Early "Mass Bird Attack" Scene in The Core (2003)

Way back when Gus Van Sant made his remake of "Psycho" in 1998, it was announced that Michael Bay was going to produce a remake of The Birds.

The movie was in development hell for some years -- with Naomi Watts attached for the Tippi Hedren role, and George Clooney suggested(in the press) for the Rod Taylor role.

Nothing came of it.

What a number of us thought was this: "What had been near impossible to pull off in 1963 -- the effects and live action bird attack sequences -- would be easy as pie in the 2000's: just hire Silicon Valley to put thousands of CGI birds on the screen." Hitchcock's achievement was achieved with the crude effects of 1963. It was a triumph.

Michael Bay's The Birds was never made, but I was cruising cable/streaming the other night and I stumbled on a 2003 movie called The Core -- about the core of the earth starting to malfunction, causing disaster movie level chaos.

Including: a mass bird attack in London -- Trafalgar Square, I think.

And there it was, just as I figured: doing a mass bird attack with CGI is pretty easy to do.

Truth be told, I don't think "The Core" had the budget for the BEST CGI -- some of the birds en masse look pretty fake and cartoony some of the time. But the rest of the time, we get what Hitchcock had to move miracles to get -- attacking birds -- and it looks "cool, but easy.

Its just as well that Michael Bay didn't make that "Birds."