Why Modern Movies Suck - CGI Overload

you know watching top gun maverick the other day and thinking about what the actors and film crew must have gone through to actually capture that air combat footage it really hammered home something that's been pissing me off about modern movies for a long time now a phenomenon that i could best describe as cgi overloads digital technology is advanced to the point where computers can conjure up just about anything our creative minds can imagine from incredible alien worlds to terrifying monsters and death defying action scenes it's revolutionized cinema to such an extent that it's almost difficult to remember a time before it existed and on the face of it it should have resulted in a better end product after all cgi doesn't rely on actors hitting their marks or force directors to find inventive ways of making difficult scenes possible it doesn't force stunt men to risk life and limb to get that perfect visual it doesn't require complicated pyrotechnics or sound stages or expensive and challenging location shoots it's controllable it's predictable it's safe it's cost effective and well it's boring as [ __ ] it feels like movies now are locked into a kind of never-ending dick waving contest each striving to outdo the other with ever more ridiculous overblown gravity-defined cgi action scenes most of which carry all the weight impact and believability of a left hook from natalie portman and i mean the non-enhanced version but don't worry we'll talk more about that later and that's not even talking about what the [ __ ] actors have to work with now honestly watch some of the behind the scenes footage of any marvel movie it's some of the most depressing [ __ ] that i think i've ever seen just actors standing around in big empty green rooms having no [ __ ] clue what they're supposed to be reacting to this is it boys and girls this is the magic of movie making now now before i go any further i want to be clear that this isn't just some excuse to [ __ ] all over cgi as a concept or the people that produce it computer animators are just professionals doing the job they're hired to do they're usually overworked underpaid striving to meet ridiculous deadlines and lumbered with the thankless task of producing something that only really gets noticed if they [ __ ] up i also fully acknowledge that cgi can be a useful tool when it's properly used and there's been plenty of movies where it was genuinely difficult to tell what was real and what wasn't that being said it's not a magical silver bullet that can fix every problem and when it's been rushed or poorly implemented well it can look like absolute dog shits my general rule of thumb is that if you can do something with stunt work practical effects or location shoots then you probably should because believe it or not humans have actually got a pretty good eye for this kind of thing and the more you do it the less engaging your movie becomes take vehicle stunts for example mad max 2 from way back in 1981 gave us some of the most incredible car chases spectacular wrecks and crashes ever shown on screen to the point where several stuntmen were severely injured in the line of duty obviously that's a tragic accident but it definitely pays off when it comes to what you see on screen every time a car gets flipped or smashed to pieces or blown up there's a kind of visceral realism to it because well it was real these vehicles really did get destroyed for these scenes this poor bastard really did cartwheel through the air because he kind of [ __ ] up his stun and the sequel fury road is probably one of the best examples of limited use of vfx in modern movie making that i can think of it relied almost entirely on stunt work and practical effects with just a little bit of cgi here and there to enhance it and well it looks [ __ ] great as a result now compare it to this scene from the fast and the furious that was clearly done with wire work and cgi backgrounds notice the difference in terms of immersion and believability it's basically just a live-action cartoon at this point or how about this stunt from the man with the golden gun no special effects for this one some mad bastard actually had to corkscrew his way across the river and if he'd misjudged the jump by a few feet either way he'd probably have earned a one-way ticket to the local icu now compare it to this scene from the transporter 2 where our man has to use a conveniently placed crane arm to remove a bomb from the underside of his car apart from looking fake as [ __ ] it's also ridiculous on a purely conceptual level because you know that there's no way anyone could actually hope to time a jump like this and it's not just cars flying through the air either look at this shot from terminator 2 where a chopper has to fly underneath a freeway overpass there was no computer trickery involved in this one they actually used a real chopper flown by a [ __ ] vietnam veteran and the shot was considered so dangerous that the film crew refused to shoot it so james cameron ended up filming it himself and well it pays off it looks real because it [ __ ] is it's the same deal with explosions and pyrotechnics in action sequences i mean look at this epic scene from hard boiled one of john woo's greatest ever movies all of this was done with squibs and blanks and pyrotechnics and probably a [ __ ] ton of rehearsals to get the three and a half minute sequence to work if any one of these actors had missed his mark or [ __ ] up his lines or forgotten his next action they would have had to start the whole scene again how many movies today would put in that kind of effort or would they just use multiple cuts and highly controllable cgi explosions to produce it in the quickest safest and most efficient way possible but what about fist fights well take a look at the subway fight from the first matrix movie it's an excellent back and forth fight sequence with solid choreography that doesn't outstate welcome and actually tells a cohesive story about the shift in momentum between the two main characters and while there's definitely wire work involved it's still very much two actors fighting in a real physical location every kick and punch has actual weight behind it and the sets look solid and convincing because they actually exist they're not just some flat soulless background that was composited in later skip forward a few years to their final battle in the matrix revolutions and what do you get a cgi neo and a cgi smith endlessly punching each other while flying through a cgi city in the cgi pouring rain you see how much less involving and engaging it is you see how constantly trying to up the stakes and spectacle actually makes it harder to connect with what's going on [ __ ] man star wars fell victim to this kind of thing decades ago the lightsaber fights between luke and vader and the ot weren't big choreographed affairs with incredible moves and spectacular effects shots most of the time they were fighting in dimly lit rooms and corridors it was tight and claustrophobic and clumsy at times but it worked because it was more about the emotions of the two characters than the moves they could pull off the physical constraints of the time forced the director to focus more on the emotion of the characters and it paid off then compare it to the fight between anakin and obi-wan in revenge of the sith that shit's got them flying and leaping all over the place in cgi form pulling off very obviously choreographed moves and battling through crazy spectacular landscapes for what feels like 15 minutes straight it reeks of excess and over-the-top spectacle at the expense of good storytelling and it pretty much exemplifies the lesson that bigger isn't always better but what about creatures and monsters you might ask i mean we've been fascinated with stuff like that since the dawn of cinema what's scarier than a good monster well terrifyingly bad cgi and no i'm not even going into the obvious stuff like the hilariously [ __ ] scorpion king first up let's look at two examples from the same director peter jackson best known as the director of the lord of the rings trilogy now the orcs from the lord of the rings were actually done with practical effects this dude right here was put together with prosthetics and makeup and i think we could all agree he looks pretty damn good the makeup effects the armor the size and build even the contact lenses on the eyes they all add up to a pretty convincing character on screen he's still vaguely humanoid but monstrous and deformed at the same time a bit like your average nightclub goer in aberdeen now consider a similar antagonist from the hobbit trilogy made more than a decade later and relying more heavily on cgi you see how boring and lifeless his face looks now how there's no real detail or expression in his features his clothes or his overall appearance he's just this dull grey blob that does absolutely nothing he's not intimidating and he's not interesting and in fact it's very obvious that he doesn't even exist i know which one i'd rather have in my movie damn man we're even using cgi on actors themselves now like natalie port person who in reality looks like she's been on hunger strike for three weeks straight but what's the girl to do when she's forced to play a big buff goddess of thunder does she go through months of intense physical training and dieting to build herself up just like her male co-star or does she just show up as she is and let the cgi department give her the body she couldn't be bothered building for herself i think we all know the answer to that one now i could probably prattle on for hours about this [ __ ] giving you example after example of practical effects winning out over cgi but i think you get the point i'm making here the more movies rely on cgi the less engaging the experience becomes for the audience because deep down they know there's really nothing behind it yeah there's a [ __ ] ton of work involved to make it look convincing and i'm not trying to take anything away from the animators here but it's not the same kind of work that has to go into shooting a continuous five-minute action sequence where a single mistake can mean having to restart the whole thing from scratch it's not the same as actors and stunt performers having to risk injury or death to capture some breathtaking stunts and it's not the same as actors having to lumber around the set wearing heavy prosthetics or spend hours in the makeup chair to achieve the right result on screen yeah computer animation can overcome the physical limitations of practical effects but what's the point if nobody actually buys into what they're seeing cgi absolutely has its place in modern movie making in fact it's a vital weapon in the arsenal of most filmmakers now allowing them to show things that would be almost impossible to achieve any other way but it's not a magical solution to every problem it's not there to turn live-action movies into tightly controlled animating features with occasional appearances from real actors it should be used to enhance practical effects not to replace them if you suck all of the risk and challenge and inventiveness out of movie making and try to replace it with sterile animated spectacle then you take away the most important aspect of movies altogether the humanity and as far as i'm concerned that's a price that i'm not willing to pay anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,516,669

Keywords: critical drinker, review., review, funny, MCU, Disney, Star Wars, Superman

Id: DY-zg8Oo8p4

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022