Movies Talk! Talkin' about movies!

[PretentiousHipster]

Technically it's not the CGI that's bad. It's that Disney uses as much green screen as possible for CGI to make a quick buck with a short filming time, and make so many deadlines and short notice demands to those CGI companies that are impossible to the point that no respected company wants to work with them anymore.

[Raging Justice]

I've seen a few movies in recent years with dodgy special effects and CGI. I can look past it though if the movie is really good, but it is distracting when it happens. There's a fall in John Wick 4 where it clearly looks like a CGI John Wick falling. RRR is another great movie, but has obvious CGI animals in it.

[Ack]

Technically it's not the CGI that's bad. It's that Disney uses as much green screen as possible for CGI to make a quick buck with a short filming time, and make so many deadlines and short notice demands to those CGI companies that are impossible to the point that no respected company wants to work with them anymore.

In fact, Marvel has specifically led to VFX houses unionizing in IATSE in the past six months, specifically because of the working conditions that have been imposed.

[Golgo 14]

Lackluster effects in general don't bother me. The Bollywood action movies I was talking about in the other thread have fairly lousy effects compared to big budget blockbusters. What do you want for 30 million? As long as it gets the point across, it's all right by me.

What does kind of bother me is when the studios pour 200+ million into a movie and the result is a bloated, wall-to-wall fx mess. These movies aren't wowing anyone with their visuals because we've all seen it before now, but they keep running the same play hoping for the grosses they managed 5-10 years ago.

[PretentiousHipster]

The big example is that the new Godzilla movie only spent a fraction of their budget to make a film with much more impressive CGI. Honestly, I'd call the Marvel films embezzlement. The twitter thread that got viral was one of the characters just having a conversation in a room... it was in green screen. Wtf is the point except to save money lol

[RCBH928]

Lackluster effects in general don't bother me. The Bollywood action movies I was talking about in the other thread have fairly lousy effects compared to big budget blockbusters. What do you want for 30 million? As long as it gets the point across, it's all right by me.

What does kind of bother me is when the studios pour 200+ million into a movie and the result is a bloated, wall-to-wall fx mess. These movies aren't wowing anyone with their visuals because we've all seen it before now, but they keep running the same play hoping for the grosses they managed 5-10 years ago.

Make belief is important for me in a movie. I do not want to see movies like the ones they made in Be Kind Rewind. I remember that movie District 9, the models were so good it was hard to tell they were computer graphics. I think their budget was 30M.

They say CGI is expensive, but I do not get how it gets in the 10s of millions expensive. I will only guess that each shot has like 50 people working full time on it for 6 months to make it believable.

There are movies where I just do not see where the money went to, like John Carter is $350M ($468M FFI) budget. Looks like any other movie with CGI. LOTR budget for the trilogy was about $300M to put things into perspective, $530 Fixed for inflation, and had better CGI than current marvel releases.

What was Disney executives thinking paying that much for John Carter movie idk

[Golgo 14]

The twitter thread that got viral was one of the characters just having a conversation in a room... it was in green screen. Wtf is the point except to save money lol

I doubt that there's a lot if any money to be saved that way and Disney from 2010 to 2022 was not exactly budget conscious. They were putting out 200, 300, even 400 million dollar movies several times a year with a great hit/miss ratio. When it seems like every dollar you spend brings back five in return that leads to more spending, complacency and bloat. I imagine they're counting pennies now after their nightmare 2023 though.

What was Disney executives thinking paying that much for John Carter movie idk

Budgets were already out of hand by then with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies of that time coming in at 300+. On top of the extensive effects in John Carter, they basically shot the movie twice, which isn't recommended generally. It was a passion project for the director and he had a lot of power and goodwill with the studio, so they gave him a long leash.

[prfsnl_gmr]

First, John Carter is actually a really fun movie. I enjoyed it immensely, and I’m sad it flopped so hard.

Also, I think a good combination of detailed set design, practical effects and CGI enhancement make for the best looking movies. Star Wars, LotR, Hellboy II, etc. all took that approach, and the best Marvel movies took that approach too. New “alll green screen” Marvel movies look like trash.

[RCBH928]

First, John Carter is actually a really fun movie. I enjoyed it immensely, and I’m sad it flopped so hard.

Also, I think a good combination of detailed set design, practical effects and CGI enhancement make for the best looking movies. Star Wars, LotR, Hellboy II, etc. all took that approach, and the best Marvel movies took that approach too. New “alll green screen” Marvel movies look like trash.

the lower budget movies like District 9 look better than higher budget movies like the current Marvel ones. Maybe it goes for actor's pay and NOT the CGI work.

[Raging Justice]

I have heard that John Carter is underrated

CGI and green screen have their place, but it's always more impressive when people work hard to make things look real and authentic without the use of computers. Whether that's set design, props, people in costume for monsters and aliens, old school Jim Henson puppetry, animatronics, actors doing their own stunts, practical effects, or shooting big set pieces on location like I think they did with that train sequence in that last Mission Impossible movie.

You can just feel it when you're watching something that people worked hard to make look real with using the easy out of computers or tons of smoke and mirrors or stunt doubles. Authenticity goes a long way onscreen.