I couldn't stand watching that bloodbath even though the elephant was a miniature stop-action replica. It's obvious Ray Harryhausan has some psychological hatred towards elephants (see "The Valley of Gwangi").
I wonder what happened? Did an elephant destroy Harryhausan's house or did it step on one of his relatives?
The elephant was kicking the crap out of his monster most of the fight
shareImagine if they remade the movie in this day and age: that elephant would probably be trained to "mentor" the ymir-help it eat it's sulfur & maybe spray water into it's mouth and bathe it; they'd be 'buddies' until such time the Ymir suddenly grows too large.
I know it's silly but after all the alien is not aggressive unless harassed and elephants are pretty 'intelligent' so who knows?
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
That actually isn't a bad idea... I mean, what if when the Ymir breaks out, the people fear that it will kill the animals at the zoo, but when they come out they find the elephant not paying attention to it because it doesn't see Ymir as a threat. Or maybe they are playing or something. It would give a larger emotional impact when the Ymir is killed because it would be even more innocent and even less of a threat. It already was killed as a misunderstood creature, but there was still a "justifiable" reason for killing the Ymir. With this, the people and the audience would see how innocent it is.
To me the Ymir is like Kong or 'The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' or even Goji...they didn't ask to be reawakened, brought to the bid bad city or resurrected, but they are too dangerous to allow to run loose-unfortunately.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
Yeah that's how I saw them too. As the director of "Gojira (1954)" Ishiro Honda said: "Monsters are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, that is their tragedy."
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