"Consider Ridley Scott’s 1985 Legend, wherein Tim Curry’s onscreen presence as a horned devil is heavy, weighty—despite playing a fantastical devil, his clopping around in hooves comes across as ontologically solid. Your eyes are not deceived. And moreover, under the slathered makeup and prothestics, he is still acting—when his lip curls, that’s a real lip. Compare that to Steppenwolf, from the 2017 Justice League. After almost a quarter-century of “progress” in cinema he comes across as digital dust, a void where physicality should be. His superstrength is unthreatening, because deep in our occipital lobes we know Steppenwolf weighs nothing, impacts nothing. Therefore the entire movie has no stakes. Of course the bad guy will be defeated, he’s a hologram."
Yes, of course the article ignores the hundreds of old movies with terrible prosthetics and costumes. I think the author tries his best to compare similar things. For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies. Specifically, he discusses how the desert scenes _look_ to our eyes:
"Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin costumes hanging out in a desert ... For instance, the shadows both characters cast to their right. In the 2021 Dune, it is a monochrome chunk, despite the billowing fabric around the character. In the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, the shadow of the fabric is actually see-through. It has dimensionality, thinness and thickness. Because it’s a real shadow. So despite both being filmed in similar locations, one scene unconsciously triggers more belief in the ontology of the fictional world—the directionality of the light, the blue above the dune—while the other comes across as an ersatz reality."
I felt this coming out of the latest Star Wars movies: the space battle scenes felt so... flat, despite being technically amazing. There's something to be said for actually shooting on location and using physical props.
Of course he’s going to be defeated, he’s the villain. Heroes don’t get injured. Every strength based character is infinite strong.
Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, then fly, then fly in space, then lift a continent made of kryptonite which is “Superman’s Kryptonite”, if you will.
Tobey MacGuire Spider-Man hurt his knee trying to slow down a train, Tom Holland held a flying aircraft carrier together with his hands. Yesterday’s Doctor Octopus would be no match for today’s Spider-Man and his small scale plots no interest. Even so, Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc was a good and threatening character despite having CGI assisted arms.
Hulk used to throw tanks about, now he punches alien spaceships into the ground.
Iron man was a guy in a cyborg suite, with hulk buster he’s hulk strong.
Magneto was a strategist who could push away wolverine, now he can lift sunken battleships and stadiums.
Wolverine was an eternal soldier now he can survive a hit from a nuclear bomb(!)
Batman was a strategist who worked out, now he’s strong enough to fight superman hand to hand.
Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody dies unless they’re about to come back to life[mostly]. Nothing is damaged unless it’s background scenery buildings and cars.
Of course people aren’t thinking it’s hush stakes, it isn’t. That’s not CGI fault, it’s poor story telling papered over with CGI, bad character writing with CGI energy beam weapons instead of personality.
The point of the series is that you can take such an uninteresting overpowered character, in a superheroes vs supervillains setting, and still end up with an interesting plot. Of course none of the plot hinges on the question of whether Saitama will be powerful enough to win, that'd be stupidly bad writing.
Mainstream US superhero movies are mostly plots about whether their equivalent of Saitama will win. The action & graphics are the point, the plot is an afterthought.
I was more going for: with Tobey Macguire's Spiderman, Doctor Octopus was holding Aunt May from a building and taunting Spiderman with dropping her; the world was not at stake, the city was not at stake, almost nobody else in the city knows or cares who she is. I didn't think Spiderman would lose, but I felt like it mattered and that it was in some way difficult for Peter Parker to deal with, he had to take a chance, risk something, "only just" caught her. CGI tentacles didn't look realistic because they aren't a real thing, and that wasn't a dealbreaker. Nowadays a cloud opens up into an interdimensional portal and a flood of metal-living-skeleton-alien invasion spaceships fly through and it couldn't matter less if it tried; they are a swarm of whocares for the Avengers to punch through, which they do easily and uninterestingly and they didn't miss out on anything happening really. CGI isn't ruining it, bad plot is ruining it. Building turns to dust as thing crashes and explodes, is so overdone that's not even interesting by itself.
Compare to early Hulk who was on his knees in a field against two(!) sonic beam tanks owned by the US Army, with only Banner's love of Liv Tyler to make him stand up and fight. Small scale and he was never going to lose, but this was the US Army against the unknown, Banner and the General's daughter, and it mattered. When Hulk threw the tanks, they were CGI and a bit unrealistic, but so what, that isn't immersion breaking. Watching Hulk fight now is like seeing Star Trek's Lt Worf punch a Romulan spaceship while it explodes over The Fonz jumping a shark on a surfboard. It's not the CGI which makes it bad.
On the YouTube Pitch Meetings channel, one of the recurring jokes critiquing films is the 'writer' describing the plot of a film and getting to a point where a character dies, and the 'executive' does a "who was that? Should I care, because I don't feel anything right now" reply. I don't need the hero to lose, or the CGI to be unnoticable. I want to feel like something is at stake which matters. CGI punchups may as well be watching a 2 hr demo of Street Fighter II.
Every Frame a Painting has a good video on Kurosawa's use of movement in his films, and actually uses The Avengers as a contrasting example and how the cinematography & direction makes the scene in question feel meaningless.[1]
So I agree that it's not the CGI that's the problem. It's the writing, the direction, the cinematography, the editing, the music[2] (though they improved since the linked video came out, directly in response to it), etc. The films are bad in many ways, but the CGI isn't really one of them.
Where can you possibly go from here?
I'd argue the plot of one punch man is about as predictable as it gets, (it's basically a series of boss arcs where side characters struggle and Saitama saves the day but somehow doesn't get the credit). Notably, Saitama has just about zero character development throughout the series. What makes it interesting is the comical relief provided by the constant social commentary on the notion of "strength = recognition".
Interestingly, among superhero movie fans, it is often said that DC movies are worse than Marvel movies, because DC movies lack character development. Infinity war notoriously doesn't even have a happy ending. So I think saying that american superhero movies lack substance isn't necessarily accurate.
[0] https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-untold-truth-of-one-p...
This is probably the biggest thing. The biggest mistake of hero films is that characters who are strong are not very strong. They do big hits but its all clearly irrelevant. It doesn't really matter how strong they are absolutely. Getting thrown into walls is my particular pet peeve of damaging moves that never matter. There's an over reliance on suspense where its not really deserved. I feel Captain Marvel and Thor Ragnarok did this decently. They just shrugged and made it explicitly clear that the heroes were 100x stronger than the trash mobs and released any tension in the fights to just have a good time with them.
I have not seen a Daniel Craig Bond film that didn't have noticably CGI elements bringing me out of the moment. Some of the old (especially Roger Moore) bond films had pretty dire effects where it is obviously a man in front of a video screen, but I don't remember finding them as immersion breaking at the time.
But, hard to say what is recency bias. I will say that Bourne stands out as having no such issues where CGI was obviously used... but maybe it was done better
Almost like having used up the ideas available, the only place to go now is incrementally growing the constituent parts. And that's how I feel about most modern action/adventure/fantasy/scifi stuff - to quote another genre: "this one goes up to 11".
But I don't want it going to 11. Even for my SF/Fantasy I want it to feel real. For me (and I know it is subjective) the author makes a good point.
One was left wondering how there could be any further movies with this person available to fly through anything.
I quite enjoyed that universe for a bit of time but the ever-inflating (and absurd) power levels and lack of actual stakes eventually ruined it for me. As it did with most mainstream superhero movies.
In Game of Thrones, The Hound outpowers all normal people and can take damage no ordinary human can, and is still threatening. He has his own demons and is outpowered by The Mountain. He is taken down by poison and becomes Cersei's slave, she uses him to demonstrate that strength isn't power, "power is power". The Hound sacrifices himself to kill The Mountain. What would be bad - and more like some of the stories I cherry pick from - is if The Hound had been blessed by the Lord of Light followers and was now borderline invincible, had taken out The Mountain in a 2 minute flashy punch up, then one-man-army'd his way through Ramsay Bolton's army, then Daenerys flies in and inexplicably Hound is now immune to dragon fire and punches a dragon to death, then goes to the thousand foot high magically reinforced Ice Wall and pushes it over, and then is inexplicably immune to the zombies and...
In one of Christian Bale's Batman films, there is a setup of two passenger ferries full of civilians who are stranded and rigged with explosives. Each boat has the detonator to the other boat. The civilians are put into a Prisoner's Dilemma situation by The Joker. The options are: do nothing, Joker kills everyone. Blow up the other boat, Joker lets your boat live. Both groups rush to do that, everyone dies. We don't know these people, neither Joker nor Batman is enormously strong, but the scene is good. Now Affleck's Batman fights and guns down a stream of generic villains like any scene from The Matrix or John Wick or a Jason Statham movie, and then fights Superman, and the scenes aren't good. It's not his increased strength which makes them bad. Dr Strange is hugely powerful, I've only seen one movie with him in it but it was decent - he was struggling against his demons of losing his great surgeon skills, humbling himself, rising to the challenge, etc. etc. and he defeats Dormammu in a way that is more clever than forceful (yet requires a high power level to even try it).
Speaking of The Matrix, Morpheus vs Agent Smith, Neo vs Agent Smith, were good scenes with inhumanly powerful characters and CGI. Later on, a zillion CGI Neos fighting a zillion CGI Agent Smiths were dreadful scenes with boringly powerful characters where nothing felt tense, nothing mattered, and CGI.*
A timely example is Disney's Book of Boba Fett. The show is almost entirely CGI except for the actors. There have been some criticisms about particular assets like the biker gang's speeder bikes. But I've yet to hear anyone complain about the environments looking fake. Mos Espa is almost 100% CGI and it looks like a real set.
When it works your brain just accepts it. CGI is incredibly good at environments. I'd go as far to say that it has been indistinguishable from reality for the better part of a decade now. Where its gets noticed is in places where it doesn't do so well or when there were time or budget limitations. Fully CGI humans are still not believable and will probably be the last thing to get right. CGI non-human creatures have varying success. Compositing can still be difficult. Often its better to replace an actors entire body, save for the face, and create a CGI version in a fully CGI environment. Compositing a real person in a CGI scene is prone to floating body syndrome and lighting issues.
The real answer isn't necessarily that one is better than the other. But these are tools which should be used together to make a better product. And I think you'll find that modern films with the best overall effects do blend the two. Mad Max Fury Road is a good example, the vehicles are real with real stuntmen climbing on them but the environment is artificial. Shooting a film in the middle of a desert with nothing in sight is not practical. But shooting the scene on a sandy path and compositing in the CGI desert is.
You could certainly for example, film ‘once upon a time in the west’ in a green room and overlay the actors upon a western themed cgi environment, and have it look believably realistic.
But are the actors going to act as if they were under the burning sun as believably ? Will they avoid looking at the sun ? Will they tend to seek the shadows ? Will they sweat ? Probably not, and the feeling you’ll get from the film will be different, without you being able to know why
I do think CGI is often overutilized, much to the detriment of many shows and films, especially in genres where practical effects get the job done (i.e. - not sci-fi). However, these techniques are evolving, and the actors can at least start to see visual cues and interact with the same digital elements that the viewer will ultimately be shown.
Because the environment projects its own lights, reflections are automatically correct and don't need to be added in post. It also gives huge freedom to the DP for shots because they don't really have to light anything specifically.
And the best thing is that it's comparatively cheap so they can punch way over their budget effects-wise.
On the other hand you can do non-CGI effects in post as well. In fact its super common. Bluescreens, compositing, rotoscoping, etc were all common techniques well before computers had anything to do with film making and can all introduce the problems you describe. It was actually a common problem. People would spend a lot of time tryng to get lighting to match and to line up composited elements.
So its not a CGI problem at all. Its an in-camera versus post effects problem.
It is noticable that it’s not filmed in a hot place because the actors are never sweating, they move too fast, their skin doesn’t have the color and texture of a strong tan, they don’t seem affected by transitioning from hot to cold, they touch sand with naked hands, etc. Compare with western movies that are actually filmed on location, they somehow feel like they’re filmed on a hotter planet than arakis
EDIT: seems that most of the scenes in the desert filmed in situ were also in relatively cold deserts as the filming crew is wearing down jackets
And similarly, people don't bring up the vast amounts of bad or rushed practical effects being produced at the same time films like Star Wars and Lawrence of Arabia were produced.
I don't really think that bad CGI ruins films in most cases, but I think the author of this article does.
Realistically yes we should just be doing more practical SFX but you have to realize it is not just some big hollywood exec deciding they want to ONLY do VFX - the available skill market for these things has drastically changed. In the 1980s there were lots of very skilled SFX people and studios that could do some incredible things. The amount of people with those skills has dwindled.
I think the best example of this sort of thing is the OG Jurassic Park. Everyone has an armchair evaluation of why it holds up so well and many are correct but there is a subtle difference most people never bring up. Years ago I worked with a guy much more experienced than me who had originally been a talented stop motion artist and then as the industry progressed moved on to doing animation for VFX. He did a lot of animation for the CGI dinosaurs - imagine the scene where the T-Rex is chasing the jeep for example. The big difference is that because his back story was in stop motion he had a much more direct and real world experience of how things and people move and how their weight is thrown around. One of the underappreciated things in Jurassic Park and why it seems to hold up so well today is simply that the dinosaurs move like they should as huge, lumbering creatures - it ends up a subtle difference that ends up making a huge impact on what we unconsciously accept as "real".
I think the VFX approach worked well for the movie, and movie critics seem to universally agree that the cinematography and effects were magnificent.
A better comparison would be a modern period epic like Dunkirk.
As per the original author's point, the shot included from Dune looks like something out of a fantasy world, whereas the shot from Lawrence of Arabia just looks like a dude walking around in the desert. But I think this difference was intentional and goes deeper than just CGI
The video "Boston Dynamics Robots Can't be Faked - VFX Artists Explain Why" https://youtu.be/HQ1WEiMwV7Y is also really interesting to watch.
Not sure how much VFX Dunkirk had though - I have not looked into it - I know they did a ton of it practical with an imax camera on the actual planes. Impressive as well but maybe not the best comparison for VFX heavy vs SFX heavy
Yes, Lawrence of Arabia was one of the most expensive at the time. The budget was $15 million, which adjusted for inflation would be $138 million today. The most expensive movie was released the same year, Mutiny on the Bounty, which had a budget of $17 million.
Cleopatra blew that away the following year, with an estimated cost of $35-44 million. Which goes to show you money doesn't buy you a great looking movie.
For example, look at the original Star Trek. The effects were very unrealistic, everyone knew they filmed planet scenes in the desert (not on a different planet), etc. But nobody cared, it’s still a cult classic.
Star Trek TNG is pretty much the same. Despite more advanced effects, everyone knows Data is just a guy with makeup, but it was much harder to think the Enterprise was not a real ship.
At the end of the day, suspension of belief depends on delivery of lines, acting, etc, and much less on CGI or “classic” effects. CGI just makes (arguably) easier to achieve the effects.
What's worse, the abuse of retouching is making real things look fake. I remember watching the ending of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull at the cinema and thinking "why did they chose to make the top of the pyramid CGI? It's so cheap." Later I discovered it was a practical effect, color "corrected" to the point of removing any resemblance with reality.
I think that's overly restrictive. There's nothing inherently wrong with flashy CG environments, elaborate action sequences, etc. even if they're largely "for their own sake." When conceived and executed masterfully, I want to see the flashy stuff too! Of course, it's also true that sometimes very rudimentary effects can work great to advance themes or plots (like in the Star Trek series)!
"Spielberg and his effects teams succeeded in creating convincing visual effects because they didn't rely on CGI as their go-to tool. In fact, only four to five minutes of the 14-15 total minutes of dinosaur scenes were entirely computer generated. All the other visual effects were created using Stan Wintson's various physical dinosaur models. The legendary technician, responsible for creating practical models for Predator and Terminator, built everything from animatronic puppets, to to a full-size animatronic T-Rex, and even Velociraptor suits that could be worn by stuntmen. CGI was then used to build on top of what the production team had already created on-set. In other words, Jurassic Park's CGI still looks so good today because there isn't much of it in the film, which makes sense considering the limitations of the technology at the time.
...
But perhaps even more important than the breakthrough graphics was Spielberg's decision to still keep the CGI to a minimum. According to Dennis Murren, visual effects supervisor at ILM, once the director saw how convincing the digital dinosaurs looked, he actually rewrote the ending of the film to include the now-famous full-body shot of the T-Rex letting out a final roar in the Jurassic Park visitor center rotunda. But despite clearly being impressed by the capabilities of ILM, Spielberg still limited the CGI elements and retained the use of Stan Winston's puppets for much of the memorable dinosaur scenes viewers still love today. In fact, there's said to be a total of just 63 visual effects shots in the whole film, a tiny number compared to Jurassic World's more than 2,000 VFX shots."
https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-cgi-still-good-how-expl...
I'm struggling to think of really recent examples but one I recall when CGI was starting to have this problem, that was pretty subtle (to the point that it's easy to watch it and not realise how many small CGI effects are used, along with some physical ones) is What Lies Beneath. It's mainly to cover up the impossible camera angles and you'd hardly know.
Jon Favreau was a person who was very much against CGI, until he was reviewing some of the first iron man work and couldn't actually differentiate CGI from non CGI shots, he gave up on that.
There's bad cgi and good cgi, but 99% of the movies nowadays have a lot of cgi that you don't even notice, because it's good cgi :)
I don't disagree with the article entirely but I think the landscape of film has changed so much over the years that it is hard to make a comparison. The rise of superhero films has meant that blockbusters these days have to include comic-book style CGI characters, spaceships, and citywide destruction that is always going to look fake because it is literally incredible (as in non-credible) to our eyes.
Dune is an interesting case because we can directly compare Dune 2021 to Dune 1984. Both SFX powerhouses of their times. Dune 1984 does contain some very impressive shots but nobody is going to say that it looks better than 2021.
But there is a distinction between CGI that is truly invisible to the average viewer, and CGI that is extremely photorealistic but is depicting events that very clearly could not be shot practically. I think there's a lot of scenes set in space, or in extremely bizarre environments, that simply must be CGI but which looks as photorealistic as I can imagine (but of course, there are plenty of funny quotes of people saying that about imagery from the 90s that looks laughable now).
The rest was fine though. I've often thought that it's silly to spend so much time creating a huge digital scene with lots of detail only to pan by it in less than a second. Dune got that part right. Linger!
That's how they did the blue-eye effect on David Lynch's 1984 version (with hand-painting, probably not drawing directly on the film). Don't know if that maybe influenced Villeneuve's version.
Update: Actually, your response makes sense if you assumed, reasonably, that I actually wasn't sure how I felt and wanted expert opinions. Left some other similar comments further down in the thread. Sorry to snap back like I did.
Your comment starts with a statement that seem to imply that you doubt your own assessment. The list of awards is a strong signal that the effects were not "second rate". Thus my comment confirming that seems to be an unpopular opinion.
Update: Actually, I think you're right. I misrepresented my opinion as weakly held as though I was asking for a more authoritative source on the matter. So your response was appropriate and appreciated. I'm realizing now that I feel more strongly about it; like it wasn't just a matter of the theater having a bad projector.
Because it's an opinion from people that supposedly understand the subject matter more than anyone, so caries more weight.
On the whole I agree with the article, earlier movies (and Tarantino movies) felt more real due to them being filmed in real life.
To this day, it's just so blatantly obvious when they're CGI cars that don't actually exist. Though action is pumped up to 11 (not to mention occasional Michael Bay syndrome of fast zooms,a whole separate gripe), it's not as believable and impactful than physical cars at their actual limit.
That being said, that's me, and a few fellow car chase geeks and possibly film nerds.
There are what - hundred or more individual shots linked in there? So we'd have to narrow on which one is CGI augmented and how much. But it's a lot more "Weighty" of a setup either way than most car chase scenes these days, and received praise at the time accordingly :). I just watched Red Notice last night, and beyond all the other horribleness, the car chase scenes had the classic shiny, unbelievable Star Trek Warp Space feel to them that's common in so many movies today - and with 5-6 times the budget of Baby Driver, it's not that it's a "cheap movie with cheap effects".
edit after a brief Google: Indeed Edgar Wright takes tremendous pride on the car stunts and practical effects in the movie:
https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-did-ca...
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-rwd/
In fact, the Baby Driver stunt drivers are complaining wildly about CGI in other movies:
https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-condemns...
So I feel if anything, that movie proves my point :-)
Legend and Justice League are both mediocre movies, but Legend won a ton of technical awards, including being nominated for Oscars for Makeup, BAFTAs for visual effects, and won an award for cinematography [0]. Justice League's list of awards is much more meager, and nothing for technical achievements. [1]
The Dune and Lawrence of Arabia comparison is also flawed. Sure they're both "acclaimed", But Dune is acclaimed as "One of the best films of the year", and Lawrence of Arabia is acclaimed as "One of the best films OF ALL TIME."
Also, Lawrence of Arabia is a real story of a real person set in the real world. So realism is bound to be important. Dune is a fictional story set thousands of years in the future in a different part of the universe. And specifically deals with a bit of mysticism and fantastical elements closer to fantasy than science fiction. Comparing the "reality" of their effects is apples and oranges.
I'll give you Star Wars for sure. Star Wars most assuredly did NOT benefit from "improved" technology.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/awards/?ref_=tt_awd [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/awards/
The Critical Drinker has a good take on the failures of the Hobbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-0pW6BNSs
Obviously doesn't fix tone issues, but does chop the runtime in half by eliminating much of the most-obviously-superfluous content.
It seemed to give a certain fakeness to all the faces.
Same director, same setting and lore, presumably a lot of the same people worked on both sets of films. And yet for many people the Hobbit trilogy falls flat. The CGI often seems at fault here; for me the immersion was lost in the larger battle scenes, where the LOTR trilogy rarely interrupted the suspension of disbelieve.
I recently watched Knowing (2009) based on Ebert's review. One of the things he wrote in that review was: "The film has sensational special effects, which again I won't describe."
I found myself wondering if we watched the same movie. I thought the special effects were pretty awful. Comparing the scene the subway crash to say, the train crash in Silver Streak (1976)[1] or Speed subway crash (1994)[2], I thought Knowing[3] was inferior and just looks terribly fake to me.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPAOarQxaU
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2bcpW7KFU
3. https://vimeo.com/117341659
Then there's the insane French Connection (1971) chase scene which they could never film today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEloJ5venk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#C...
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/entertainment/video...
https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/secrets-of-the-french-connecti...
>Fun fact: this car scene was kinda an actual car chase. The director made the stunt man drive the car in the middle of street of Brooklyn without any acknowledge from the people and drivers there so they can capture real reactions. (It's illegal but apparently nothing happened to them)
(!) If that's true that's definitely why that scene is so good but hard to replicate. Though there are some props getting destroyed so maybe it's only true for part of the scene.
“The car chase was filmed without obtaining the proper permits from the city. Members of the NYPD's tactical force helped control traffic. But most of the control was achieved by the assistant directors with the help of off-duty NYPD officers, many of whom had been involved in the actual case. The assistant directors, under the supervision of Terence A. Donnelly, cleared traffic for approximately five blocks in each direction. Permission was given to literally control the traffic signals on those streets where they ran the chase car. Even so, in many instances, they illegally continued the chase into sections with no traffic control, where they actually had to evade real traffic and pedestrians. Many of the (near) collisions in the movie were therefore real and not planned (with the exception of the near-miss of the lady with the baby carriage, which was carefully rehearsed). A flashing police light was placed on top of the car to warn bystanders. A camera was mounted on the car's bumper for the shots from the car's point-of-view. Hackman did some of the driving but the extremely dangerous stunts were performed by Bill Hickman, with Friedkin filming from the backseat. Friedkin operated the camera himself because the other camera operators were married with children and he was not.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/trivia
The director recently said he regrets the shot:
“As successful as the film was, I wouldn’t do that now. I had put people’s lives in danger.”
https://screenrant.com/french-connection-william-friedkin-ca...
Speed probably looks best of the three. Knowing's train doesn't look real - maybe too fast, over blurred, missing reflections, whatever. Silver Streak looks terrible though, and is poorly directed.
> digital post-processing seems to have ruined Villeuneve’s more realistic vision
> the complex colors of the world have been bleached out
And I agree – Dune definitely feels less real, less believable. Dreamy, in fact. And I think it plays into that, they use the blandness as a strength, creating a feeling of bleak otherness.
True, though many older movies without CGI also had terrible special effects the killed "suspension of disbelief". Comparing to just the best isn't really fair, unless the assumption is that all CGI is done poorly.
But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a blockbuster, for sure, with enormous production budget, lots of public interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World, the Star Wars sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune will become an all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia remains to be seen.
Maybe a fairer comparison would be something like Lord of the Rings vs Dragonheart or Conan the Barbarian or whatever else iconic fantasy movie there was before the CGI era?
Or for Scifi, maybe the old Star Trek movies vs Avatar? (Blue cat people, not the other Avatar)
Or Star Trek TOS vs Deep Space Nine vs Discovery.
Those movies have worse visuals than Dune imo.
I don't quite feel that's a like-for-like comparison. All of the Denis Villeneuve's films I have watched have a surreal/unreal quality to them: from the top of my head Sicario, Arrival, and especially the one with the weird deer, whose name escapes me. That's just his "style" - I suppose it's how scenes are framed, color grading, and how his shots tend to linger; there's a dream-like quality to it, even for the "grittier" scenes - Sicario has a lot of those.
Because he choses to use bad CGI in comparisons and completely ignores all the cases where CGI is invisible.
See Why CG Sucks (Except It Doesn't) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24
"I think that CG looks bad is because we only see bad CG. Amazing, wonderfully executed CG is everywhere, we just don't know it"
Other than Black Panther, I can't think of any Marvel movie that destroyed my sense of immersion. Maybe I have become used to it so I don't even see it anymore unless it's really really bad (like Blank Panther)?
Calling Elon Musk, you know what you have to do.
But cinema is a smaller world. Yes, there are plenty of independent films, but most audience attention has always been focused on the small number of tentpole films. And if you look at just those over time, everything the author says here still holds up.
Watch some of the top ten box office grossing films from 30, 20, 10 years ago, and today. The change in style, tone, and quality is enormous.
Pick any random comedy or drama from the 80s or 90s and it will have more realness, more sense of being there than movies made today for 10x the budget. This being despite the fact that the older films were shot literally on film and the grain is visible.
Digital color, an obsession with CGI, and a fixation on storytelling that plays well across an internation audience (which means violence, action, physical comedy, and simplistic morality tales) has made today's movies a shadow of what they used to be.
But the sheet of plexiglass used as a "force field" was comically terrible, even for 1984
"The Thing" to most people today is not "one of the greatest movies" but a horror classic and -- visual quality wise -- on par with "Phantom Menace" or "Jurassic Park", if not worse.
I think the criticism is valid: that the physicality of classic SFX is still mostly unmatched by CGI, and the eye and mind notice this.
CGI looks at it's worst like it's painted on top of the scene.
Mostly sequels, remakes, reboots or nth installments of a franchise.
I don't think this matters much.
But isn't it an entirely separate conversation? Of course CGI hasn't "ruined the movies", that part of the title is hyperbole. But the actual conversation about practical SFX vs CGI doesn't have much to do with originality, I think.
Would the past be over-represented? My hunch is yes, but I think it's a fair metric.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls009003184/
Let's take a look at a few of the entry's from the 1970's that actually had practical effects:
Logan's Run - Here's Logan fighting a robot: https://youtu.be/USADM5Gk9Gs?t=106 Star Wars - : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k Soylent Green - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo Invasion of the Body Snatchers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_0dlmSq7I Alien - here's the chest buster scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQ7om598OM
I don't think these hold up as well as nostalgia would suggest, the exception being the alien chest buster scene, which is amazing. The others are much less ambitious and simply don't look as good as modern movies. Many of the practical effects look small or toy like. Maybe there's a sweet spot in the 90's?
Edit: Ian Holm, not John Hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g
Oh god. I can't imagine anyone ever thought Box (the robot) didn't look completely awful.
It may lack good practical effects, but some of the matte paintings in that movie are gorgeous. I love when they get to the overgrown Washington D.C.
If you pick a mediocre movie in 2019 and compare to a mediocre movie in 1959, the garbage storyline will be the thing you will turn the movie off for.
In my mind, the weakness with CGI overuse is it enables lazy/sloppy practices that don’t scale. Similar to in graphics work where Photoshop is abused to create impossible edits for expediency.
My family has a tradition of watching Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” every holiday season. It’s quaint how you can see the painted backgrounds and stages… the opening scenes feature cardboard bricks and cheesy props. The point of the article is that this era of filming is bland and will look cheesy in the future because of the reliance on tools. You can already see it today - compare the Sony Spider-Man movies to the last iteration - the age is apparent.
In any form of art, there have always been pieces motivated by artistic drive (i.e. a work of art like seven samurai or loan's run) and pieces motivated by profit (i.e. a product like all of the capeshit movies or the transformer movies). What we're seeing in film and other similar industries is a cabal of gatekeepers who don't fund things unless it fits the mold of proven, profit driven products. Remove the Larry Finks of the world from power, and you remove the powerwhore gatekeepers that have no concept of beauty.
I think the toughest thing about VFX facing a director is the temptation to abuse it. They have to remember the effects are there to tell the story. They should resist to making everything spectacular/shiny/tridimensional/hectic where not everything needs to be. Compare the dark Los Angeles of Blade Runner with the lower levels of Coruscant.
And yes. Darkseid is a ridiculous villain, with a lazy design and even lazier lines. No amount of CGI could save it. Not even if he were blue and lived in a Roger Dean album cover.
It sort of read like a sanitized version of Charles Murray’s “Human Accomplishment”, which is a “quantitative” “argument” for why Western culture is superior that commits severe epistemic mistakes [1]. Scott Alexander has some good takes, but this is not one of them.
And to give a positive example: I challenge anyone to visit The Barbican estates in London on a clear summer day, to take in the hanging gardens and constructed river, and not be awed. Modern and contemporary architecture can absolutely move the spirit.
[1]: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/why-is-charles-murray...
It seems to me like your postive example is a non-sequiter. I don't think Scott is arguing that it's impossible to make architecture that "moves the spirit" using modern design/construction. He's arguing that, for the vast majority of modern buildings, nobody is even trying to move the spirit. Even in cases where historically we would expect them to (major institutions, public art installations, large companies, rich people with large houses).
The question is, why do people with almost unlimited resources choose to build rectangular prisms of largely unadorned glass or concrete?
And your answer is (please correct me if I'm wrong), because modernists think it's better, and people generally agree even though they can't express this agreement in surveys?
What is your basis for believing this? And even if you engage with the literature on aesthetics in architecture, how do you find yourself siding with the modernists instead of the critics of modernism like Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros? This is a serious question, I've been trying for a while to find a defense of modernist architecture that I can actually understand.
To answer the question, my point is that there are countless examples of powerful, inventive, playful, varied works of modernist+contemporary architecture. I simply reject the premise. I brought up the Barbican because the core of his argument is "nobody likes these things because they're ugly," and I'm saying: I like them. They move me. Some of my most enduring early memories are of the Barcellona Pavillion and the Getty Center. And to read these architects, that was often the point. I guess I'm asking, why should I give a shit about this guy's taste? Don't yuck my yum.
He's just not putting forward a very strong case, nor invoking others who have studied these questions before him. I'm not claiming that there aren't any valid critiques, just that his isn't one of them. If he's only stating that middling traditionalist buildings look worse than middling modern ones: I buy that, and I think it's probably a question of economics, as he says. But to me, when recent architects set out to create the monolithic and meaningful, it's not clear they're less successful than their predecessors.
Regarding public tastes, a mea culpa: I had dismissed the survey too quickly, and on a deeper look it's reasonable (although it includes few instances of what I'd call great 20th+21st century examples). But, as the Civic Art Society says, it's hard to disentangle Americans' aesthetic preferences with their normative conception of what a federal building (or any important building) should look like. That will naturally tend toward traditional styles. I'm also not convinced that today's choice expression of populist preferences---the McMansion---is going to stand any test of time. Whereas I do think currently dispreferred styles will endure and come to signal beauty.
As for writing, I guess I found Le Corbusier's treatises convincing enough? But for defenses that post-date the modernist era, I'm not sure I have an answer for you. To me, the best defense is the work itself.
Looks like a flooded commie block
And, given the absurd prices that flats there go for, 'flooded capitalist block' would be closer to the mark...
When your estate/arch/construction costs start to exceed $20-50 million, you can get basically whatever you can think up. Giant multistory libraries, entirely of solid, old hardwoods with a glass walkwalk suspended from the ceiling? Done. 18-car garage? Done. Pool and minigolf on the roof? Done. Commercial level home gyms? Done. The client wants the absurdly large kitchen's cabinetry done without fasteners, just joinery: Done. When the client says 'I want a much higher PSI concrete for the foundation, even though it literally won't matter: done. $25k for a coffee table? Basically the same as an Ikea table to these clients.
A few examples: A home being built for client of a friend had a 26ft-tall marble fireplace from a castle/villa in Italy (which the client also purchased for this purpose) disassembled, shipped to the US, and reassembled in his CT home. This was 1 of 4 fireplaces in the residence. Hell, I've seen a property in the Hamptons where the guest house would have been the envy of Newport, RI; and even the full-time help lived in a beautiful home on the estate that exceeded most normal people's homes at 3600 sq ft.
Humans can build nice things. It's just a matter of how much money you're willing to spend. To build great things, it's a matter of how much money you're willing to throw away.
Every part of that house in seacliff was following that mantra. Exceptional attention to detail, independent craftsmen contributing special pieces, and carefully selected design language. It was cool to work on it.
Even as the lead person on creating that, I can't afford to replicate it in my own house. And my house isn't cheap. Its just not practical, and short of doing the whole house as an exercise in design and craftsmanship you just can't get the return on those things vs drywall.
Doable? Very much so. But it defiantly is a learning experience. Also keep in mind what you put into it may not translate into what it will sell for. That will depend on the area you build in and similar sized homes in the area. No mater how nice it is.
I essentially only have been exposed to the architecture and construction of homes for the ultra-wealthy. Numbers weren't that important other than there were more zeroes than I'll ever have.
Things have weird values and a number would be hard to give. I rent and am not super knowledgeable about 'regular people' housing, oddly enough.
[2] https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/result....
Does that money give you access to people who can build a home with soul?
An 18-car garage on its own is just a flex.
>had a 26ft-tall marble fireplace from a castle/villa in Italy
To me, this is a hint that the client couldn't find somebody to build something soulful anew. Instead, he had to take something exquisite from somewhere else to fill the void in his new house.
One example? In Canada we have a standard for air tightness, and more, called R-2000.
Houses with this standard have to have heat exchangers, for they are so airtight, that they require air be circulated in from outside.
When it is -40C, this change can mean heating costs of 200/month vs 2000!
I assure you, houses from 100 years ago were horrid with air gaps, poor insulation, and so on. All such houses have long since been retrofitted, rebuilt, otherwise the heating and cooling bills would be ludicrous.
Old houses may look nice, but there are many things like this, which have been improved 100fold..
Absolutely wasteful but so enjoyable.
This *is* what we call a modern and well-designed system.
I have several relatives who are home builders and have acted as my own general contractor in building a home, so this is an area of interest to me.
Comparing the average home today (yes that shitty McMansion included) to the average home 100 years ago, today's homes are way more efficient and comfortable in terms of amenities, climate control, being draft- and vermin- free, and safe.
But corporate builders aren't concerned about that. They do shoddy work because they know they can get away with it. It's just good enough that an overworked inspector will pass it, but by the time the buyer moves in and the honeymoon period has ended, the corporation which built it has been dissolved and its profits reabsorbed into the parent company. Good luck going after them at that point.
I kind of rationalized that the house is still solid after 70 years, I know pretty much every inch of the superstructure now, so why not just renovate?
One difference is that we used to use old-growth timber a lot more.
I own a 200 year old cottage. It has a LOT of mass. The walls are a meter of stone, and the mortar is lime. The thatched roof is about 1.5 meters of straw.
It's REALLY COLD. Keeping it warm takes a huge amount of energy. I've removed some of the modern Portland-cement based render and replaced with lime mortaer and that at least helped with damp (it breathes a bit) but it's still really cold.
Once you _do_ get it warm, though, it does take a while to cool down. Similarly, it can be quite warm outside and still take a couple days for the cottage to properly warm up - there's a lot of thermal inertia.
The extension to it, built last year, uses 70x200mm (about 3"x8" in inches) studs, and has 200mm thick Rockwool insulation throughout the walls and in the roof. The windows are triple glaze. I heat the extension with less energy than the cottage, and it's 3 times as big and 5-6 times as much volume, due to the higher ceilings.