The one movie Daniel Radcliffe needs everyone to love, or else: “You are not going to be in my life”
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 31 December 2025 7:00, UK
We all have that one special movie that we need everyone else in our lives to love.
It might not be the best film ever made or even our favourite, but simply one that is integral to who we are as a person. So integral that it feels like a personal dig when someone you love doesn’t like it, even if it is objectively bad. It feels like being completely misunderstood.
These films tend to be the ones we grew up with. Those who hold a Madeleine de Proust type of nostalgia. For many people who grew up in the noughties, that film may well be one of the movies from the Harry Potter series. But for Daniel Radcliffe himself, it’s something much older and much different.
“[Jason and the Argonauts] because it is the film of my childhood, and I still think the skeleton sequence is one of the scariest effects sequences ever,” Radcliffe explained when listing his favourites, the movie being a 1963 epic fantasy adventure film based on The Argonautica, a Greek epic poem from the 3rd Century BC.
And the skeleton sequence in question is one in which Jason gets attacked and run off a cliff by a group of stop-motion skeletons, with the entire film having been made in collaboration with iconic stop-motion artist Ray Harryhausen, and it makes for a campy romp through ancient Greece nowadays, but at the time of its release, it was surely ahead of the curve.
It’s the perfect example of one of those movies that, by today’s standards, might look a little ridiculous, but we continue to cherish it in spite of the dated effects. Although with the CGI slop we’re being served these days, the vintage special effects are actually refreshing to watch.
For Radcliffe, they’re a make-or-break when it comes to personal relationships: “If you don’t like Harryhausen’s stop-motion, then you are not going to be in my life.”
So maybe go easy on talk of the effects being dated and campy if you ever hope to get close to the actor. He even claims Jason and the Argonauts to be the test of any of his romances. When he’s about six months into a relationship, it’s time to pull out the big guns and see if it’s meant to be: “If she doesn’t react the way I’d like, then that’s kind of a deal-breaker.”
It might seem a little extreme, but cinephiles tend to be dramatic about these things, and there’s something so incredibly personal about the films we love and carry with us throughout the years, becausehey are a way to open up to the people around you and say, “This is me, and if you don’t like it, then we’ve got a problem.”
The films people like can tell us so much about them, from their tastes and aesthetics to their political beliefs and their childhood. I certainly know that if someone I was dating sat me down and got all hyped up to show me their special movie, and it was Avengers, I’d know we weren’t a good fit.
And for Daniel Radcliffe, Jason and the Argonauts is just as important to his life as the other hard-hitters like Dr Strangelove and 12 Angry Men that also made it onto his list.
Related Topics
