Top 40 worst special effects of all time

[Master Blaster]

I laughed my ass off for almost an hour after seeing that!

[cheecky-monkey]

Yes the fearless one, I do have something against CGI. I used to like it. But in recent years, it's gotten cheap, unconvicning, gratuitous, lazy and unnecessary. It put effects artists with talent--like Stan Winston and Rick baker--out of work and requires remarkably little effort, not to mention the fact it lacks a "realistic" feel as the good old creature effects which we so loved in films like "The thing", "The fly", and so on. I really don't care when they use it for outer space battle sequences or vast armies marching into battles, but for god sakes, IT SHOULD NOT BE USED ON MONSTERS!!!!!!!!!!

I mean, look at it this way: remember Rancor? The giant monster under Jubba's palace in "Return of the Jedi"? It looked like a real, living, 40-foot monster. It was, in fact, a two-foot handpuppet. yeah. I think that if they could create something that convincing in 1983, they can do so today as well. But oh, silly me, that might actually require EFFORT...

[Fearless Freep]

A quick look at IMDB shows that both Rick Baker and Sam Winston continues to work quite a bit  People with talent, with a good artistic eye, cam always find work .

As far as the Rancor, I remember as a kid thinking that it looked fiarly unconvinving as an obvious stop-motioned (or go-motio) monster and Luke in front of an obvious blue screen.  It was decent for it's time, but you still had to suspend disbelief and take what the movie was giving you and go along for it..  Most special effects require that to some degree or another.

The thing you are missing is that it's all about talent and money.  People who are good and have the time and talent can get good results.  Movies that don't have the budget to hire good people and put the production budget into good effects are not going to get .

Python and Boa are good examples with silly lookg CG effects.  Thing is, if  the same talent and budget went into making stop motion miniatures or giant animatronic puppets or what have you...would the result have been any better?

Ironically, the reason you see so much bad CG effects is that DTV has allowed movies to be made and distributed for much, much cheaper so you just see *more* movies where the option of using CG, even if not well, is much higher.  Those cheap movies actually have a chance of getting to you.

[Cheecky-monkey]

That's just it......CG is CHEAP, requires little talent, effort or creativity.
Indeed it comes down to people who are willing to work hard and are talented (Money, all things considered, plays a minor role in how good the effects are--creativity and dedication are all it really takes.) but it seems as though there is a lack of either effort or creativity amongst today's filmmakers.

[Dunners]

Yeah CG monsters all suck. Especiall Gollum, the trolls and the balrog for the LOTR trilogy. totally unconvincing, if they used stop motion it would have scared me to death because stop motion looks better than CGI.

Sorry cheecky yer on yer own here. Plenty of good examples of CGI critters and stuff have been given and used effectively. While you are right that CGI is cheap and all, it really does depend on how much time is allowed for the animators to work their magic.

If yer gonna blame anyone blame the producers, not the animators.

[Fearless Freep]

Well, CG can allow you to do more for the same money.  I'm not sure how much a couple of CG artists and time down at he local render farm really costs, but it can't be too terribly cheap.  What CG allows you to do for the same bucks is have a bigger vision.  A CG monster done on the cheap may not be impressive (see "Python") but it's still going to be a lot bigger and more mobile than trying to do it with models or puppets or whatever.  It's easy to knock a low budget movie for using a CG monster and trying to do a lot with it, but replace that CG monster with a fake looking puppet that doesn't move and it's just as bad.   Cheasy, low-talent effects always look stupid, CG just allows you to be more impressively stupid

[JohnL]

>Python and Boa are good examples with silly lookg CG effects. Thing is, if the
>same talent and budget went into making stop motion miniatures or giant
>animatronic puppets or what have you...would the result have been any better?

Look no further than King Cobra for the answer to that question.

>I'm not sure how much a couple of CG artists and time down at he local render
>farm really costs, but it can't be too terribly cheap.

I'm not exactly an expert, but I've heard people mention costs in the range of $1000 or more a minute for professionally rendered CG. In fact, I seem to recall Steven Speilberg setting up his own CG studio with Amigas running Video Toasters, to do the effects for Seaquest in order to keep the costs down. I think the final images were actually rendered on SGI systems though, since even the fastest Amiga couldn't match the raw speed of SGI machines, but the design and animation was done "in house".