Here is one of those little things that makes me smile. Much like my obsession with opening credit sequences (where I get my fix regularly from over at Art of the Title) although not quite as integral to the movie as the mood established by a good title sequence, it is a fun little way to opening your flick, especially in genre films.

The first time I became consciously aware of this ‘tweak the logo’ practice was with Stephen Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, which popped a Peruvian mountain over top of the recognizable Paramount logo. In that series, the mountain was on a large gong, in the middle of the American west, and finally a molehill (a fitting metaphor for the fourth film which is so much lesser than the three that it follows). Perhaps the first instance of this was a Marx Brothers short wherein Groucho is standing in for the MGM lion and he does a little roar. The MGM logo was always ripe for fiddling with. Take, for example, Roman Polanksi’s vampire comedy, The Fearless Vampire Killers (or Pardon Me But Your Teeth are in My Neck) which replaced the MGM lion with a comic green-faced vampire with a couple of drips of blood instead of the roar. The SCTV almni Dave Thompson and Rick Moranis in their Bob and Doug Mackenzie movie (Strange Brew, required viewing for the Canadian male) had the lion belch a couple times, then in a strange type of fourth wall break, pan across to the boys playing with the beast (here).

Another common one is the Universal Logo, memorably and usefully modified to cut back on exposition for Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (a movie not as bad as the press back in 1995 would have you believe) in which you see a quick visual ‘global warming’ demo (which I’m sure made Al Gore proud at the time) involving the polar ice-cap melting and the continents being submerged as the water level raised (here). This was followed by a slow zoom into the clouds before ending at a non CGI shot of endless ocean. Joe Dante also zoomed into the planet to end up on the cul-de-sac which comprises the only set for the film, and after the film is over, we zoom back out. A nice and simple framing device.

This doesn’t even begin to tap the numerous ‘official’ changes to the studio logos over the 100 years many of them have existed. Such as switching from practical effects to CGI (universal always looked great in black and white and looked pretty fine in the 1970s. They’ve never got the CGI looking right on their ‘relief map’ globe in the past 15 years. 20th Century Fox has done a lot better with the moving camera version of their Logo. In terms of modifications for specific films, HollywoodLostAndFound is a good spot for this little tangent on graphic design and film minutiae.

With the superhero and blockbuster movies with ever increasing budgets this ‘custom logo’ is done in just about every movie with a budget over $60 Million these days. (Prior to 2002, almost all the logo changes could fit on a single page, which is here)

This rambling lesson in the studios varying their logos to fit their films is a lengthy introduction to say that I found the intro to JCVD, yes the highly entertaining meditation on Jean Claude Van Damme wrapped in a heist comedy/thriller, has a pretty kick ass variant on the Gaumont Logo.

Enjoy. And feel free to use the comments section below to offer up your favourite variants on logos.