Are some movies going over the top with visual effects?

Is that so ? What about classic animation, or stop-motion, or models, or clever practical effects and camera tricks ?

It's true that one can do anything using CG, but using it as you go-to tool is just lazy.

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Transformers 3 abandoned the story altogether just to pack in as many explosions as they could. and it didn't work...

on the other hand, the new mad max movie also had no story, just interesting visual effects. and it was pretty darn good.

I miss the action movies of my youth, like Eraser, Virtuosity and Face Off. all had CG but not like today.

Thank you! I've posted this on here before.

What Fury Road does right, as does TDK, The Raid and other successful movies that blend visual beauty with story telling, is use practical effects and then touch those effects up with CGI.

I know it gets a lot of hate but when used properly, CGI is the perfect tool to engage you in a story. Just look at the construction of the world in movies like Gone Girl, Zodiac and Gone Baby Gone, where almost every scene uses some form of CGI and you end up with an engaging visual piece which isn't too obvious.

The problem arises in movies like Transformers or Ninja Turtles where CGI is just way too in your face and way too cartoonish.

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most of fury road is cgi wtf u guys smoking also beautiful story telling? its a car chase the entire movie for some water how is that beautiful story telling

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Mad Max Fury road is trash

"Most" would be a stretch - as seen in Rodent's video and others, much of the CGI is used to create multi-layered compositions of practical effects. This is considerably different to films that use CGI to create most (if not all) of their effects from scratch.

As for 'beautiful storytelling", to quote a certain film critic, it's not what the movie is about, it's how the movie is about it. Fury Road may be "a car chase the entire movie", but the details are what matter. The unorthodox structuring that plays with action movie tropes in order to create something new (especially in terms of its much-discussed feminist subtext), the trimming of any narrative fat to focus on purely visual storytelling (to the point where the film can work as a black-and-white silent version), the ways in which the thematic elements cohere with the more visceral elements, etc. It's not the most overtly complex film in terms of narrative, but it more than demonstrates that it doesn't need to be.

There's also the fact that I could just as easily break down your favourites in much the same way. Civil War is a bunch of superheroes fighting with each other for the entire movie. 300 is a bunch of soldiers fighting their enemies until they die for the entire movie. Inception is almost literally "all a dream". I literally started a game thread that was inspired by such weak dismissals of beloved films. With those last few sentences in mind, how would you defend your favourites in terms of their storytelling (as beautiful or otherwise)?

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