Cubs BCB After Dark: Where does Jordan Wicks fit?

The only film I watched this week that I enjoyed was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) which was directed by Nathan Juran and starred Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant and Torin Thatcher. But really, the director and star of this film is the legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, who created all the great creatures and stop-motion effects in the film.

The plot of the film itself is simply an excuse to get to the stop-motion animation. In fact, the entire film was Harryhausen’s idea, who wanted to create some different monsters out of Arabian mythology. Sinbad (Mathews) and his crew land on an island where they find an evil sorcerer (Thatcher) battling a cyclops. They escape the giant monster with the help of the sorcerer’s genie (Richard Eyer), but in the ensuing battle the sorcerer drops the magic lantern, which is then taken by the cyclops as treasure. Once they get back to Baghdad, the sorcerer shrinks Sinbad’s finacée Parisa (Grant) down to about four inches tall and says that the only way to cure her is to go back to the island that they were on to get the materials for an antidote. Of course, the sorcerer is evil and has no intention of getting Parisa back to normal size: he just wants to go back to the island to get the genie’s lamp back.

So along the way, Sinbad has to fight a few cyclopes, a roc, a skeleton and a dragon as well as the evil sorcerer. The skeleton battle was so successful that Harryhausen repeated it with dozens of skeletons in the famous climax of Jason and the Argonauts. (1963)

These Ray Harryhausen films are some of the first movies I watched on TV when I was a kid. I don’t remember specifically having seen this one, but I very well might have. The stop-motion animation monsters were pretty state of the art for the 1950s and honestly, I still enjoy them today. I believe that even as a kid, it was clear to me that the creatures were animated dolls and not actual monsters, but I enjoyed them anyways. They were cool adventure tales with fantastical creatures in them. You really didn’t care that they looked like puppets. They were creative and exciting anyway and you’re able to enjoy them for what they are.

I find it troubling that most young people today are not able to get over the old-fashioned nature of the stop-motion animation and appreciate a film like this like I did when I was their age. Kids are so conditioned to see modern CGI animation that they find this older style silly. I know this because my wife is an English teacher who has tried to show her students Harryhausen’s later Clash of the Titans (1981) to teach about mythology and the kids just find it stupid. (She tells me that some kids do like it because they think it’s silly and cheesy, which I guess at least means they enjoyed it, but maybe not for the reason it was meant to be enjoyed)

It’s too bad because I really enjoy Harryhausen’s work for the craft that goes into them and the way they bring a story to life, even if it’s not “realistic” looking. I still marvel at all the effort that went into The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

On the other hand, I also think that today’s modern blockbusters owe a lot to the films for which Harryhausen did the stop-motion animation. I very much object Martin Scorsese’s comment that Marvel movies “weren’t cinema” because what is a superhero movie but a version of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with updated special effects? Scorsese never would claim this film “wasn’t cinema” or any other action/adventure film from the Golden Age of Hollywood. There is a lot to criticize about the modern trend of superhero movies. Some are truly great. A few are terrible. Most are just fine ways to waste a summer afternoon. But at their heart they’re no different than this film except for the verisimilitude of the special effects. We can criticize them for the way they’ve pushed smaller-budget movies out of the multiplex (and I suspect that is Scoresese’s real complaint), but that’s more a factor of the changing economics and culture of the cinema than the fault of superhero films. But we really shouldn’t argue they aren’t cinema.

Of course, I doubt Scorsese has ever even seen a Marvel movie, so I don’t know that it was worth even refuting him.

Here’s the original trailer for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. The trailer actually spends most of its time explaining how the special effects were done. Some of the scenes in the trailer are in black-and-white although as the trailer explains, they’re all in color in the film. I guess they didn’t want to give away the color scenes for free or something.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.

The Cubs are finally getting some good news on the pitcher injury front as Matthew Boyd is expected to come off the injured list and start Wednesday’s game against Philadelphia. The rotation is still down Cade Horton and will be until probably July of next year at the earliest, but at least Boyd’s absence turned out to be short.

Another pitcher who is currently on a rehab assignment in Iowa is left-hander Jordan Wicks, who is coming back from a forearm strain suffered in Spring Training. He made one appearance for Iowa last week and pitched three scoreless innings.

Wicks was expected to be an important part of the Cubs pitching staff last year, as either a starter or a reliever. But general ineffectiveness as a starter and a bullpen that didn’t need him very often meant that he spent most of the year in Triple-A Iowa. He was pretty good in Iowa last year, making 16 starts and four relief appearances that totalled 71 innings. He posted a 3.55 ERA with an even better Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) line of 3.07. He struck out more than a batter an inning in Iowa and walked a very solid 7.8 percent of batters he faced. Yes, that’s not the major leagues, but it does sound like someone who could help a major league team.

As Wicks missed all of Spring Training, he’s not coming going to be activated from the injured list anytime soon. He’ll likely have to make three or four more starts before he’s declared fully healthy and that’s probably three weeks away.

But when Wicks is activated, where would you plug him in? Would you use him as another left-hander in the bullpen? Assuming there are no further injuries to the Cubs starting rotation (probably not a great assumption, but we’ll go with it), they’ve still got Colin Rea in the rotation after Boyd comes back. Presumably Boyd’s return moves Javier Assad to either the bullpen or Iowa. Would you stick Wicks in as the fifth starter and use Rea out of the bullpen?

Or, with Wicks still having minor league options, would you just send him down to Iowa until the Cubs have another spate of injuries that Rea and Assad can’t cover for?

Thanks for stopping by tonight. We’re always glad to see you. Please get home safely. We want to see you again. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow night for more BCB After Dark.