What's so special about the special effects in The Matrix?

I’ve read loads about how special the effects in The Matrix are, and how they’re a revolutionary new technique, how nobody’s really sure who invented it and someone else was doing it at the same time and so on, but I can’t really see what’s so special about it. Sure, it looks cool, but when you get right down to it, isn’t it just ultra-slow motion? Why the ranting and raving?

[sub]Oh, and nobody really cares if The Matrix was good or not, or which movie/artist/person/whatever was first with the technique, so let’s keep that out of the thread, mmm’kay?[/sub]

It’s not just ultra slow motion. Ultra-slow motion would be where you used one camera to capture a sequence of images close together in time. However, this cannot be used to photograph the same moment in time from more than one point of view, which should be obvious. There are also practical limitations on how fast you can move the camera.

The special effects sequences for the technique known as “bullet time” are done using a large number of computer-controlled cameras which trigger simultaneously or very shortly after one another, to overcome the limitations with moving a single camera for slow-motion work.

Do a google search for “bullet time” for more information, since you don’t apparently want people here to talk about when/where/how/why the technique was invented or whether it was original to the Matrix. In fact you don’t really seem to want to discuss anything. There are about a million Matrix-related websites anyhow.

I wanted to discuss the technique, but not whether it was original to The Matrix or who was first in doing/suggesting it, since those topics are apparently subjects of holy wars. What I did want to know was why the technique is different from ultra-slow motion, and you gave me the answer: we freeze the image but not the angle. That’s pretty cool when you think about it. Up to now, I hadn’t.

Searching for “bullet time” has yielded exactly nothing so far, since everyone just raves on about how great it is without adding why it is great.

Priceguy, I think what irked refusal was that you ask what’s special about the FX in The Matrix, but don’t want to know who was first. The thing is that these FX are special because The Matrix was the first to use them. I honestly don’t see how you can talk about the one without mentioning the other.

OK, let’s rephrase. “What is so special about the special effects techniques that have become known as ‘bullet time’ and are best-known for their use in the 1999 movie The Matrix?”. I’m asking about the techniques themselves, not the movies they have been used in.

I disagree that they’re famous because The Matrix was first with them (if, indeed, it was). They would have been famous no matter who or what was first with them.

Ah, now I see your point. But do you agree that one of the reasons it is special is because it was different from what happened before? In that case you should allow for discussion about who was first with the technique. ‘special’ is relative to the technical standard at the time of the movie.

Some references that may or may not answer your question (in case refusal’s answer doesn’t fully answer it already):

These links focus on The Matrix Reloaded, but also discuss the novelty of bullet time in The Matrix. I found them by Googling first for “bullet time”, then for “bullet time Gaeta” (Gaeta being the FX director credited with inventing it: found the name with the first google effort).

Hope this is of any use. :slight_smile:

Of course.

It’s just that I’ve seen Matrix fanboys and anti-fanboys turn that discussion into a bona fide holy war. I’m so utterly uninterested in that, that I can’t even find the words to describe my complete lack of interest. I just wanted to know what made the technique so radically different.

I’ll check your links out, but I think refusal gave me the answer.

As an additional note, Matrix Reloaded dabbles with “photorealism”, in creating CG images that look as closely as possible to realistic persons and objects. Trouble is, it’s still too obviously fake and while a car case that involves swerving around 18-wheelers with millimeteres to spare looks interesting, it doesn’t create the same audience tension as the mass carnage in the more realistic chases in, among other places, Terminator 3.

There’s a limit to how dangerous you can make a stunt look before totally blowing disbelief suspension out the window.

Watch out, Bryan Ekers.

You’re stepping dangerously close to turning this discussion into a bona fide holy war that Priceguy is so utterly uninterested in, that he can’t even find the words to describe his complete lack of interest.

I’m sure there’s an attempt at sarcasm in there somewhere, but damned if I can find it.

Anyhoo, with photorealistic effects, the temptation is to have Keanu step aside while a cruise missile thunders past, but since this is so patently ridiculous, the audience will never forget that what they are watching is, in fact, fake.

Having a truck crash spectacularly, though, with flying debris narrowly missing the actors, looks plausible enough that even CGI enhancement doesn’t need to shatter the suspension of disbelief.

You have just summed up my entire reaction to The Matrix films.

Maybe I have a higher disbelief threshhold but most of the stuff I saw I had no problems suspending disbelief. Mainly because some of the stuff CANT occur in real life so I would have no idea how it looked.

absolutely nothing is so special. in fact, Matrix 2 had the worst special effects I have ever seen in a film. Whenever something “neat” happened the characters turned into cartoons. Did they really think we wouldn’t notice that? The brawl with 100+ agent Smiths was pathetic–the most unrealistic thing I’ve ever seen passed of as live-action. The car chase was miserable. Wanna see a good car chase? Believe it or not, Terminator 3 has one of the best ones I’ve yet to see. And unlike Matrix 2, it looks real.

Right, now for those of us who read past the thread title…

I am a Matrix fanboy, but I think everyone will agree with what I have to say. Bullet time SFX existed before The Matrix, but it was in that film that they really got good. In all of the previous incarnations, either the camera angle only changed by a little bit during the shot, or the pan was so choppy it looked bad. For examples of this, see Lost in Space and Wing Commander, respectively. It’s nowhere near the the smooth 540° pan that we got in The Matrix in the subway scene - I recall that this took a few hundred cameras. Additionally, they don’t only use the stills. They use a computer to interpolate the frames in between. I don’t know when this technique started.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the OP with a hijack…

Yuppers, you hit the nail on the head for why I think that most people like the Matrix. Since everything in the world of the Matrix is fake it allows people to do incredible things that would not be possible in the real world. It is recognizing that the Matrix is a fake, and basically one giant videogame, that makes the movies so appealing: here are people doing things that look as close to real as possible without actually being so, yet there are still real world ramifications. Knowing that everything is fake is what makes for most people someone missing a truck by inches or jumping fifty in the air so interesting and, surprisingly, believable.

Even though you might not have liked the movies, you have to admit that the concept of the Matrix is clever in that it allows the main characters to be superhuman in a movie that is set in a world with realistic physics, thus delivering action scenes that in another movie would likely be dismissed as cartoonish or ridiculous.

Unfortunately, it can work the other way as well. Too many of the action scenes in Matrix Reloaded were big on eye-candy but short on significance. As a result, does it matter in the least if Neo kung-fu fights with Seraph, if the fight is just a waste of time? Similarly, it becomes clear in the first few seconds that Agent Smith, even in his new virus form, is indestructable. Why, then, does Neo bother to fight a hundred Smiths at all? It doesn’t even advance the story, since it remains unclear why Smith is trying to get Neo. Why would Smith care?

It takes only a few minutes for even the best eye-candy to seem humdrum, especially once you establish the cartoon-like nature of the stunts. Since literally anything can happen, nothing has any significance. Actually, it begs the question of why the characters need to be using any formal martial arts at all. Why bother with kung-fu? If you have superhuman strength and speed, just punch the guy. Why bother with all this “dancing crane” crap?

That’s almost a side issue, though, since I’d like to see a movie when the high-kicking kung-fu expert gets his ass kicked by the professional boxer. Those loopy kicks are telegraphed for months before they land. But I digress.

Well, I did like the first one, actually. In that movie, the action sequences were cartoonish, but not pointless. People get hurt in them (and not just nameless bystanders, either). And the various Superman movies and TV shows also use special effects to present superhuman characters, so there’s nothing inherently new in the Matrix approach. They just ridiculously overdid it, to the point where the effects actually get in the way of the story. “Oh, look! Morpheus did another double backflip!” Yay. For the next movie, try topping yourselves with plot, not effects.

I loved the first movies, but loathed the second. I thought the effects in the first movie were seamless and used timely, as opposed to Reloaded which overused the (obvious CG) effects.

No wrath; I have my answer. Feel free to hi-jack, start a holy war, etc.