Whats up with Special Effects

[Evan3]

Sometimes I see "special" ffects in movies and figure they must be named that way because the people who made them are "special."

I don't get it, you have movies like Ice Age, Final Fantasy, Minority Report and The Matrix who have animation and CGI done so well that you can barely tell it isnt real or part of the movie. Hell, even the new Star Wars movies have better effects than almost anything else.

But then you have some real crap. Sure their are movies like Boa and other movies which cant afford high special effects, but why are some of them awful. That movie Jimmy Neutron looks awful and blocky, so far, the Hulk looks sooooo ridiculous,  As much as I like Blade, the effects had huge swings up and down.

I just say do it well or stick with classic non computer things. Memento didnt need any special effects to be a movie. Jurassic Park was a damn good movie with animatronics. Williard mainly used real rats (the original only used real ones). Hell, The Exorcist still amazes me visually and didnt use a lick of CGI. Even Mary Poppins had good if heesy crossover animation.

What do you all think???

[raj]

I think some movie directors use FX to help tell the story (e.g., you can't really have an army of 10,000 orcs), others say "hey, we can do neat things with fx, let's make a movie."

Plus, I don't think that digitalization is quite on par with analog.  IMO.

[Ash]

I agree about The Hulk.

Part of me wants to see it but whenever I see a trailer on TV for it and see the Hulk looking like a cartoon I tell myself that I'm not gonna waste even $4.50 to go to a matinee showing.

    What in God's name were they thinking when they decided to make the Hulk 100% CGI??

And casting Eric Bana as Bruce Banner!!??  He is simply too young and does not fit the look of Banner.

Come on!!

The sad thig is that this movie will be the top grossing film of it's release weekend.

[Bernie]

Ditto on the Hulk!  And I am SOOO glad to hear someone say it!

I can't understand the buzz around the Hulk -- from the little I've seen (commercials and trailers) he sets CGI back about 10 years (a lifetime in computer animation).

Oh, a big green cartoon.  I am so scared....

Even Spider-Man looked better.

[Chadzilla]

My kid can't wait to see it (he's 8) and I'm kinda looking forward to it as well (Hulk trashes San Francisco, coolness.  All they need is Dirty Harry to show up!  Why, because he CAN, that's why).  The special effects don't bother me because, in the end I...don't....care...at...all!!!  And that's the stone cold truth.  I gave up caring a long time ago, decided to just stay a kid inside and enjoy all the pretty colors and loud noises the Dream Factory drops, be them bombs or otherwise.  Being a cynical movie just drains out the fun of the magic.

[Evan3]

Dont get me wrong, I am looking forward to the Hulk merely because I am a comic book addict. However I just dont understand why some fx look awful while others dont. If you arent going to invest in good fx, then dont use CGI at all.

[Brother Ragnarok]

CGI should only be used when absolutely necessary, i.e. Lord of the Rings.  Practical effects are way better. Give me the goofy monster suit from Enemy Within any day as opposed to that awful cartoon monster in DNA.  And screw the Hulk movie.  Not gonna bother with that at all.

Brother R

[Nathan Shumate]

...I LIKED Jimmy Neutron.  You really can't hold blockiness against what is essentially a computer-rendered cartoon, unless you also criticize The Poewrpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory (and Looney Toons and The Flintstones and The Simpsons) for not being fully rendered.

[Bernie]

Hey, I'm an oldtime comic book fan too but, to me, the Hulk just looks ... crappy.  And I can't find it in myself to give these guys the slack that I give, say, Ed Wood, 'cause they had enough money on hand to buy a Third World country!  I agree with Evan3 -- Why do some movies, even CGI-heavy flicks like Spider-Man and X2, look so damn good and others (cough cough this one) look so ... TACKY?

[Feathertop]

I agree about how silly the Hulk looks and I'm glad to finally hear it being said! I think he looks like Shrek with a thyroid condition. An all-CGI HOWARD THE DUCK might have made sense(God help us all!) but doing the Hulk this shabbily seems pointless, given the money they had to work with.
I hope this is not the same way they'll be depicting THE THING in next year's FANTASTIC 4 movie!

[Bernie]

LOL!!

[The Burgomaster]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: CG effects are ruining the film industry. It is now more important to be a computer geek than a good storyteller.

[Chadzilla]

Here's a quote from an ILM computer animator in the June 16th issue of Newsweek(evidently Ang Lee was breathing down their necks for six whole months, going over the effects with a fine tooth comb)...

"He'll look at something really complex and go, 'Well, that doesn't look real.'  People who know the industry and saw some of the early stuff we'd done were blown away by it.  But to Ang, it didn't look real.  So that's it.  End of discussion.  At one point I was sick to my stomach.  I thought, 'My God, what if we can't pull this off?'"

Rumor has it that Universal made Lee dumb The Hulk down.  Evidently Lee focused too much on the characters for them (I mean, come on, treating comic book characters as flesh and blood people, the audience doesn't want that).  So he trimmed the film's slower first third and toned down the weighter dialogue to increase the movie's "playability".  Or has Lee said, "I come from art house, where you can do what you want.  If things don't make sense, people will make sense out of it.  In summer movies, you have to remember you're dealing with popcorn.  It just mean making things more...normal.  Likable."

Gee, expecting people to actually THINK during a summer movie.  What a maroon!

Wait a minute...

My feelings remain the same...taking the kid to see it, looking forward to it, and if Lee did a good job and makes the character of The Hulk itself worth an emotional investment, I will forgive the movie for not being 'photorealistic', much like I forgive Harryhausen stop motion for looking like clay figures on caffeine.



Post Edited (06-13-03 14:29)

[JohnL]

>Jurassic Park was a damn good movie with animatronics.

Umm, most any shot in Jurassic Park where you saw the entire dinosaur at once was CGI. The T-Rex running down the road, the herd of dinosaurs stampeding toward the main characters, most of the raptor scenes in the kitchen, the T-Rex at the end...

[Andrew]

JohnL wrote:

> >Jurassic Park was a damn good movie with animatronics.
>
> Umm, most any shot in Jurassic Park where you saw the entire
> dinosaur at once was CGI. The T-Rex running down the road, the
> herd of dinosaurs stampeding toward the main characters, most
> of the raptor scenes in the kitchen, the T-Rex at the end...

This is true, but I must say that their decision to build the big T-Rex model was a good one.  The scenes that they did use it in, (if memory serves) with close shots in the rain, probably wouldn't have worked nearly as well without it.