CGI Is Starting to Suck

I agree. There are reasons given that's not the CGI's problem. In fact there are reasons given that really don't show that it is in fact getting worse.

 

Watched the first Spider-man movie with my kids this evening and they kept commenting on how it looked like a cartoon. I agreed.

 

You mean the first Amazing Spiderman (the 2012 film with Andrew Garfield) or the earlier movie Spiderman (the 2002 film with Tobey Maguire)? I agree, the VFX on the more recent ones got a little much, to the point where some scenes resembled video games.

 

The 2002 one. There were a couple still shots of Spidey against the sky where my 10-and-12-year-old boys both said, "It looks like a cartoon!"

 

Then don't go see the 2012 and later versions. Much, much more CGI than in the earlier films.

 

Again, it looked 'cartoon' because the action was badly planned; the animation was weightless- not because it was CG.
If it was shot with a wired up guy in live action, it would have looked even worse.
'Just use less CGI' is not gonna cure all the other problems (story for example). People like to blame everything on the technology but really the problems lie somewhere else. Many old big name directors are using CG- Steven Spielberg; Ridley Scott; Tim Burton....We can't go back to the old days with back projection; film effects etc... As for some suggestions about using practical effect, most of the time it is not 'practical', Steven Spielberg couldn't even get the horse to jump over a small ditch in 'War horse'.

 

The emphasis on practical effects here is very encouraging...

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/sdcc-star-wars-bts-video/

 

As much as I enjoyed the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films (well, apart from the third, which I've explained my reasons for disliking in the past), I have to agree that there are quite a few places where the CGI felt as if it was heading too far into video game territory... and I don't mean that in a good way! More recently, I had the same problems with Man Of Steel, though a lot of this was more due to the frantic cutting and seeming inability for the camera operators to keep still, actually preventing me from being able to immediately comprehend the action in places - is everyone in Hollywood these days really colour blind, suffering from ADHD or both, or is this just the market they're pushed into catering for?

 

It's because it was bad CG.

 

I wasn't going to.

 

I also tend to miss some movies when it comes to using fire effects. Obviously with a lot of the modern B-movies on Syfy the use of the CGI fire just makes the whole scene quite unbelievable and cheap, and almost laughable in some cases.

For me, like for instance Woo's "Hard Target" the use of real fire in scenes (especially at the uncle's house) make it much more realistic and believable. Or even older movies like 'The Towering Inferno', there was no CGI fire in any of those scenes.....you would be very hard pressed to find anything like that today. Being almost 40 years old its harder to watch modern movies because of the heavy use of CGI....and with the modern generation of younger people more into eye candy and such, I think more directors will continue to go into the realm of CGI since its basically what most young people want. I like a good story to go along with those fancy graphics.

And when you see these films on BD at home with a 4K TV, it just makes it even more obvious and in some ways can take the enjoyability of the film.

 

Funnily enough, The Towering Inferno remains one of my all-time favourite films, and for me about 99% of its effects hold up brilliantly... Maybe it's just because of how young I was when I first saw this, but for years I had no idea there were so many effects shots involving miniatures (especially of the glass tower itself). Unlike many other examples I could think of, the scale and sheer ambition never lets up, though it's hardly surprising when you consider it required two studios collaborating to pull off visuals of this magnitude. Yep, they sure don't make 'em like that anymore!

 

Fire, smoke, and water are still the worst when it comes to CGI. I just watched an episode of the execrable Under the Dumb from a week or so ago, where "Junior" burns down his father's house, and the CG fire and smoke effects looked like they were done by a junior high-school kid in his garage using an iMac. And they spent about a day and $1.98 doing them.

 

Does anybody think it's possible or even likely that The Force Awakens will have an influence on the VFX of future films, and that more films will begin to employ practical effects in conjunction with CGI provided that the major studios think it's worth the investment? I'm hoping that Star Trek Beyond will take a page from The Force Awakens and use some practical effects for exterior shots.

 

I think that influence is in place right now with or without the new Star Wars movie.

 

I find it frustrating when I google any sort of '10 best blurays to demo your new tv', and all 10 movies are cgi blockbusters, transformers, x-men, etc. How can I admire the 'realistic, lifelike high definition' if NOTHING on the screen ever EXISTED in the first place, beyond the actors and greenscreen? I find myself looking for old panavision,VistaVision, todd AO, 70mm type, 'the sound of music' opening shot flying over the swiss alps, 'the searchers' for the outdoor panaramic scenery of monument valley, or a modern film like 'Red Cliffs', or 'Crouching TIger Hidden Dragon' for the intricate detail in the sets, costumes and historic weapons. When I first saw '300', I was like "is this ALL greenscreen CGI?I mean do they EVER go OUTSIDE?" I couldn't even watch the 'Speed Racer' movie, imagining a real mach-5, like made by George Barris Kustom City(of Batmobile fame), compared to a Wachowski CGI creation. I agree that GOOD cgi doesn't attract your attention , it just LOOKS real, not 'hyper-real'. The way 'Gladiator' blended the CGI coliseum with live action stunts was perfect, the CGI Speilberg used for D-day in 'Saving Private Ryan' was amazing, matching actual photographs. The realism of "Apollo 13", with actors in actual weightlessness , is WORTH the effort, compared to 'fix it in post, we can cgi the astronauts'. I am sure their are some 'character driven drama' being made today, but if you want action and actual stunts, car chases with ACTUAL cars,and (like the article mentioned) actual physics, your out of luck these days
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I agree, Speed Racer was unwatchable by humans. Just a jaw-droppingly bad film.

If you want demo-quality material, I would put Gravity in that narrow category. DP Chivo Lubezki deservedly won the Oscar for that one. Spielberg's Lincoln and War Horse -- while not very good movies -- are stunningly beautiful-looking films, lit by the great Janusz Kaminski. Everything Roger Deakins ever did is great, up to and including the recent James Bond film Skyfall. And I think Wally Pfister is another guy who's never lit an ugly movie, including his Oscar nomination for Inception. All of those are beautiful films that don't necessarily have a "heavy CGI" look, despite the use of CGI in the latter two.

 

Hey bro, thanks for the recommendations. I have read plenty of your posts in the past years and I consider myself a fan of yours. I haven't seen Lincoln yet, but I completely agree with War Horse being beautiful, the look of the bleak landscapes, the horse itself looked SO lifelike, but still had that 'dreamlike' cinematic look. The mane flowing as he ran, the power of him running. Definitely amazing lighting and cinematography, demo quality for sure.

 

Just saw "Jurassic World" and it struck me that in all these years CGI hasn't improved, really..the opening shot of the bird was very telling; I never confused it with the real thing.

 

Dreamed of a SR movie since childhood. Never knew how it could be made to work in live action without having a massive budget. But what they did was so unforgivable, so against the original material, so incomprehensible, so impossible to follow, so painful to experience...that not only did I storm out before the first reel was up and beat my head against the wall...but I went to the manager and actually got my money back. I have never done this very much before as I know it really doesn't matter and that the theaters need as much money as they can get due to the pitiful ticket percentages...but damn....what were they thinking and what kind of hold do they still have over WB?

This may have been the impetus behind me starting to try and compile better copies of the series episodes to get rid of all the awful compression and time compressed speedup. I haven't had much luck other than a few VHS copies really.

 

Ah, I hated the Speed Racer cartoon show, and yet we agree 100% on the movie!

You look at stuff like this and just say, "what were they thinking?"

 

And they do it over and over again every couple of years. Seriously what power do the Wachowskis have?

You may have liked the more serious Japanese version of the series. While the US dub is brilliantly done with an endearing silliness the original version is far more dramatically appropriate in every instance.

I'd love the Japanese restored Blu-ray boxset but it has no subtitles and averages around $1,000. YIKES!

 

There's some godawful CGI in Jurassic World, just awful, awful stuff. The huge shot of Chris Pratt riding his motorcycle at night through the jungle surrounded by Velociraptors is totally videogame stuff. In fairness to the VFX team, trying to create a sense of depth with creatures in back of a live-action actor and in front of the actor at the same time, while the camera is moving, is a huge, huge degree of difficulty. But it just snapped me right out of the movie because it looked so fake. Some parts of the movie looked terrific, particularly many of the seasons with the Indominus Rex. But the Pterodactyls were no good (to me). It's a very, very uneven film.

The studio doesn't care -- it went north of $1.5 billion this past weekend. To the studio, this kind of performances verifies that everything that was written, shot, and produced was all exactly what the audience wanted.

Although... I gotta say I enjoyed their Sense8 series quite a bit. And it has terrific cinematography by the great John Toll, plus seamless VFX work (for TV). It's a decent show that holds up very well -- to me.

 

My brother and I loved that cartoon show. Watched it all the time while we were little kids. The only thing that made me laugh was the dubbed English voices over the Japanese animation. The mouth movements never matched the English. LOL. That was probably my first experience of English being dubbed over a foreign language. Of course, shortly after, I was introduced to all those Asian martial arts films with English dubbed over the voices.


I didn't even bother go seeing the Wachowskis movie from 2008, because it looked stupid from the previews and some horrible reviews.