CGI, Have Moviemakers Lost Their Edge?

Since the Star Wars thread is being overrun with CG discussion, I thought I would start a thread so that we could focus 100% on CG.

In Jurassic Park, the CG was flawless, you knew the dinosaurs were fake, but they looked so damn real.

in The Phantom Menace, why did everything look so plastic? Here is the creator of one of the most sensational things out there (THX), and we get crappy CG.

Sound off...

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

Yeah. I have another problem with the CG in TPM. It looks so clean. Lucas, what happened to that "used, rusty" look you were going for with the first three films? I mean, come ON-- the Millenium Falcon looked like it had the crap beaten out of it at least a half-dozen times, as did all the rest of the rebel hardware. Even the Empire's stuff looked pretty battle-scarred, although it did look a bit cleaner than the stuff the Alliance had.

So, what gives? Was the "used" technology story just to cover up the fact that your models didn't come out looking as pristine as the ships in other sci-fi movies? If you were really being honest about that whole ethos, then WHY oh why did you make everything look so darn sparkly in TPM? Don't tell me "it's a prequel"-- did cleaning technology REALLY diminish that much in however many years there were between the two sequels?

Sheesh!

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Everything is destined to reappear as simulation.
Jean Baudrillard
America, 1988

I wouldn't say it was all cleaner. It was cleanER, but not all that clean. The Pod Racers looked pretty old and banged up to me.

i think complementing episode 1 in any way shape or form is about as good to me as chopping off one of my arms, if anyone here wants to talk cg, can someone please tell me why final fantasy, an entirely cg movie, was completely devoid of a decent plot or story devolpment?

its like there is no balance in the damn industry and they spend all their time trying to sell you on cheap gimmicks instead of good films. i hate it when people say, "the special effeccts were awesome!", because i think if the special effects were in any way decent, then they wouldnt have noticed in the first place, theyd have thought it was real. but thats just me

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Here's a helluva balance for you: LOTR: FOTR! Amazing effects (go ahead, I dare you to name a more kick-a** movie monster than the Balrog), an amazing story, and superb acting.

I think they spent more time with the actual look of the movie. They probably had this thought in their head that with visuals such as this, who's going to care about a good storyline.

As for LOTR, very cool effects.

exactly, thats my point, they just didnt care, and i thought, "why shouldnt they care more about the storyline?"
it hurts my heart

as for the LOTR, i hated the book, but seeing Sauron wearing the ring and destroying the opposing armies with that spiked club just made me feel all tingly....

Nobody will name a cooler monster than the Balrog because there IS NO MONSTER COOLER. That thing could rip Godzilla a new @rsehole without breaking a sweat. It could slice and dice the T-rex from Jurassic Park like one of those slicer-and-dicer thingies you see advertised on really late night TV with bad Japanese voiceovers.

The effects in that movie were, hands down, incredible. Talk about using CG effects in a innovative and USEFUL way: the hobbits. Look at Frodo sitting next to Gandalf in the first scene......is that not the most totally natural-looking thing in the world? But Elijah Wood isn't that small! It's magic--- movie magic that I haven't seen in too long.

The place effects were excellent, too. How could anyone NOT believe Gandalf is sitting on the top of a tower thousands of feet above a forest in Isengard? How could anyone NOT believe that the Fellowship is paddling canoes between two massive guardian statues? Mount Doom, Lothlorien, Rivendell.....I could go on, and on.

Okay T, I might not agree with you on everything, but on this point I'm right with you. LOTR : FOTR is a movie that seamlessly integrates beautiful and effective visual effects with excellent acting and an excellent plot. Which is, in short, why it rocks my socks.

i actually didnt like the plot structure and everything, i guess it was tainted because i read the book first, and like i said before, i REALLY hated the book
i liked when bilbo tries to take the ring from frodos neck about halfway through the film and you get a shot of him looking a bit like golem. THAT was cool.

i hate uneccesary cg, i mean lotr was fine but throwing in jar jar wasnt. scooby doo is ok because theres no other way of doing it.
but beast would be avoidable

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HAHA, whenever I try and picture what beast would look like now, I picture Sully from Monsters, Inc. HAHAHA

One thing though, about Beast, they better get the guy that voiced him in the cartoon. If any of you have played Spider-Man 2 for the PlayStation, they got this guy doing the voice of Beast and he sounds stupid.

i dont like the spider man being all cg either. but then again how else would u do it?

haha, like they did on the old crappy tv show
that stuff was hee-larious
hed be fighting this random bad guy each week and theyd have him climbing up walls, when of course you could see the wires and you noticed he was hanging like 6 inches off of the building
my oh my, how far we can fall, eh spidey?
i just hope for spiderman they get the character down right, im sick and tired of people getting batman wrong, he supposed to be the ultimate bad@$$, and if they do it right, spidey will be a wisecracking superhero
all my fellow geeks out there know what im talking about

yep i think tobey maguire's perfect. And u cant cast william dafoe and better than that.

but back on topic. I thought dragonheart had perfect cg, but dragonheart 2 had some of the worst ever, kind of weird.

Concerning Spider-Man, some of the CG shots from the trailer look a little silly, but for the most part, the movie in itself looks sweet.

my god, how can someone make a sequel to dragonheart?
its a crime
for me, a movie that has good cg is a movie where you cant tell its cg, i think the robot thingie angelina jolie fights in tomb raider is cg, that was pretty good (even though i hate the movie)
really good cg is usually used in battle scenes, i think the patriot used a lot of this, its great, you cant even tell
as for scooby doo, jar jar, and the dragon from dragon heart
a blind monkey with a banana could tell that was cg, and thats a no go
though i do agree that it should be used when theres no other option, thats the only time i think special effects should be used period

i thought the one had really good cg of those special forces, couldnt even tell they were fake most of the time.

Independence Day used some good CG. I mean you knew the ships weren't real, but they damn near looked it at certain points.

FF gets sucha hard time, not unfairly, but i think that there was a lot of wasted opportunity in that film. The plot gets a lot of criticism (rightly so) but it was written by the creator of the FF games (hironobu Sakaguchi) and if you know the games you know that they are as convoluted and completely disorienting as the movie. i think the main problem with the plot was the fact that nearly all the key concepts were left unexplained!(anything to do with the fact Mr Sakaguchi speaks no english and the script suffered awful translation?? as do the games)....but back to the point. FF unfortunately rode on the coat-tails of its own hype, and became by and large a tech-demo. An expensive failure for the studio and te now defunct Square pictures. Another strike in the plot v CG battle.

CG is still very young though looking across the history of film, we have seen a lot of gimmicks so far, and will see many more but i hope that we will turn a corner soon where seamless integration will really start to occur. That is what George Lucas is trying to achieve but unfortunately but from the plastic look of SWI, and the gauze covered lens of SWII it doesn't look like he is quite there.

I think one of the main problems is that the director wants the best CG and, perhaps, takes it one step too far and we get something that looks too fake.

One thing I can't understand is that why is it that a CG Team working on one movie can do a good job, but that same team on a totally different movie can do a terrible job. Who's at fault when it comes to this sort of thing?