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Why Blockbusters Aren’t as Good as They Used to Be
Every year I go to the movie theater less, only leaving the comforts of my La-Z-Boy for the latest “must-see” blockbuster. And each time I return home, I wonder why I bothered leaving my beloved La-Z-Boy in the first place. All I remember about the latest Avengers flick was fire, noise, and 72 actors zooming in and out of CGI backgrounds wearing shiny outfits. Add in the $362 I spent on popcorn, drinks and Red Vines for the kids, and it’s no wonder the industry is lagging.
I blamed my lukewarm reactions on Hollywood’s unoriginal storylines and the fact that I’m getting older. My kids are seeing this stuff for the first time, while I’m on my fourth Spiderman. (I hear the next Spiderman movie will reboot the franchise in the middle of the second act.) However, according to the movie addicts at StoryBrain, over-reliance on CGI might be to blame. And it isn’t just the computer-generated characters, but the too-perfect backgrounds.
Here’s their theory: Back in the ’90s, a CGI character would be placed onto a real backdrop — say, an actual city street — which added to the realism. Our brains saw something we recognized from personal experience, so we were willing to suspend our disbelief for the single CGI element strolling through the middle of it.
Once the technology advanced enough, Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital sought to better integrate the foreground and the background by making everything CGI. Today a digital Hulk walks on digital streets with digital buildings dappled with digital sunlight. Now that everything is fake, our brain no longer has a frame of reference to latch onto. Despite the pretty compositions and non-stop action, everything blends into a bland, generic falseness.
What do you think: Do the folks at StoryBrain have a point?
Published in Entertainment
Wait… what?
As described in the Story Brain argument as referenced in the OP. CGI when it’s not necessary; CGI when real would work better.
You know what was a decent blockbuster-esque movie? Real Steel from 2011. It had its flaws. But they used the CGI crack cocaine sparingly. And it was character driven.
I seem to remember Siskel and Ebert mentioning that the best movies are usually the more quiet ones.
Thus, why do improved visual effects always have to be accompanied by more and more noise (which can be unbearable when sitting next to movie theater speakers)?
I think they have to crank up the noise to overcome people talking during the show.
I think blaming CGI is facile and completely misses the point. It’s all about artistry, not medium.
CGI is fantastic technology because it makes it possible for digital artists to create any image they can imagine and design. But they still have to imagine it and design it. Unfortunately, CGI makes it easy for poor artists to create poor art; the CGI isn’t to blame for that any more than a paintbrush is to blame for Thomas Kinkade.
I’m as nostalgic as anyone about the blockbusters of my youth, but frankly, I find that many of the old visual effects just don’t work anymore. The obvious stop-motion animation of the Tauntauns in The Empire Strikes Back isn’t remotely convincing; and although Yoda was a marvelous puppet, it’s obvious that he is a puppet every time his mouth moves.
And don’t forget, CGI can be used with marvelous restraint, and the best visual effects are the ones you don’t even realize are visual effects. How much of the CGI did you notice in The King’s Speech? It was there.
Okay, can I stand up for Thomas Kinkade here? Maybe his art isn’t “inspired” and edgy, but it is at least beautiful, and took a hell of a lot more effort than signing a urinal and calling it art.
I find it fun to revisit aging favorites that hold up well for this reason. I have The Hunt for Red October on Blu-Ray, and the only thing that makes me wince is the caustics around the submarines’ propellers. You can do better in real time on modern desktop PC gaming hardware (and yes, someone should do a submarine combat game). But then, it’s 2015, not 1990.
If you want your mind utterly blown, it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, again on Blu-Ray. Now remember, this film came out in 1968. A year before the first lunar landing, and eight years before the first “CGI” (Futureworld, 1976, in which we’re treated to a very low-polygon-count animated 3D wireframe rendering of eventual Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull’s hand). I always have to remind myself that the moon in 2001 looks a little funny—not crazy, just a bit off—because no one had been there yet; and the psychedelic visions at the end were photographed by effects wizard Douglas Trumbull.
Watch the climactic battle scene at the end of the first Lord of the Rings movie, with that glorious swooping trolley shot down and through the forest as the Orcs are attacking the Company of the Ring, then watch ANY battle scene from the Hobbit series.
Peter Jackson was forced to use the beautiful landscape of New Zealand in the first three movies because he didn’t have the money to turn everything into CGI. As a result, he ended up with fight scenes full of people, not pixels which were much more engrossing, much more enticing, much more entertaining than the over-the-top eye candy in the Hobbit series.
Follow-up question: Who is the hero of The Avengers: Age of Ultron? Who makes the life change? Black Widow? (Yep). Hawkeye? (Yep). Hulk? (Yep). Scarlet Witch (Yep). Quicksilver? (Yep).
With a half-dozen heroes in a superhero movie, it’s no wonder we didn’t feel a connection to the characters.
Maybe your first mistake was going to see Avengers. I mean, I’ve lost count of how many superhero movies have been made in the last years. Probably there’s 6 being released in the next 3 weeks.
I don’t know. These sort of movies were always dumb movies.
Well, the upside is they stopped making penguin movies. The bad news is, once they’re done with superheroes, something even more frighteningly bad will become the fad.
I don’t think it’s CGI to be blamed. Simply that the movies aren’t targeted towards adults. They’re targeted towards kids. And kids these days have more money than kids of prior days, hence they can make 16 Avenger movies in a year, knowing that kids will go watch them.
Another reason might be that kids today have been desensitized to “visuals” by video games. So the movies need to up the video games in terms of visual appeal, otherwise the movie doesn’t offer very much to the kids. They’re not really there for the “story line”.
So if you want Hollywood to stop making so many bad movies, stop giving your kids money to go watch these movies. Hollywood responds to market demands, so I don’t blame them.
Eh, this is a stretch. Battle scenes in the first three films made extensive use of the Massive multi-agent animation software, motion capture, and compositing. The extended DVD documentaries make quite clear that there are no untouched images of New Zealand in the films, disappointing tourists who want to see, e.g. Bag End or Rivendell. The scene where Frodo and Bilbo look at Bilbo’s book on a balcony is a good example: part live New Zealand, part miniature, part CGI in the same frame at the same time.
But the moment you say “battle scene with swooping trolley shot down and through trees, with orcs,” it’s Massive and a lot of Carrie Thiel mocap.
I’d frame this differently: movies are passive entertainment. If it’s to be engaged by a story you want, play Batman: Arkham City, Hitman: Absolution, Tomb Raider, or Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And, increasingly, if it’s amazing visuals you want, you need to go to the same source.
Concur. By the way, all of the references listed during the sword fight were authentic.
I miss stuntmen, does Hollywood still have those?
The recent Mad Max reboot was very good, and I read that George Miller made a big effort to minimise reliance on CGI. There was, however, uninterrupted action all the way and only wafer-thin character and plot development. But in the end that didn’t detract from the movie at all.
Funny you ask! With my last Christmas gift cards (nobody knows what to get for me, and I sympathize completely), I purchased the Bond 50. Watched them all, in order, with my wife mostly in and out from time to time.
First: the restoration work on the early films is amazing. You’ll see similarly amazing restoration on Universal Classic Monsters, which I also own.
I had stopped watching Bond after Tomorrow Never Dies—much as I like Pierce Brosnan, the franchise couldn’t seem to figure out what to be in a post-Playboy, post-Cold-War era. So I hadn’t seen any of the Daniel Craig Bonds. When I saw the opening of Casino Royale, I was blown away. My wife asked why. I said “it’s gone back to basics: stuntmen doing dangerous things.” The whole Craig era so far feels much more personal, like Bond matters, M matters, Q matters, and—finally!—Moneypenny matters. Highly recommended.
One can use a ton of CGI without sacrificing good storytelling. Three recent examples being X-Men Days of Future Past, the R. Downey JR. Sherlock Holmes films, and The Hunger Games franchise. It takes great acting, and original stories with depth of character to make it work.
Great Ghost of Gödel:
My wife asked why. I said “it’s gone back to basics: stuntmen doing dangerous things.”
Thinking about this a little more, I think audiences like to know that the act of making a movie (or creating anything) is adventurous and risky, and maybe there’s not enough risk in movies if actors are in no danger of getting hurt, studios are just relying on familiar franchises over new ideas.
There’s no sense of daring or bravado in an FX guy who’s just pushing pixels on a computer screen in a comfortable office.
Wouldn’t another major aspect of modern film-making would also have to be the replacement of film-rolls with digital motion-capture technology? Celluloid rolls were expensive and imposed far greater budgetary constraints than digital footage. I don’t know much about this, last time I checked about 10 years ago there was still a preference for celluloid for it’s image quality.
Well good news because they already did!
In all seriousness it may well be that the new remakes just aren’t very good despite the SFX. Does King Kong still resonate with people? I think the original Robocop still stands up while the remake just didn’t provoke any interest in me at all and I can say the same about say Total Recall.
I think with big fight sequences you need to establish stakes and the outcome needs to be in doubt or there are consequences to the characters involved. Man of Steel was horrible because there was no reason to care about anyone in that movie. In the Avengers 2, Ultron’s actions made no sense and of course they aren’t gonna let all the innocent people die. Whereas in the first Avengers the final long fight scene is a culmination of them overcoming their differences to do something significant.
The Star Wars prequels might have been better if Obi Wan wasn’t in every other scene since you more or less know that he needs to survive to become Alec Guinness.
You can have both. My favorite example is the freeway chase in The Matrix Reloaded. I thought the stakes felt crazy-high, and it wasn’t until quite a bit after seeing it for the first time that it really occurred to me to wonder how they got some of those shots. The “making of” documentary of just that scene is, head and shoulders, my favorite Matrix trilogy documentary. A mile-long freeway set, scads of cars, a lot of blue-screen work, and a lot of CGI. Favorite Laurence Fishburn quote, to stunt director RJ Rondell: “RJ, I’m scared.” RJ Rondell: “I know. I’m gonna take care of you.” Number of injuries: 0.
Mocap is good for projection onto crowds or non-humans where you can sacrifice nuance. Remember, Gollum was painted onto Andy Serkis’ mocap performance. That’s very expensive.
I’ve really dug the Daniel Craig Bond films (well, I would have dug Quantum of Solace if the director had any clue how to shoot action). Casino Royale is my favorite Bond flick.
Just saw Kingsman with some friends – and everyone loved it. It is basically a return to what James Bond was, once upon a time. And tremendous good fun, with one of them protagonist-fellers and everything. I happen to identify with classy heroes, and Kingsman brought back the age when the good guy wore a great suit.
Kingsman was recommended on Ricochet, and I am delighted that I went ahead and saw it anyway.
“Blockbuster” these days typically means “We spent a ton of money making this film.” I’m beginning to think Hollywood is running out of creativity, given the heavy reliance on endless sequels (Fast and Furious 27), comic books (The Amazing Adventures of Dirtman), or computer generated cartoons (The Frog Prince). Okay, I made those titles up.
A blockbuster can be cheap and original, unless the studio simply must have this star and that star in the leading roles. Give me fresh faces, a little backing, and a simple script—say, a love story—and even I could write a blockbuster . . . I’ll bet many Ricochetti out there could write one too.
The last two “blockbusters” to be based on original screenplays (not a book, comic or a sequel) was “Inside Out” and “Avatar”.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Hollywood’s creativity.
It’s all good and well to say “We need new content!”, but if it’s your job on the line, and you have the choice to green-light “Joe Dirt 2” or something untested, which direction would you chose?
And of those, “Inside Out” was the only actual original screenplay. Setting “Dances With Wolves” in space doesn’t exactly count as original or creative.
A couple of months ago, my wife and I decided to watch Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Not a remake, but certainly building on the solid history of The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger. My wife enjoyed the film. I, however, was not impressed, though in the interest of not ruining her fun, I refrained from stating my opinion until after the film was over. The difference? I had grown up on the the old Jack Ryan films.
One particularly bad scene from Shadow Recruit was when Ryan and a group of google superusers solve the entire mystery in 5 minutes. My wife was sympathetic, but she didn’t understand where I was coming from, so I insisted that we watch Patriot Games to see how it should be done.
It was like night and day. She saw very quickly why this new film was a dull and twisted mess for me.
A few days later, with the awful climactic fight scene in JR:SR still in mind, we watched Clear and Present Danger to see how what a really intense action scene looks like – think ambush in the streets of Bogota, bombing a mansion, or infiltrating a Narc’s headquarters. The funeral scene juxtaposed with the betrayal and capture of the spec ops soldiers left us both in tears – something that could never be said about JR:SR.
This is just one example of how newer movies are blowing it.
-E
Book adaptations, remakes, and sequels have always been a staple of Hollywood, all the way back to the silent days. I see no evidence that this reliance has increased in modern times.
I just looked at IMDB’s current list of the top ten films of all time, and of those ten, eight are adaptations or sequels.
There are lots of good reasons to criticize Hollywood, but I don’t think that’s one of them.
“One particularly bad scene from Shadow Recruit was when Ryan and a group of google superusers solve the entire mystery in 5 minutes. My wife was sympathetic, but she didn’t understand where I was coming from, so I insisted that we watch Patriot Games to see how it should be done”.
This comment causes me physical pain. The movie version of Patriot Games is a gawdawful mess. If you want to see “how it should be done” put the movie down and read the book.
It’s pretty well universally agreed that the book is always better than the movie, but the comparison here is between 2 movies. Would you rather watch JR:SR or Patriot Games? Anyone who chooses the first has either never seen Patriot Games or is a philistine.
-E