis O’Brien’s work on the film. He would go on to reinvent stop-motion animation with his own work in films like Mighty Joe Young, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the titans.
“Whether they were prehistoric dinosaurs or mythological creatures, in Ray’s hands they were no longer puppets but became instead characters in their own right, just as important as the actors they played against and in most cases even more so,” his family wrote.
“Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry. The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much,” Lucas said in a statement included. “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars.”
Jackson called his Lord of the Rings trilogy his “Ray Harryhausen movie,” adding, “Without his life-long love of his wondrous images and storytelling it would never have been made – not by me at least.”
“Ray, your inspiration goes with us forever,” Spielberg said.
In 1992, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences gave Harryhausen an honorary Oscar for his technical achievements.