Nonsense. I’d stack Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, or Nick Park against any CGI you care to choose and they’d win in a romp. No contest at all. The things O’Brien did on King Kong in 1933 are still the most realistic animated sequences ever created (down to the wind blowing through Kong’s fur), and Park managed to create characters that moved with utter naturalness instead of the jerk jerk jerk of CGI.
I’m going to have to throw my hat in with the CG crowd. Stop motion animation was ground breaking for its time, and no one can doubt Harryhausen’s skill and ingenuity with it, but it simply cannot compare to CG. Personally, I’d watch King Kong over TPM any day, but I thought Jar Jar and Watto were nearly flawless as 3D models go. I thought they looked and moved “real,” like living breathing creatures. Kong looks great, especially for the time period, but he looks like a real model gorilla, not a real gorilla.
Koffing, perhaps you weren’t paying close attention, if you ever get the chance to see the film again, i challenge you not to notice the CG in that scene.
FWIW, the “wind blowing through Kong’s fur” was an unintentional artifact. O’Brien was not able to keep the rabbit fur used on the model straight during the manipulations. You are seeing random fingermarks as deliberate imitation of a breeze.
You’re seriously claiming that, say, King Kong looked more realistic the Jurrasic Park dinosaurs? I think you should watch King Kong again.
I always felt that stop motion (and, to some extent, CGI) creatures suffered from what I call “stop-motion epilepsy”. This is a condition where every portion of a creature’s body must be in motion at all times. A lot of Harryhausen beings seem to constantly be on a storm-tossed ship of their own, leaning and swaying at all times. Which is not to say I don’t like stop-motion - I love those movies. And the bronze giant in Jason and the Argonauts scared the bejesus out of me. I’ve noticed CGi has picked up this trend too - that to make something more realistic you make every portion of it move all the time.
Spidey doesnt move like you would expect a human to move, but it is pretty much just how you would expect spidey from the comics to move. You need to base it off of all of the poses you see in the comics. Hes a human spider for petes sake!
Quoth razer:
This is physics, not opinion. The force of the blow that sent the person flying is completely, 100% irrelevant. All that matters is the initial speed and the forces acting on the object while it’s moving. The only significant force on the person flying through the air is gravity, and we know how strong that is. We also know the initial velocity from how quickly the character moves across the screen. From that, we could, if we liked, calculate the exact trajectory that the person should follow, and it’s usually arced a lot more than what they show in the movies.
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only one who didn’t notice this.
Perhaps some of us are more discerning moviegoers than others ;). Seriously though, Its a quick shot and you might have been caught up in the movie and didn’t pay close attention to it. But, I would bet real money that no person of chimp intelligence or better could pay attention to the shot I’m thinking of and honestly believe it was a real person. Without exaggeration it was slightly better (more real) than the humans in Shrek, but still easily recognizable. Unlike say the troll thing in LOTR which I thought was completely believable and realistic.
Nick Park is best known for his work at Aardman. He is the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. You are wrong when you class him as working only in the medium of stop action. See Digital Effects In Chicken Run
Quite possible. I was thoroughly drawn into the movie. Of course, now that it’s been pointed out to me, I have no doubt that I’ll notice the CG in that scene when I inevitably go see the movie again.
Such a good movie…
What I hear Roger Ebert and other FX critics saying is that, when the Spider-Man: Special Edition is released in about 15 years with updated effects, they’d reconsider their negative reviews.
If the only thing wrong with the movie is the digital FX, then we don’t have a problem. They could be fixed in time for the DVD release (if Sony wanted to spend another $20-30 Million on it).
Personally, I didn’t have a problem with the FX. Indeed, I found the web-slinging scenes to be rather stirring. I also have no complaints about Goblin’s immobile mask, which has also drawn gripes.
At least a friend of mine had the decency to not like the movie based on the corny dialogue and sometimes wooden acting. But he gives the FX a pass.
To answer the original question, people rave about bad CGI effects because they’re in style at the moment. Also, it’s possible that people are being swept up by the rest of the film and thus are ignoring the weaknesses in the effects.
I can forgive the obvious CGI look of the effects in SPIDER-MAN because it’s a comic book movie, in the same way I can forgive the stop-motion strobe of Ray Harryhausen’s fantasy films. Neither is “realistic,” but in the proper context they are acceptable.
The real problem with CGI is that it has become the standard method, even if it is not always the best method. The fight scenes in SPIDER-MAN, for instance, don’t have the visceral kick of the best work scene in films like A CHINESE GHOST STORY, which rely on wire work and editing to make warriors seem to fly through the air. What CGI enabled SPIDER-MAN to do was show such action in wide-angle shots without using camera angles to hide wires and editing to fake the action. Whether or not the result is “believable” was probably not of concern to the filmmakers, as long as they were doing something impossible to achieve with other techniques.
I just watched Spiderman.
Great movie!
The effects were apropriately cartooney, just as the acting was appropriately cartooney. (I’d be really dissapointed if they tried to make J.J. Jameson’s character “realistic” - or even Aunt May.) If anything, I was expecting it to be a bit more campy, coming from Sam Raimi and all.
I agree that the costumeless wall-climbing was a little cheesey looking - photorealistic CGI characters are hard to pull off. But the animators clearly optimized their tools for a costumed spidey, and they made the motion picture-perfect. I think it would have been a mistake to try to do that scene using a practical effect – the fluidity of movement would be nearly impossible to achieve. I prefer the consistency of using all CGI.
My only complaint regarding the digital effects is the particle-system combustion used to create the smoke-trails for the Green Goblin’s glider. Not up to par.
Nitpicking about physics is just silly. In order for Spidey to catch uh, objects, that are falling thirty feet below him, he would have to fall faster than them. Should the animators have made him spring off the underside of something for added velocity? No, because it looks way cooler for him to execute a nice dive, starting with upward momentum.
You may as well complain that you can’t alter the DNA of a living being. It’s a conceit that works within the framework of the film, which is, after all, fantasy.
In short, I think that the effects were fine for the film, but they’re certainly not what make it a great movie – it’s got a good story, some good performances, it’s beautiful.
Quitcher bitchin.
we’re not debating the quality of the film here, we’re debating the quality of it’s special effects. If this was the Godfather or Stripes poor special effects wouldn’t bother me so much. However, this was not a standard drama or a comedy. Spider-man is a scifi/fantasy movie, special effects are a major component of films in this genre.
Haven’t seen Spiderman, but the CG fight scene in Blade II annoyed the piss out of me! First of all, there really wasn’t any need to use CG, the fight could have been done with green screen/wires, etc. and looked a thousand times better than what was on the screen. What really got me, was that they did all kinds of tricks to hide that it was CG, but blew it because the CG animators screwed up so badly. (Characters limbs suddenly change size, characters suddenly change size, etc.)
I can tolerate CG if its used to envision something that can’t be done any other way (the overhead shots of Rome and the shots of the Colosseum in Gladiator) or if the CG’s done well (Jar Jar), but use it unnecessarily and badly and I want nothing more than to bitch slap the director.
Honestly, if, while watching a film, you notice a bad effect, that to me is the sign less of an effects problem than a writing/directing/editing problem. It means that the filmmakers didn’t do their job. They didn’t suck you into their world, fully engross you in their story, have you empathize with the characters loving the hero and hating the villain (or possibly vice-versa).
I think the problem with a LOT of the blockbuster films these days is that they sacrifice those elements of a movie so that they can include the ‘wow’ CGI shots. Because of that, people go to the movies almost more for the ‘wow’ than for the movie itself. So when an effect is done badly, you really notice.
There was a British horror film made in the late 1940s called Dead of Night. It was made on a shoestring budget with virtually no special effects. The special effects it does have, upon a lot of reflection, aren’t very good. It is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen despite this because the characters are strong, the stories (it is more like a collection of short films with a unifying plot) are truly frightening and I get sucked in completely every time I watch it.
DEAD OF NIGHT is a great movie, but by its very nature it is not really relevant to this topic. The film falls into the tradition of Britihs ghost stories, in which the horror is conveyed by suggestion and shadow more than substance. Therefore, using extensive visual effects would have violated the very nature of the film.
On the other hand, SPIDER-MAN or LORD OF THE RINGS or what have you are by their very nature filled with action that cannot be achieved without special effects. To compare them to DEAD OF NIGHT does really illuminate the topic, which is why people rave over bad special effects.
I would go a step further and say that when people notice bad special effects it is often simply because they are bad special effects, not because there is something wrong with the script, dialogue, acting, etc. It makes more sense to say that when people enjoy a film over all they are more likely to forgive its failings (whether the special effects or whatever).
At any rate, the bottom line remains the same: CGI is the flavor of the month; people love it, because it’s the big thing right now, not because it always works.
I would go further and state that whenever the audience notices the effects at all, it means that the effects were bad. To use a good example: Name a few of the scenes in Fellowship of the Ring which contained special effects. The first things you think of are the Balrog, the Eye of Sauron, and the ringwraiths, right? I’ll bet that you didn’t even think of all the scenes containing a hobbit or dwarf and a human, did you? Nearly every scene in the movie had some pretty heavy special effects, but they go unnoticed because they were done so well.
Even when you have an extraordinary scene like, say, Spidey webslinging, you really still shouldn’t notice. Your first reaction should be “Oh, look, it’s Spider-Man swinging through Manhattan”, not “Oh, look, that’s CGI”. It’s like makeup: The object of wearing makeup is to make it look like you’re not wearing makeup.
In Fellowship there was one scene with noticable (bad) CGI, when Saruman walked down the stairs to greet Gandalf. It was particularly noticable because all of the other CGI was so seamless and natural.
I haven’t seen Spiderman yet, but I saw a clip of a fight scene. Spidey didn’t look human, his arms and legs didn’t seem to move like a person’s would. The CGI movements just don’t seem natural, and I don’t care that he’s a superhero he should still move in a way that appears natural. Say what you will about Jar-Jar, his movements always seemed natural and real.